Scientists have calculated that the present day ice sheets keep vast amounts of climate gas methane in check. Ice sheets are heavy and cold, providing pressure and temperatures that contain methane in form of ice-like substance called gas hydrate. If the ice sheets retreat the weight of the ice will be lifted from the ocean floor, the gas hydrates will be destabilised and the methane will be released.

Studies conducted at CAGE have previously shown that ice sheets and methane hydrates are closely connected, and that release of methane from the seafloor has followed the retreat of the Barents Sea ice sheet some 20 000 years ago. But is all such release of the potent climate gas bound to be catastrophic?

The 'maths gender gap' was eliminated in the United States during the Bush administration under the No Child Left Behind program, and it has closed substantially in European countries and parts of Asia as well. Where do young women still lag in math? In societies with poor rates of gender equality, according to the American Economic Review.

A new atudy finds that an online computerized cognitive behavioral therapy (CCBT) program both alone and in combination with Internet Support Groups (ISG) is more effective than doctors for anxiety and depression.

A new study in mice provides direct causal evidence that rapid eye movement or REM sleep helps to consolidate memory in the brain. The link between REM sleep and memory has been long been considered by scientists, but the transient nature of REM sleep, along with the ethical concerns of experimentally depriving humans of REM sleep, make it difficult to study. To get a closer look at what happens in the brain during REM sleep, Richard Boyce and colleagues used an optogenetics technique that allowed them to use light to selectively silence neurons in the mouse hippocampus during REM sleep, inhibiting the signaling patterns called theta oscillations that are thought to be involved in learning and memory.

The frequent occurrence of same-sex behaviors in beetles of one sex could be explained by genes that are favored by natural selection when expressed in the opposite sex, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

The study by researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden sheds new light on same-sex sexual behavior in the animal kingdom through examination of the seed beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus, a common beetle found in bean stores across the world.

• Syncytin-1 gene is result of a viral infection of our primate ancestors