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+15 +1
How bacteria read and follow the Earth’s magnetic field
Magnetotactic bacteria have magnetosomes with which they can sense magnetic field lines. This allows magnetotactic bacteria to swim towards North or South
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+4 +1
A 'regime shift' is happening in the Arctic Ocean, scientists say
Scientists at Stanford University have discovered a surprising shift in the Arctic Ocean. Exploding blooms of phytoplankton, the tiny algae at the base of a food web topped by whales and polar bears, have drastically altered the Arctic's ability to transform atmospheric carbon into living matter. Over the past decade, the surge has replaced sea ice loss as the biggest driver of changes in uptake of carbon dioxide by phytoplankton.
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+3 +1
Why Birds Can Fly Over Mount Everest
A story for my granddaughter about oxygen, evolution, and our planet’s fate.
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+3 +1
"Extinction breeds extinctions": How losing one species can wipe out many more
Humans are causing a mass extinction. And humans can stop it.
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+4 +1
Rivers help lock carbon from fires into oceans for thousands of years
The extent to which rivers transport burned carbon to oceans—where it can be stored for tens of millennia—is revealed in new research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA). The study, published today in Nature Communications, calculates how much burned carbon is being flushed out by rivers and locked up in the oceans.
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+20 +3
Earth is accelerating towards sixth mass extinction that could see 'end of civilisation'
Stop The Wildlife Trade: ‘Extinction breeds extinction’, says grim new study revealing more than 500 species are on course to go extinct in next two decades - around the same figure for the whole of the twentieth century
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+15 +6
Glimmer of hope for world's rarest primate
The discovery of a new breeding pair raises hope for the future of a critically endangered gibbon.
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+12 +1
The Mysterious Anomaly Weakening Earth's Magnetic Field Seems to Be Splitting
New satellite data from the European Space Agency (ESA) reveal that the mysterious anomaly weakening Earth's magnetic field continues to evolve, with the most recent observations showing we could soon be dealing with more than one of these strange phenomena.
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+19 +4
Scientists explain magnetic pole's wanderings
The North Magnetic Pole has been racing across the top of the world, from Canada towards Siberia.
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+3 +1
Coronavirus calm reveals flourishing Venice Lagoon ecosystem
"The flora and fauna of the lagoon have not changed during lockdown. What has changed is our chance to see them," says zoologist Andrea Mangoni, plunging his camera into Venice's normally murky waters to observe life. A crab tries to grab the intruding lens, jellyfish propel themselves along near the surface, schools of fish swim peacefully by, crustaceans cling to the city's famous jetties, and seaweed of every colour wafts gently on the current.
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+20 +4
Soil gets its smell from bacteria trying to attract invertebrates
Soil’s earthy smell comes from chemicals produced by bacteria called Streptomyces, which use the odour to attract springtails to help disperse their spores
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+11 +2
The 500-million-year-old reason behind the unique scent of rain
New research from an international team of scientists is suggesting that instantly recognizable earthy smell after rain is released by bacteria trying to attract a particular arthropod as a way to spread its spores.
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+3 +1
In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of Disasters
Small levels of global warming can increase the likelihood of extreme events, new research warns. That’s prompting scientists to question how accurately disasters in the recent past can be used to predict extreme events today.A study published Wednesday in Science Advances suggests that some research attributing climate change to individual disasters has underestimated the probability of certain extremes in the last decade. That’s especially true of unprecedented hot and wet events.
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+17 +2
What causes an ice age to end?
New University of Melbourne research has revealed that ice ages over the last million years ended when the tilt angle of the Earth's axis was approaching higher values.
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+29 +3
There's an unlikely beneficiary of coronavirus: The planet
Factories were shuttered and streets were cleared across China's Hubei province as authorities ordered residents to stay home to stop the spread of the coronavirus. It seems the lockdown had an unintended benefit -- blue skies.
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+19 +5
Revealed: Monsanto’s secret funding for weedkiller studies
The research, used to help avoid a ban, claimed ‘severe impacts’ on farming if glyphosate was outlawed
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+9 +1
The Trouble With Tumbleweed
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+11 +3
How a seasonal snarl-up in the mid-1500s gave us our strange rules for leap years
Leap years were devised in Julius Caesar's time, to fix the pesky problem that Earth's year isn't exactly 365 days. But 15 centuries later, our calendars were still slightly askew.
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+17 +6
Earth has acquired a brand new moon that's about the size of a car
Astronomers have spotted an asteroid that has been captured by Earth's gravity, making it a temporary mini-moon. It will probably fly away again in April
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+19 +6
The carbon cost of home delivery and how to avoid it
Delivering online shopping to people's homes is a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly when deliveries fail and the journey needs to be repeated. Researchers are now re-thinking home deliveries to see if there is a better way of doing things, with ideas including robot couriers, jointly owned parcel lockers and an "Uber' for parcels.
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