Research from a team at the Swiss Ornithological Institute, to be published in a forthcoming Proceedings B, a learned journal published by the Royal Society, reveals complex effects of global warming on migratory habits of birds. These effects may constitute a serious threat to some species – in particular those with longer migratory flights.

Over the past two decades spring temperatures in temperate regions have increased. This effect, due to global warming, has advanced the start of the r

Early evolution of life as we know it may have depended on DNA’s ability to absorb UV light. This insight into the early moments of life on Earth comes from research published today in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

The research fills in one of the major gaps in our understanding about the origins of life: how single molecules were able to join together to create the self-replicating long chain molecules of RNA, the precursors of DNA. It “sheds new light on the earliest steps of evo

The old song, asking rain to “go away” and “come again another day,” may get even older for people who live in large coastal cities, according to new NASA-funded research. According to the study, urban heat islands, created from pavement and buildings in big coastal cities like Houston, cause warm air to rise and interact with sea breezes to create heavier and more frequent rainfall in and downwind of the cities. Analysis of Houston-area rain-gauge data, both prior to and since urbanization,

There is more to mother-of-pearl than good looks. Also called nacre, the gleaming, white material is renowned in scientific circles for its strong, yet flexible, properties. Now researchers have developed a nanoscale, layered material that comes close to nacre’s properties, including its iridescence.

The ability to nanomanufacture artificial nacre may provide lightweight, rigid composites for aircraft parts, artificial bone and other applications.

Reporting online in Nature Mater

Inflation’s got nothing to do with it. Since the beginning of time, a picture has always been worth more than a thousand words. But in this age of information proliferation, that reality is the taproot of a vexing problem that Zhongfei “Mark” Zhang, an assistant professor of computer science at Binghamton University, is determined to help solve.

From personal and commercial digital image libraries and multimedia databases to data mining programs and high-tech security and defense survei

BU invention could ’sweeten’ diabetes therapy within five years

C.J. Zhong hopes that within the next three to five years diabetics the world could see their quality of life enhanced by his tiny invention-a chip-sized pump with no moving parts. The device is also expected to find its way into myriad industrial and environmental applications, where it could mean huge savings in manufacturing and monitoring processes.

Zhong’s patent on the low-power, electrically