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Categories: Biology: Zoology, Geoscience: Geochemistry

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Researchers are revisiting old building practices -- the use of by-products and cast-offs -- as a way to improve building materials and sustainability of the trade. A technique known as rammed earth construction uses materials that are alternatives to cement and are often more readily available in the environment. One such alternative is wood fly ash, a by-product of pulp mills and coal-fired power plants.

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Bats live in a world of sounds. They use vocalizations both to communicate with their conspecifics and for navigation. For the latter, they emit sounds in the ultrasonic range, which echo and enable them to create an 'image' of their surroundings. Neuroscientists have now discovered how Seba's short-tailed bat, a species native to South America, manages to filter out important signals from ambient sound and especially to distinguish between echolocation and communication calls.

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The evolutionary success of the first large predators on land was driven by their need to improve as killers, researchers suggest.

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More than 100 million years ago, the ancestors of the first snakes were small lizards that lived alongside other small, nondescript lizards in the shadow of the dinosaurs.

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The side effects of large-scale forestation initiatives could reduce the CO2 removal benefits by up to a third, a pioneering study has found.

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The annual rate of carbon emissions due to the degradation of carbon stocks in mangrove forests is predicted to rise by nearly 50,000% by the end of the century, according to a new study. Mangroves in regions such as southern India, southeastern China, Singapore and eastern Australia are particularly affected.

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If storms become stronger in the future due to climate change, more nitrogen may be released from the bottom of coastal seas.

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Researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to provide accurate, high-resolution predictions of carbon cycles in agroecosystems, which could help mitigate the impacts of climate change.

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Whether ultramarine, cerulean, Egyptian or cobalt, blue pigments have colored artworks for centuries. Now, seemingly out of the blue, scientists have discovered a new blue pigment that uses less cobalt but still maintains a brilliant shine. Though something like this might only happen once in a blue moon, the cobalt-doped barium aluminosilicate colorant withstands the high temperatures found in a kiln and provides a bright color to glazed tiles.

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Researchers have paired a deep learning model with experimental data to 'decode' mouse neural activity. Using the method, they can accurately determine where a mouse is located within an open environment and which direction it is facing, just by looking at its neural firing patterns. Being able to decode neural activity could provide insight into the function and behavior of individual neurons or even entire brain regions.

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The effects of a phenomenon called tree masting on ecosystems and food webs can be better understood thanks to new theoretical models validated by real world observations.

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A collaborative team of scientists recently found that there is no physiological evidence supporting a leading theory -- which involves the surface area of fish gills -- as to why many fish species are 'shrinking' as waters grow warmer due to climate change. Known as the Gill Oxygen Limitation (GOL) theory, it has been proposed as the universal mechanism explaining fish size and has been used in some predictions of future global fisheries yields. However, the researchers conducted a series of long-term experiments on brook trout and found that, though increased temperatures do lead to significantly decreased body size, gill surface area did not explain the change.

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Comparison of over 200 high-quality butterfly and moth genomes reveals key insights into their biology, evolution and diversification over the last 250 million years, as well as clues for conservation.

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Tuna is one of the most popular seafoods worldwide. But this protein-rich fish can build up high levels of methylmercury from feeding on contaminated prey, like smaller fish or crustaceans. Despite efforts to reduce mercury emissions into the environment, researchers report that levels in tuna appear to be unchanged since 1971. They warn that more aggressive emission reduction targets are needed to start nudging down tuna mercury levels.

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Reduce, reuse, recycle, and repurpose: These are all ways we can live more sustainably. One tricky aspect of recycling, though, is that sometimes the recycling process is chemically intensive, and this is the case for recycling one of the world's most abundant materials -- chitin. Researchers have tackled this problem and found a way to sustainably recover chitin from seafood waste.

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Researchers evaluated the prevalence, concentration and tissue distribution of essential and non-essential trace elements, including heavy metal toxicants in tissue (blubber, kidney, liver, skeletal muscle, skin) and fecal samples collected from 90 whales and dolphins stranded in Georgia and Florida from 2007 to 2021.

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A research team has unveiled a novel ligand exchange technique that enables the synthesis of organic cation-based perovskite quantum dots (PQDs), ensuring exceptional stability while suppressing internal defects in the photoactive layer of solar cells.

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Findings more than a decade in the making reveal a rich diversity of beneficial fungi living in boreal forest trees, with implications for the health of forests.

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An international team analyzed 656 lakes across five continents to provide empirical evidence supporting a long-held theory regarding low deep-water oxygen concentrations, or anoxia.

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Purple sulfur bacteria (PSB) convert light energy into chemical energy through photosynthesis. Interestingly, certain species can photosynthesize even in environments with low-calcium levels. Using cryo-electron microscopy, researchers unveiled the structure of light-harvesting complexes and elucidated the mechanism that facilitates photosynthesis under low-calcium conditions.