164 articles from WEDNESDAY 22.9.2021

How a city’s design creates congestion

City planners predict that as more people move into urban areas, traffic jams will get worse. That's why sustainability experts propose a new way to analyze traffic congestion. Using more precise measures to describe the shape of cities and considering other socioeconomic factors, the model, which was applied to nearly 100 American cities, could lead to a better understanding of the link between...

NASA finds 2021 Arctic summer sea ice 12th-lowest on record

Sea ice in the Arctic appears to have hit its annual minimum extent on Sept. 16, after waning in the 2021 Northern Hemisphere spring and summer. The summertime extent is the 12th-lowest in the satellite record, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA.

How do migraines affect the sleep cycle?

Adults and children with migraines may get less quality, REM sleep time than people who don't have migraines. That's according to a meta-analysis. Children with migraines were also found to get less total sleep time than their healthy peers but took less time to fall asleep.

Seeking climate-smart strategies for root, tuber and banana crops in central Africa

Root, tuber and banana (RT&B) crops are widely cultivated across the landscapes of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). These staple food crops play a fundamental role in smallholder farming systems due to their good economic value and high importance within the daily diets of most households. The extensive planting of RT&B crops highlights their adaptive nature, but a team of researchers has identified a...

Metals supercharge a promising method to bury harmful carbon dioxide under the sea

There's a global race to reduce the amount of harmful gases in our atmosphere to slow down the pace of climate change, and one way to do that is through carbon capture and sequestration—sucking carbon out of the air and burying it. At this point, however, we're capturing only a fraction of the carbon needed to make any kind of dent in climate change.

Study explores the role of landlords in housing discrimination

Examining the practices landlords use to screen potential tenants can offer significant insights into how racism continues to shape life outcomes. While sociological research on racial discrimination in housing has increasingly highlighted the key role that landlords play as gatekeepers to rental housing markets, this research has largely been operating under the fundamental assumption that...

A history of colorism sheds light on discrimination today

Colorism is a form of discrimination, typically within a racial or ethnic group, favoring people with lighter skin over those with darker skin. This pernicious form of discrimination is often overshadowed in discussions about racism, but it affects a broad swath of people across multiple populations.

Some animal species can survive successfully without sexual reproduction

In the framework of an international research project, a team of scientists have demonstrated for the first time that asexual reproduction can be successful in the long term. The animal they studied is the beetle mite Oppiella nova. Until now, the survival of an animal species over a geologically long period of time without sexual reproduction was considered very unlikely, if not impossible.

Early Homo sapiens groups in Europe faced subarctic climates

Using oxygen stable isotope analysis of tooth enamel from animals butchered by humans at the site of Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria, researchers show that human groups belonging to an early wave of dispersal of our species into Europe were faced with very cold climatic conditions while they occupied the cave between about 46,000 and 43,000 years ago. Archaeological remains at Bacho Kiro Cave currently...

Continental growth is not a continuous process

The continents, a specific feature of our planet, still hold many secrets. Using chemical data on sedimentary rocks compiled from the scientific literature from the 1980s to the present day, researchers have uncovered a new geological history of the continents. The research shows that their growth was not a continuous process, and that they have always been rich in silica1. This new study calls...

What Would a Climate-Conscious Facebook Look Like?

A version of this story first appeared in the Climate is Everything newsletter. If you’d like sign up to receive this free once-a-week email, click here. After a summer of devastating hurricanes, heat waves and wildfires, Facebook’s new measures to address climate misinformation leave something to be desired. In fact, you might be forgiven for thinking they were a joke. In a blog...

Continental growth is not a continuous process

The continents, a specific feature of our planet, still hold many secrets. Using chemical data on sedimentary rocks compiled from the scientific literature from the 1980s to the present day, CNRS researcher Marion Garçon has uncovered a new geological history of the continents. She shows that their growth was not a continuous process, and that they have always been rich in silica. This new study,...

Mimicking how water and wind create complex shapes in nature

Intricate natural formations like star-shaped sand dunes or arc-shaped rocks can appear so purposeful in form that it's easy to wonder whether someone has designed them. Scientists have long recognized that a particular combination of random and chaotic energy fields can, over a long period of time, give rise to these kinds of unique formations that dot our globe. Few, however, have succeeded in...

Online searches may reduce predisposed belief in misinformation

A new analysis suggests that online searches could help correct people's predisposed belief in misinformation, but that searching may still promote negative feelings about a targeted minority group, despite correction of specific information about the group. Tetsuro Kobayashi of City University of Hong Kong and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on September 22,...

Early Homo sapiens groups in Europe faced subarctic climates

Using oxygen stable isotope analysis of tooth enamel from animals butchered by humans at the site of Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria, Max Planck researchers show that human groups belonging to an early wave of dispersal of our species into Europe were faced with very cold climatic conditions while they occupied the cave between about 46,000 and 43,000 years ago. Archaeological remains at Bacho Kiro Cave...

New research 'sniffs out' how associative memories are formed

Has the scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies ever taken you back to afternoons at your grandmother's house? Has an old song ever brought back memories of a first date? The ability to remember relationships between unrelated items (an odor and a location, a song and an event) is known as associative memory.

Immune cells in the brain share the work

To break down toxic proteins more quickly, immune cells in the brain can join together to form networks when needed. However, in certain mutations that can cause Parkinson's disease, this cooperation is impaired.

Two-legged dinosaurs may have swung tails to run faster, say scientists

A computer simulation could help us better understand the evolution of movement in animalsTwo-legged dinosaurs may have swung their tails as they crashed through the undergrowth – just like humans swing their arms – according to scientists who have modelled their movements in 3D at Harvard University.Until now, it was widely believed that bipedal (two-legged) dinosaurs grew long tails to...

Genetics reveal how humans island-hopped to settle remote Pacific

Study using DNA analysis reveals not only are statues on these distant islands connected, but inhabitants tooEaster Island’s famous megaliths have relatives on islands thousands of miles to the north and west, and so did the people who created them, a study has found.Over a 250-year period separate groups of people set out from tiny islands east of Tahiti to settle Easter Island, the Marquesas...