Science News Archive - October 26, 2010

Researchers have discovered more than 700 new species of prehistoric insects in a 50-million-year-old amber deposit in India.

From 1999 to 2009, an average of one new species of plant or animal was discovered every three days in the Amazon region.

Weather systems in the Southern and Northern hemispheres will respond differently to global warming, according to an MIT atmospheric scientist's analysis that suggests the warming of the planet will affect the availability of energy to fuel extratropical storms, or large-scale weather systems that occur at Earth's middle latitudes.

Indonesia's most volatile volcano erupted Tuesday after scientists warned the pressure building beneath Mount Merapi could trigger the most powerful explosion in twelve years.

Ever wonder why some people breeze along on four hours of sleep when others can barely function?

A case study published in the 2010 Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education by professors at Washington State University studies the challenges one organization faced in maintaining an urban market garden.

New research has provided the first evidence that 'gender bending' chemicals which find their way from human products into rivers and oceans can have a significant impact on the ability of fish to breed in UK Rivers.

As the ice-capped Arctic Ocean warms, ship traffic will increase at the top of the world.

Greenhouse plant growers can substitute rice hulls for perlite in their media without the need for an increase in growth regulators, according to a Purdue University study.

The human hand is an amazing machine that can pick up, move and place objects easily, but for a robot, this "gripping" mechanism is a vexing challenge.