Once abundant in Southern California, the foothill yellow-legged frog inexplicably vanished from the region sometime between the late 1960s and early 1970s. The reasons behind its rapid extinction have been an ecological mystery.

MIT researchers have devised a miniaturized system that can deliver tiny quantities of medicine to brain regions as small as 1 cubic millimeter. This type of targeted dosing could make it possible to treat diseases that affect very specific brain circuits, without interfering with the normal function of the rest of the brain, the researchers say.

A type of virus that dominates water samples taken from the world’s oceans has long escaped analysis because it has characteristics that standard tests can’t detect. However, researchers at MIT and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have now managed to isolate and study representatives of these elusive viruses, which provide a key missing link in virus evolution and play an important role in regulating bacterial populations, as a new study reports.

The potential solution discovered by University of Saskatchewan researchers for producers stuck with unsellable fusarium-infected wheat may actually put cash in the farmers’ pockets and open up a new worm-based niche market in the feed industry.

“We want to help producers by making use of grain that is worth nothing and that no one knows how to dispose of safely,” said Fiona Buchanan, animal and poultry science professor.

University of Guelph scientists have piggybacked on nature’s way to delay fruit ripening by inventing a preservative that increases shelf life and reduces produce spoilage.

Their research, published recently in two academic journals, may hold out huge economic benefits, especially in developing countries that depend on fruit production, said Gopinadhan Paliyath, a professor in U of G’s Department of Plant Agriculture.

Global surface temperatures surged by a record amount from 2014 to 2016, boosting the total amount of warming since the start of the last century by more than 25 percent in just three years, according to new University of Arizona-led research.

Nitrogen oxides — i.e. nitrogen compounds with varying amounts of oxygen — have a very bad reputation. They are produced among other things by burning fossil fuels. In regions with heavy traffic and a lot of industry, they occur in high concentrations and are made responsible for a large number of diseases of the respiratory system. However, nitrogen oxides also occur in nature. There they play an important role in the nitrogen cycle, which ensures that nitrogen, essential for life, is available in forms that the organisms can process.

Mercury is a widespread environmental toxicant and pollutant that travels up the food chain onto people's dinner plates. Although a global issue, mercury regulations vary worldwide. Depending on where one lives in relation to mercury emissions, regional remediation makes minimal impacts for local fish consumption advisories. This is particularly true in a sensitive landscape like Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where nearly 80 percent of inland lakes are impaired.

An influx of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) charging without coordination could prove challenging to the nation’s electric grid, according to research conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

A University of Wyoming researcher contributed to a paper that demonstrated, for the first time, direct observation of cloud seeding -- from the growth of the ice crystals through the processes that occur in the clouds to the eventual fallout of the ice crystals that become snow -- and how the impacts could be quantified.