The passage of time can play cruel tricks on noble intentions. The person selected as the new United Nations (UN) Secretary-General later this year should keep this in mind as he or she evaluates how effectively the UN is responding to the challenges of the 21st century.

Those who go to a masked ball consciously slip into a different role, in order to avoid being recognized so quickly. Insects were already doing something very similar in the Cretaceous: They cloaked themselves in pieces of plants, grains of sand, or the remains of their prey, in order, for example, to be invisible to predators. An international research team, with participation from the University of Bonn, has now investigated such "invisibility cloaks" encased in amber. The custom-tailored "costumes" also permit conclusions about the habitat at the time. The results have now been published in the journal "Science Advances".

New work suggests Earth's ancient magnetic field was significantly different than the present day field, originating from several poles rather than the familiar two. 

Earth generates a strong magnetic field extending from the core out into space that shields the atmosphere and deflects harmful high-energy particles from the Sun and the cosmos. Without it, our planet would be bombarded by cosmic radiation, and life on Earth's surface might not exist. The motion of liquid iron in Earth's outer core drives a phenomenon called the geodynamo, which creates Earth's magnetic field. This motion is driven by the loss of heat from the core and the solidification of the inner core.

Bremerhaven/Germany, 24 June 2016. The Siberian permafrost regions include those areas of the Earth, which heat up very quickly in the course of climate change. Nevertheless, biologists are currently observing only a minimal response in forest composition. In the places where, when considering the air temperature, pine and spruce forests should be growing, Siberian larch trees are still thriving. The cause of this paradox has been tracked using million-year-old bee pollen by scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute, the University of Cologne, and international partner institutions. The results suggest that the intensity of the ice ages determined how quick the vegetation adapted to warmer climate periods.

A University of Exeter scientist has helped develop an innovative mathematical model for exploring why some individuals evolve to be genetically programmed to be nice, while others stay nasty.

Dr Sasha Dall, Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Ecology, and a team of international colleagues have designed a new mathematical framework for examining social behaviour in a range of different species that will help advance our understanding of the evolution of sociality.

One of the first clues pathologists look for in tissue from a newly diagnosed breast cancer patient is the estrogen receptor, a nuclear protein that converts hormonal messages in the bloodstream into instructions for the cell about how to behave. They also look for the presence of progesterone receptors, primarily to confirm that the estrogen receptor is active.

In the June 24 issue of Science Advances, however, researchers radically upgrade the significance of the progesterone receptor. They show that when exposed to estrogens and progestins, these receptor proteins interact with different sets of binding sites in the cell's chromosomes, with the progesterone receptor dramatically altering how estrogen receptors interact with the cell's DNA.