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Pressure to feel upbeat can make you feel downbeat, while embracing your darker moods can actually make you feel better in the long run, according to new UC Berkeley research.

“We found that people who habitually accept their negative emotions experience fewer negative emotions, which adds up to better psychological health,” said study senior author Iris Mauss, an associate professor of psychology at UC Berkeley.

Scientists at the Universities of Liverpool and Oslo have uncovered the secret behind a goldfish’s remarkable ability to produce alcohol as a way of surviving harsh winters beneath frozen lakes.

Humans and most other vertebrate animals die within a few minutes without oxygen. Yet goldfish and their wild relatives, crucian carp, can survive for days, even months, in oxygen-free water at the bottom of ice-covered ponds.

During this time, the fish are able to convert anaerobically produced lactic acid into ethanol, which then diffuses across their gills into the surrounding water and avoids a dangerous build-up of lactic acid in the body.

Famously, the use of caged birds to alert miners to the invisible dangers of gases such as carbon monoxide gave rise to the cautionary metaphor “canary in a coal mine.”

But other than the fact that exposure to toxic gases in a confined space kills caged birds before affecting humans — providing a timely warning to miners — what do we know about the effects of air pollution on birds?

Not as much as you’d think, according to researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

For the first time, researchers have observed that birds that fly actively and flap their wings save energy. Biologists at Lund University in Sweden have now shown that jackdaws minimise their energy consumption when they lift off and fly, because the feathers on their wing tips create several small vortices instead of a single large one. The discovery could potentially be applied within the aeronautical industry.

The fourteenth tropical cyclone of the Northwestern Pacific Ocean hurricane season formed about 200 miles away from Wake Island and a NASA-NOAA satellite saw it take on a comma-shape.  

NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite passed over Tropical Storm 14W on August 11 at 0118 UTC (Aug. 10 at 9:18 p.m. EDT) shortly after it formed. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard took a visible light picture of the storm that showed thunderstorms around the low-level center and a thick band wrapping from the east to south to west, forming a comma-shape.