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Con la primavera ahora totalmente instalada, un nuevo estudio realizado por investigadores de la Universidad de Wisconsin-Madison muestra que se presentaron manifestaciones previas en zonas urbanas densas antes que en su entorno suburbano y rural. Esto puede ser música para los oídos de los jardineros urbanos, pero esa melodía podría ser alarmante para algunos pájaros e insectos nativos y migratorios.

A study of more than 6,000 marine fossils from the Antarctic shows that the mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was sudden and just as deadly to life in the Polar Regions.

Previously, scientists had thought that creatures living in the southernmost regions of the planet would have been in a less perilous position during the mass extinction event than those elsewhere on Earth.

Dining in dimly lit restaurants has been linked to eating slowly and ultimately eating less than in brighter restaurants, but does lighting also impact how healthfully we order?

New research findings forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing Research illustrate that those dining in well-lit rooms are about 16-24% more likely to order healthy foods than those in dimly lit rooms. Furthermore, the researchers found evidence that this effect is due mainly to the level of diners’ alertness. “We feel more alert in brighter rooms and therefore tend to make more healthful, forward-thinking decisions,” explains lead author Dipayan Biswas, PhD, University of South Florida.

Más del cincuenta por ciento de la energía de Estados Unidos proviene de los combustibles derivados del carbón y del petróleo. Energizar a un país en el que la persona promedio utiliza la cantidad de energía equivalente a 15,370 libras de carbón o 165,033 cartuchos de dinamita en un año, no es sostenible. Al pensar en una solución, la fuente de energía renovable que muy probablemente venga a la mente es la energía solar.

For the first time, the genomes of the giraffe and its closest living relative, the reclusive okapi of the African rainforest, have been sequenced — revealing the first clues about the genetic changes that led to the evolution of the giraffe’s exceptionally long neck and its record-holding ranking as the world’s tallest land species. The research will be published in the scientific journal Nature Communications on May 17, 2016.

“The giraffe’s stature, dominated by its long neck and legs and an overall height that can reach 19 feet (~ 6 m), is an extraordinary feat of evolution that has inspired awe and wonder for at least 8,000 years — as far back as the famous rock carvings at Dabous in the Republic of Niger,” said Douglas Cavener of Penn State, who led the research team with Morris Agaba of the Nelson Mandela African Institute for Science and Technology in Tanzania.

How did the giraffe get its long neck? Clues now are revealed by new genome sequencing.