NASA's Webb Telescope to Investigate Mysterious Brown Dwarfs

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Astronomers are hopeful that the powerful infrared capability of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will resolve a puzzle as fundamental as stargazing itself — what IS that dim light in the sky? Brown dwarfs muddy a clear distinction between stars and planets, throwing established understanding of those bodies, and theories of their formation, into question.

Danforth Center Uncovers a Genetic Mechanism That Could Enhance Yield in Cereal Crops

Solving the world’s food, feed and bioenergy challenges requires integration of multiple approaches and diverse skills. Andrea Eveland, Ph.D., assistant member at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and her team identified a genetic mechanism that controls developmental traits related to grain production in cereals. The work was performed in Setaria viridis, an emerging model system for grasses that is closely related to economically important cereal crops and bioenergy feed stocks such as maize, sorghum, switchgrass and sugarcane.

We Need One Global Net­work of 1000 Sta­tions to Build an Earth Ob­ser­vat­ory

We also need to share our data. So says world’s most prominent geoscientist, professor Markku Kulmala.

Environmental challenges, climate change, water and food security and urban air pollution, they are all interlinked, yet each is studied as such, separately. This is not a sustainable situation, for anybody anymore. To tackle this, professor Markku Kulmala calls for a continuous, comprehensive monitoring of interactions between the planet’s surface and atmosphere in his article “Build a global Earth observatory” published in Nature, January 4, 2018.

Is Arctic Warming Influencing the UK's Extreme Weather?

Severe snowy weather in winter or extreme rains in summer in the UK might be influenced by warming trends in the Arctic, according to new findings. 

It's Official: 2017 Was the Second Hottest Year on Record

Last year was the second hottest year on record worldwide, behind 2016, according to a European Union climate monitoring program. Global temperatures averaged 14.7 degrees Celsius (58.46°F) — 1.2 degrees C (2.2°F) above pre-industrial times.

Cancer Mortality in the U.S. Continues Decades-Long Drop

The report estimates that there will be 1,735,350 new cancer cases and 609,640 cancer deaths in the United States in 2018*. The cancer death rate dropped 26% from its peak of 215.1 per 100,000 population in 1991 to 158.6 per 100,000 in 2015. A significant proportion of the drop is due to steady reductions in smoking and advances in early detection and treatment. The overall decline is driven by decreasing death rates for the four major cancer sites: Lung (declined 45% from 1990 to 2015 among men and 19% from 2002 to 2015 among women); female breast (down 39% from 1989 to 2015), prostate (down 52% from 1993 to 2015), and colorectal (down 52% from 1970 to 2015).

Scientists find surprising evidence of rapid changes in the arctic

Scientists have found surprising evidence of rapid climate change in the Arctic: In the middle of the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole, they discovered that the levels of radium-228 have almost doubled over the last decade.

Which came first: complex life or high atmospheric oxygen?

We and all other animals wouldn’t be here today if our planet didn’t have a lot of oxygen in its atmosphere and oceans. But how crucial were high oxygen levels to the transition from simple, single-celled life forms to the complexity we see today?

Children with chronic illness often show signs of mental health problems

Children commonly show signs of a mental disorder soon after receiving a diagnosis involving a chronic physical condition, according to a recent study in BMJ Open.

Forty Per Cent of Global E-Waste Comes From Asia

Humans generated a staggering 44.7 million metric tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) in 2016 — the equivalent of 4,500 Eiffel Towers, and five per cent more than the electrical and electronic goods discarded just two years earlier, says a new study.