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Categories: Ecology: Trees, Offbeat: General

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Extreme events wipe out entire forests, dramatically eliminating complex ecosystems as well as local communities. Researchers have become quite familiar with such attention-grabbing events over the years. They know less, however, about the more common moderate-severity disturbances, such as relatively small fires, ice storms, and outbreaks of pests or pathogens.

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The rivers of Australia, which once flowed across its now dry interior, used to host a range of bizarre animals -- including a sleek predatory lobe-finned fish with large fangs and bony scales. The newly described fossil fish discovered in remote fossil fields west of Alice Springs has been named Harajicadectes zhumini by palaeontologists.

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Black holes not only existed at the dawn of time, they birthed new stars and supercharged galaxy formation, a new analysis of James Webb Space Telescope data suggests.

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The workings of the ultrasonic warning sounds produced by the wings of a species of moth have been revealed.

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Research involving has shown that a 'swarm' of more than 100 autonomous ground and aerial robots can be supervised by one person without subjecting the individual to an undue workload.

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Experts have discovered how to create different colors of blue cheese. After discovering how the classic blue-green veining is created, a team of experts were able to create a variety of different fungal strains that could be used to make cheese with colors ranging from white to yellow-green to red-brown-pink and light and dark blues.

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Scientists completed several successful attempts to fire 28 kilojoules of laser energy at small capsules filled with deuterium and tritium fuel, causing the capsules to implode and produce a plasma hot enough to initiate fusion reactions between the fuel nuclei. These results demonstrate an effective 'spark plug' for direct-drive methods of inertial confinement fusion.

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Fake news works for wallabies and elephants. Herbivores can cause substantial damage to crops or endangered or protected plants, with traditional methods to deter foraging lethal, expensive or ineffective. Biologists are now using aromas from plants naturally repellent with remarkable success to deter the animals.

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In the fossil record, trees typically are preserved with only their trunks. They don't usually include any leaves to show what their canopies and overall forms may have looked like. In a new study, researchers describe fossilized trees from New Brunswick, Canada with a surprising and unique three-dimensional crown shape.

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Scientists developed a new method to map exactly how a fungus works with leafcutter ants in a complex microbial community to degrade plant material at the molecular level. The team's insights are important for biofuels development.

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Zebrafish are smaller than your little finger, with a brain no more than half the size of a pinhead. Yet these animals possess an efficient navigation system that enables them to find their way back to spots in the water where the temperature suits them.

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It's an achievement with important implications for scientists studying the brain and working on treatments for a broad range of neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

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Researchers have been skeptical that recent AI advances can tell us much about human learning and development. To address this, a team training an AI model, not on massive data, but on the input that a single child receives. Their findings showed that the model could learn a substantial number of words and concepts using limited slices of what the child experienced.

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We often think of fish as carefree swimmers in the ocean, reacting to the world around them without much forethought. However, new research suggests that our marine cousins may be more cognizant than we credit them for. Fish may be counting vertical bars on intruders to determine their threat level, and to inform the social hierarchy governing their sea anemone colonies.

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Researchers have discovered a change in what scientists already knew about global warming dynamics. It had been widely accepted since the 1950s that global temperature rises were not consistent throughout the day and night, with greater nighttime warming being observed. However, the recent study reveals a shift in dynamics: with greater daytime warming taking place since the 1990s. This shift means that the temperature difference between day and night is widening, potentially affecting all life on Earth.

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The earliest galaxies are thought to have formed as the gravitational pull of dark matter, which has been impossible to study directly, slowly drew in enough hydrogen and helium to ignite stars. But astrophysicists now show that after the Big Bang, hydrogen and helium gas bounced at supersonic speeds off dense, slowly moving clumps of cold dark matter. When the gas fell back in millennia later, stars formed all at once, creating small, exceptionally bright galaxies. If models of cold dark matter are correct, the James Webb Space Telescope should be able to find patches of bright galaxies in the early universe, potentially offering the first effective test for theories about dark matter. If it doesn't, scientists have to go back to the drawing board with dark matter.

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A research group has discovered a novel RNA viral genome from microbes inhabiting a high-temperature acidic hot spring. Their study shows that RNA viruses can live in high-temperature environments (70-80 degrees Celsius), where no RNA viruses have been observed before. In addition to the two known RNA virus kingdoms, a third kingdom may exist.

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Goats can tell the difference between a happy-sounding human voice and an angry-sounding one, according to researchers. A new study reveals that goats may have developed a sensitivity to our vocal cues over their long association with humans.

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How is a beech leaf constructed? What determines the appearance of an asparagus? A new 'encyclopaedia' helps us learn more about the building blocks of plants. The encyclopaedia, probably the largest of its kind, could be used to improve targeted plant breeding efforts, to make them both more climate-resilient and more easily digestible.

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Poultry scientists are unraveling the complexities of bird brains and finding less expensive ways to do it. The scientists mapped the intricate neurological pathways that control vision in chickens with detailed 3D models of the connections between the eyes and four regions of the brain.