Top Stories

Back-to-the-Future Plants Give Climate Change Insights

If you were to take a seed and zap it into the future to see how it will respond to climate change, how realistic might that prediction be? After all, seeds that actually grow in the future will have gone through generations of genetic changes and adaptations that these “time traveling” seeds don’t experience.

>> Read the Full Article

Chinese Satellites Provide Advanced Solutions to Modeling Small Particles in the Atmosphere

The assimilation of aerosol optical depth (AOD) observational data from the Chinese satellite Fengyun-3A (FY-3A) can significantly improve the ability to model aerosol mass, according to Prof. Jinzhong MIN, Vice President at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology.

>> Read the Full Article

Violent Crime Rates Rise in Warmer Winters

As global temperatures climb, warmer winters in parts of the country may set the scene for higher rates of violent crimes such as assault and robbery, according to a new CIRES study.

>> Read the Full Article

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill's Dramatic Effect on Stingrays' Sensory Abilities

It has been almost a decade since the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill. Described as the worst environmental disaster in the United States, nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil oozed into the Gulf of Mexico, severely degrading the marine ecosystem immediately surrounding the spill site and directly impacting coastal habitats along 1,773 kilometers of shoreline. About 10 million gallons remain in the sediment at the bottom of the Gulf and may continue to cause severe physiological damages to marine life, including impairment of sensory systems.

>> Read the Full Article

Escalator to Extinction: Can Mountain Species Adapt to Climate Change?

A shift in home range by a handful of bird species along an obscure ridge in the Peruvian Andes might once have seemed like sleepy stuff, even to ecologists. Instead, it made headlines last month when researchers reported that the birds’ uphill push for cooler terrain has already resulted in population losses for most species and the probable extirpation of five species that were common at the top of the ridge just 33 years ago.

>> Read the Full Article

Wishes Help Keep Pediatric Patients Out of the Hospital

Cimone Stills, 15, has a medical condition that has caused her to have multiple seizures a day for most of her life. Specifically, she has treatment-resistant generalized epilepsy because of a genetic variation. Like many patients with such a serious illness, it affects her daily life and as a result, she was diagnosed with clinical depression. But Cimone’s outlook on life completely changed for the better after her wish of going to Paris. Cimone says that the wish helped provide her perspective and hope. It also helped reduced her number of seizures over time.

>> Read the Full Article