COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The lady salamander that shuns male companionship may reap important benefits.

For instance, when a predator snaps off her tail.

New research from The Ohio State University compared an all-female population of mole salamanders to a related heterosexual species and found they grew their tails back 36 percent faster. The unisexual salamanders (part of the Ambystoma genus) contain DNA of up to five species and reproduce primarily by cloning themselves.

More than 500 million people live in the Middle East and North Africa, which has always been hot in summer. And it's getting hotter, says Jos Lelieveld, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Professor at the Cyprus Institute. The number of extremely hot days has doubled since 1970, he says, and "the very existence of its inhabitants is in jeopardy." 

Rainwater may play an important role in the process that triggers earthquakes, according to new research.

Researchers from the University of Southampton, GNS Science (New Zealand), the University of Otago, and GFZ Potsdam (Germany), identified the sources and fluxes of the geothermal fluids and mineral veins from the Southern Alps of New Zealand where the Pacific and Australian Plates collide along the Alpine Fault.

From careful chemical analyses, they discovered that fluids originating from the mantle, the layer below the Earth's crust, and fluids derived from rainwater, are channelled up the Alpine Fault.

Climate change has caused a drop in the amount of oxygen dissolved in the oceans in some parts of the world, and those effects should become evident across large parts of the ocean between 2030 and 2040, according to a new study led by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.

Scientists expected a warming climate to sap oceans of oxygen, leaving fish, crabs, squid, sea stars, and other marine life struggling to breathe. But they had encountered difficulties in determining whether this anticipated oxygen drain was already having a noticeable effect.

April 29, 2016 - A modified surgical technique may provide a simpler approach to the surgical treatment for one type of chronic headache, according to an "Ideas and Innovations" paper in the May issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

While women's tennis is arguably far more interesting than the men's game, there are some who want to make it more like the male version, or at least more competitive between women.

In a Journal of Sports Economics paper, the authors examined the differences between men's and women's tournament scores from the 24 top men's and 23 top women's singles tournaments of the 2010 season. They evaluated the "tightness," or competitiveness of a match according to how close the set scores were. Men's sets were consistently closer (6-4, 7-5), while women's sets tended to be more lopsided, with scores of 6-2, 6-1.