Wolves Understand Cause and Effect Better Than Dogs

A rattle will only make noise if you shake it. Children learn this principle of cause and effect early on in their lives. However, animals like the wolf also understand such connections and are better at this than their domesticated descendants. Researchers at the Wolf Science Center of the Vetmeduni Vienna say that wolves have a better causal understanding than dogs and that they follow human-given communicative cues equally well. The study in Scientific Reports provides the insight that the process of domestication can also affect an animal’s causal understanding.

The Body's Own Fat-Metabolism Protects Against the Harmful Effects of Sugar

For several years, medical researchers, doctors and dieticians have known that a low carbohydrate diet and plentiful fat can prevent a range of lifestyle and age-related diseases and thus promote healthy aging. But researchers from around the world have not been able to explain why this is the case. They have just been reasonably certain that the energy metabolism and its chemical intermediates (metabolites) play a central role.

Arctic Sea Ice Once Again Shows Considerable Melting

This September, the extent of Arctic sea ice shrank to roughly 4.7 million square kilometres, as was determined by researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute, the University of Bremen and Universität Hamburg. Though slightly larger than last year, the minimum sea ice extent 2017 is average for the past ten years and far below the numbers from 1979 to 2006. The Northeast Passage was traversable for ships without the need for icebreakers.

Why is it getting cloudier in the Arctic?

Clouds are an important part of the Arctic climate because they trap warm air at the surface like a blanket. There has been a continuous increase in cloud cover over the Arctic for the past two decades and this is driving big changes on land and in the ocean. The increasing cloud cover has exacerbated the Arctic amplification and is a major reason why the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

New study shows banning shark fin in the U.S. won't help save sharks

A new study published today in the scientific journal Marine Policy shows that banning the sale of shark fins within the United States can actually harm ongoing shark conservation efforts.

David Shiffman of SFU’s Earth2Ocean research group and Robert Hueter from the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida say that a proposed nationwide ban on shark fin sales within the United States is a misguided and ineffective approach to protecting sharks.

One vaccine injection could carry many doses

MIT engineers have invented a new 3-D fabrication method that can generate a novel type of drug-carrying particle that could allow multiple doses of a drug or vaccine to be delivered over an extended time period with just one injection.

The new microparticles resemble tiny coffee cups that can be filled with a drug or vaccine and then sealed with a lid. The particles are made of a biocompatible, FDA-approved polymer that can be designed to degrade at specific times, spilling out the contents of the “cup.”

NASA Sees Eastern Pacific Stir Up Tropical Storm Norma

Tropical Storm Norma is the newest addition to the tropical cyclones in the Eastern Pacific and NASA's Terra satellite caught it after it developed.

New climate risk classification created to account for potential 'existential' threats

A new study evaluating models of future climate scenarios has led to the creation of the new risk categories “catastrophic” and “unknown” to characterize the range of threats posed by rapid global warming. Researchers propose that unknown risks imply existential threats to the survival of humanity.

These categories describe two low-probability but statistically significant scenarios that could play out by century’s end, in a new study by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a distinguished professor of climate and atmospheric sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, and his former Scripps graduate student Yangyang Xu, now an assistant professor at Texas A&M University.

NASA Sees Typhoon Doksuri in the South China Sea

Typhoon Doksuri appeared well-rounded and organized on satellite imagery as it moved through the north central South China Sea toward Vietnam.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible light image of Typhoon Doksuri on Sept. 14, 2017 at 1:48 a.m. EDT (0548 UTC).Although Doksuri's eye was obscured by high clouds, the center was evident by the powerful thunderstorms that surrounded it. Doksuri's western quadrant had already spread over the east coast of Vietnam as it moved toward that country.

Biologist reaches into electric eel tank, comes out with equation to measure shocks

The shock from a young electric eel feels like accidentally touching a horse fence. A big one is more like getting tasered — by nine of those devices at once.