Taming the Butterfly

Bats in North America are under a two-pronged attack but they are not the only victim - so is the U.S. economy. Gary McCracken, head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, analyzed the economic impact of the loss of bats in North America in agriculture and found it to be in the $3.7 to $53 billion a year range.

Large-scale emergencies, such as bombings and plane crashes, trigger a sharp spike in the number of phone calls and text messages sent by eyewitnesses in the vicinity of the disaster, according to a research study by network scientists at Northeastern University.

A new analysis, published this week and conducted by a team of scientists led by Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, shows stricter vehicle emission standards would yield major health, agricultural, and climate benefits.

The current focus on assessment means the public debate is overlooking how schools are engaging young people and preparing them for the future, according to Lyn Yates, Professor of Curriculum in the University of Melbourne's Graduate School of Education.

Flat out wrong. That's what a team of Duke researchers has discovered, much to its surprise, about a long-accepted explanation of how nuclei collide to produce charged particles for electricity - a process receiving intense interest lately from scientists, entrepreneurs and policy makers in the wake of Japan's nuclear crisis.

The Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters were perhaps two of the most prominent reminders of how crucial it is that everything work just right for a spacecraft to travel to space and successfully return back to Earth. Whether it was the failure of the seal used to stop hot gases from seeping through, or a piece of foam insulation that damaged the thermal protection system, scientists and engineers must make thousands of predictions of all the things that could go wrong during flight.

A team of scientists from Aberystwyth University, the University of Exeter and Stockholm University, led by Welsh scientist and Professor Neil Glasser, have released at study published in Nature Geoscience showing that the glaciers of Patagonia in South America are melting at a much faster rate than originally thought.

Australian scientists have begun the process of delivering the most detailed national climate change projections yet.

In a paper published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Veronica Kwok, Li-Hai Tan, and their colleagues at the University of Hong Kong, conclude that the adult human brain is capable of new rapid growth when exposed to stimuli similar to what babies experience as they are learning from their environment.

Keeping moorland soils wet could prove vital in conserving some of Britain's important upland breeding bird species - by protecting the humble daddy longlegs, according to new research.

In an unprecedented collaborative analysis published in the journal PLoS Biology, scientists from 49 nations demonstrated that the ability of reef fish systems to produce goods and services to humanity increases rapidly with the number of species. However, growing human populations hamper the ability of reefs to function normally, and counterintuitively, the most diverse reef fish systems suffer the greatest impairments from stressors triggered by human populations. The study documented that the extent of this distress is widespread and likely to worsen because 75% of the world's reefs are near human settlements and because around 82% of the tropical countries with coral reefs could double their human populations within the next 50 to 100 years.

We're stumbling through a science fiction wonderland of not just high-flying communications software and tools but of the basic building blocks for the devices we use to do that communicating. The latest contender for radically-improved memory in a computer? Blood. Researchers in Gujarat, India have created a "memristor" -- a portmanteau of memory and resistor -- made of human blood. A resistor is the part of a computer chip that regulates the flow of electricity. Unlike most resistors, a memristor remembers previous levels of voltage and allows for a repeat of that flow.

Meditation produces powerful pain-relieving effects in the brain, according to new research published in the April 6 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience.

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, shown here in 2010, told governments to prepare for a gap on the expiry of pledges under the Kyoto Protocol, which has formed the foundation of the world's efforts to cut carbon emissions. Commitments by most developed countries to cut emissions are likely to expire at the end of next year without a new round of legally binding pledges, she warned.

CO2 capture by means of amines is considered to be the most appropriate method to quickly begin with CO2 removal. During this capture process, some of the amines escaping the recycling process will be emitted into the air and will also form other compounds such as nitrosamines and nitramines. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) was commissioned by the Climate and Pollution Agency (Klif) to assess whether these new emissions are harmful to health - particularly in terms of the cancer risk to the general population. The results of the risk assessments were submitted recently.

Populations of Fraser River sockeye salmon are so fine-tuned to their environment that any further environmental changes caused by climate change could lead to the disappearance of some populations, while others may be less affected, says a new study by University of British Columbia scientists.

Conservationists may need to change their approach to protecting animals and plants from extinction if they are to successfully shield key species and habitats from the effects of global climate change, according to a new review in the journal Science.

For the first time, more college students are using smart phones than traditional feature phones, reports a new study from Ball State University.

World population will reach 7 billion this year, prompting new concerns about whether the world will soon face a major population crisis.

Elias Konstantopoulus runs through an optics test with his "bionic" eye glasses during a session at the Lions Vision Research and Rehabilation Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Konstantopoulus is blind but working with Johns Hopkins University he has been implanted with a microchip and given a set of glasses that enable him to distinguish between light and dark.