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Categories: Ecology: Nature, Offbeat: Computers and Math

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Humans pass on more viruses to domestic and wild animals than we catch from them, according to a major new analysis of viral genomes.

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Scientists have found a 'tipping point' in the evolution of fungi that throttles their growth and sculpts their shapes. The findings demonstrate how small changes in environmental factors can lead to huge changes in evolutionary outcomes.

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Scientists have explored the puzzling world of rays that lived 150 million years ago and discovered a previously hidden diversity -- including a new ray species. This study significantly expands the understanding of these ancient cartilaginous fish and provides further insights into a past marine ecosystem.

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What maintains stability within an ecosystem and prevents a single best competitor from displacing other species from a community? Does ecosystem stability depend upon the presence of a wide variety of species, as early ecologists believed, or does diversity do the exact opposite, and lead to instability, as modern theory predicts? A new study suggests an answer to this question that has been a subject of debate among ecologists for half a century.

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Forests and streams are separate but linked ecosystems, existing side by side, with energy and nutrients crossing their porous borders and flowing back and forth between them. For example, leaves fall from trees, enter streams, decay and feed aquatic insects. Those insects emerge from the waters and are eaten by birds and bats. An international team has now found that these ecosystems appear to keep the energy exchanges in balance -- a finding that the scientists called surprising.

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The largest living animal, the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) which averages about 27 meters in length, has slowly recovered from whaling only to face the rising challenges of global warming, pollution, disrupted food sources, shipping, and other human threats. In a major new study, biologists have taken a stock of the number, distribution and genetic characteristics of blue whale populations around the world and found the greatest differences among the eastern Pacific, Antarctic subspecies and pygmy subspecies of the eastern Indian and western Pacific.

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Measuring between 3 to 3.5 meters, 16 million years old: Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a new species of freshwater dolphin in the Peruvian Amazon region. Surprisingly, its closest living relatives can be found in the river dolphins of South Asia.

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If it walks like a particle, and talks like a particle... it may still not be a particle. A topological soliton is a special type of wave or dislocation which behaves like a particle: it can move around but cannot spread out and disappear like you would expect from, say, a ripple on the surface of a pond. Researchers now demonstrate the atypical behavior of topological solitons in a robotic metamaterial, something which in the future may be used to control how robots move, sense their surroundings and communicate.

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Scientists advocate for change to promote standardized practices in the field -- a practice that has been missing from the science.

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In a new study, researchers describe a novel approach for a wireless communication network that can efficiently transmit, receive and decode data from thousands of microelectronic chips that are each no larger than a grain of salt.

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In a step toward nanofluidic-based neuromorphic -- or brain-inspired -- computing, engineers have succeeded in executing a logic operation by connecting two chips that use ions, rather than electrons, to process data.

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To better understand a carbon sink in danger, scientists are turning to tiny organisms that have long been overlooked.

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Researchers have used a series of artificial stream channels to mimic the behavior of headwater creeks under future climate change scenarios. They found that drier conditions shifted the life cycles of the algae and insects that form the base of the alpine food web. However, because species adjusted to the shifts in a variety of ways, the stream ecosystems were generally resilient to the changing conditions.

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Leafhoppers, a common backyard insect, secrete and coat themselves in tiny mysterious particles that could provide both the inspiration and the instructions for next-generation technology, according to a new study. In a first, the team precisely replicated the complex geometry of these particles, called brochosomes, and elucidated a better understanding of how they absorb both visible and ultraviolet light.

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Performing a new task based solely on verbal or written instructions, and then describing it to others so that they can reproduce it, is a cornerstone of human communication that still resists artificial intelligence (AI). A team has succeeded in modelling an artificial neural network capable of this cognitive prowess. After learning and performing a series of basic tasks, this AI was able to provide a linguistic description of them to a 'sister' AI, which in turn performed them.

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When climate scientists look to the future to determine what the effects of climate change may be, they use computer models to simulate potential outcomes such as how precipitation will change in a warming world. Some scientists are also looking at something a little more tangible: coral.

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Important data can be stored and concealed quite easily in ordinary plastic using 3D printers and terahertz radiation, scientists show. Holography can be done quite easily: A 3D printer can be used to produce a panel from normal plastic in which a QR code can be stored, for example. The message is read using terahertz rays -- electromagnetic radiation that is invisible to the human eye.

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A new study has found a decline in the abundance of marine fish species that move rapidly toward the poles to escape rising sea temperatures. The researchers explain that many animal species are currently moving toward cooler regions as a result of global warming, but the velocity of such range shifts varies greatly for different species. Examining thousands of populations from almost 150 fish species, the researchers show that contrary to the prevailing view, rapid range shifts coincide with widescale population declines.

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Scientists have discovered how female Diadem butterflies have evolved to look like African Queen butterflies to repel predators.

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A new visitor was reported on the coast of Cyprus, thanks to the growing power of citizen science. Researchers collected information and specimens through personal communication with amateur naturalists, but also through the internet, in order to compose the mosaic of repeated appearances of a giant water bug on the eastern shoreline of the island.