Methane still seeps from these craters on the Barents Sea floor, formed some 12,000 years ago when pent-up methane burst from sediment. (Illustration Credit: Andreia Plaza Faverola/CAGE) A massive reserve of methane — a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide — is trapped deep within the seafloor. In northern latitudes, thick ice sheets act as a lid sequestering gases at the right temperature and pressure. But when that ice melts, it’s akin to popping a cork on a press ...read more

The underwater wreckage of a B-25 Mitchell bomber from World War II near Papua New Guinea. Credit: Project Recover About 75 years ago, the North American B-25 Mitchell bomber became famous as the twin-engined plane that helped the United States launch the first retaliatory attack on the Imperial Japanese homeland during World War II. The medium bombers mainly deployed in the Pacific theater of war, where they often served as low-flying gunships that attacked both ...read more

For bumblebees, big cities are a bummer. Layers of asphalt, concrete, brick and metal add up to fewer places for the insects to nest. But one big city—Detroit—reverses that trend. That means shrinking cities might be a growing opportunity for at-risk pollinators. Bumblebees (species with the genus name Bombus) are, like other bees, in trouble. Their numbers and diversity are decreasing across North America. Other native wild bees—the insects that have been ...read more

By Kaitlin Vortherms New and exponentially increasing amounts of biomedical research can yield valuable insight into rare diseases, cures, devices, procedures, and more. This growth, however, can sometimes overwhelm scientists and the public alike: the amount of scientific research published in 2014 was more than triple the amount published in 1990, and this trend continues today. While this research has the potential to lead to valuable, lifesaving insights, it is not only hard for scientists t ...read more

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The LCLS Coherent X-ray Imaging Experimental Station. (Credit: Nathan Taylor/SLAC) When researchers want to take pictures of very small things, like individual molecules, they have to get creative. When scales shrink to seemingly imperceivable levels, images must be captured using indirect techniques that record how the subject being photographed interacts with its environment. One way to do this is by observing how a beam of particles disperses around the object. Working backward, r ...read more

Don’t skimp on the SPF. (Credit: Sabphoto/Shutterstock) Kerry Hanson, University of California, Riverside Not so long ago, people like my Aunt Muriel thought of sunburn as a necessary evil on the way to a “good base tan.” She used to slather on the baby oil while using a large reflector to bake away. Aunt Muriel’s mantra when the inevitable burn and peel appeared: Beauty has its price. Was she ever right about that price – but it was a lot higher than any of ...read more

Goats grazing on an argan tree in southwestern Morocco. In the fruiting season, many clean argan nuts are spat out by the goats while chewing their cud. (Credit: H. Garrido/EBD-CSIC) What do goats and squirrels have in common? They both climb trees, of course. While squirrels live amongst the branches, goats, or at least those in arid regions, climb them for dinner. And that’s good for the goats, and the trees. Scientists have discovered that the domesticated goats in southern Morocco be ...read more

The outer sarcophagus of a woman buried at Abusir el-Malaq. (Credit: bpk/Aegyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, SMB/Sandra Steiss) DNA recovered from ancient Egyptians mummies is revealing the mosaic of cultures that came to dominate the region. German researchers gathered genetic data from over 100 mummies stored in museum collections and analyzed it with updated sequencing techniques. They amassed 90 mitochondrial DNA sequences and three full genomes, a collection ...read more