More mammals were living on the ground several million years before the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs, new research led by the University of Bristol has revealed.
More than 150 million metric tons of propylene are produced annually, making it one of the most widespread chemicals used in the chemical industry.
Research from the University of South Australia shows that autistic students are still struggling at school, despite efforts to improve services and supports.
An edible biofilm, obtained from agricultural and fishing waste and developed by researchers at the São Carlos Institute of Chemistry of the University of São Paulo (IQSC-USP) in Brazil, allows the shelf life of strawberries (Fragaria x ananassa Duch.) to be extended.
Plants don't just grow, they build. From towering trees to delicate flowers, complex plant shapes are sculpted with remarkable precision. Now a study by biologists and biophysicists at Université de Montréal reveals how plants build their organs in three dimensions.
As the planet gets hotter and freshwater sources dry up, cities and towns will not be able to continue the global norm of using millions of liters of clean, drinkable water to flush toilets. South Africa's Water Research Commission recently commissioned a study into using seawater to flush toilets in Cape Town. Water engineering lecturer Teboho Mofokeng researches water management and reuse in South Africa and she co-authored the study. She spoke to The Conversation Africa about Capetonians' willingness to pay up to 10% more on their water bills to use seawater to flush their toilets, as long as it doesn't smell or stain their toilets.
A French team coordinated by a scientist at CNRS highlights the harmful impact on sparrow reproduction of chronic exposure to tebuconazole, one of the most widely used fungicides in agriculture in Europe. These findings, recently published in Environmental Research, reveal a direct link between exposure to this fungicide and slower growth, as well as increased mortality, in sparrow chicks, with a greater impact on females.
Researchers have tracked 89 northern saw-whet owls (Aegolius acadicus) along a migration corridor in Western Montana, underscoring the efficacy of telemetry studies for detailed investigations into the movements of birds.
Machine learning methods enable the efficient mining of large amounts of data from corporate reports. In her doctoral dissertation at the University of Vaasa, Finland, Essi Nousiainen presents how the new machine learning-based methods she has developed can be used to examine corporate reporting related to, among other things, responsibility, innovation, and blockchain.
Pollinating insects such as bumblebees often repeatedly visit the same type of flower, even when a variety of flowers bloom nearby. This behavior is known as "flower constancy." Darwin speculated that flower constancy was a passive response to avoid the effort involved in remembering the different flower characteristics. However, researchers at University of Tsukuba have revealed that this theory is incomplete, since it focuses too heavily on "memory constraints."
