A recent study conducted by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) on endangered Galapagos sea lions (Zalophus wollebaeki) has revealed that the animals are more susceptible to starvation as a result of their exposure to humans. Over a span of more than 18 months, conservationists tagged and monitored the behavior and physiology of two groups…

Earth continues to hit temperature and greenhouse gas milestones—just a couple of months ago, multiple stations measured carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere of 400 parts per million, the highest in several million years. Many studies have tried to estimate how much and how rapidly the two great ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica might…

NASA’s Curiosity Rover has been exploring Mars for almost a year now. It has been acquiring detailed data on the current atmosphere. A pair of new papers report measurements of the Martian atmosphere’s composition by NASA’s Curiosity rover, providing evidence about loss of much of Mars’ original atmosphere. Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite…

Bumblebees imported from Europe infected with parasites pose a serious threat to the UK’s wild and honey bee populations, according to a new study. Each year, more than a million bumblebee colonies are imported by countries across the globe to pollinate a variety of crops, with the UK alone importing between 40,000 and 50,000. Although…

The supply of dissolved iron to oceans around continental shelves has been found to be more variable by region than previously believed – with implications for future climate prediction. Iron is key to the removal of carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere as it promotes the growth of microscopic marine plants (phytoplankton), which mop up…

Crop rotation is a common farming practice where different series of crops are planted in the same area each sequential season. Planting different crops on the same piece of land has been used since Roman times and has been proven to improve plant nutrition, benefit soil health, and control the spread of disease. A new…

New technology makes it possible to automatically identify species by their vocalizations. The software and hardware system, detailed in the current issue of the journal PeerJ, has been used at sites in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica to identify frogs, insects, birds, and monkeys. Many of the animals identified by the system are typically difficult…

Each year the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) releases energy flow charts in an effort to track the United States’ consumption of energy resources. So what seems to be the trend from the past couple of years? Well, renewable energy is on the upswing. Compared to 2011, Americans used more natural gas, solar panels and…

0 percent of the rainforests in Malaysian Borneo have been heavily impacted by logging, finds a comprehensive study that offers the first assessment of the spread of industrial logging and logging roads across areas that were considered some of Earth’s wildest lands less than 30 years ago. The research, conducted by a team of scientists…

Rodeo riders love longhorn cattle. What would they think about a longhorn dinosaur? A remarkable new species of horned dinosaur has been unearthed in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah. The huge plant-eater inhabited Laramidia, a landmass formed when a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America, isolating western and eastern portions for…