ScienceDaily: Top Science News

Species across the world are rapidly going extinct due to human activities, but humans are also causing rapid evolution and the emergence of new species. A new study summarizes the causes of humanmade speciation, and discusses why newly evolved species cannot simply replace extinct wild species.

A new Hubble Space Telescope image shows a firestorm of star birth lighting up one end of the diminutive galaxy Kiso 5639. The dwarf galaxy is shaped like a flattened pancake, but because it is tilted edge-on, it resembles a skyrocket, with a brilliant blazing head and a long, star-studded tail. Kiso 5639 is a member of a class of galaxies called "tadpoles" because of their bright heads and elongated tails. This galaxy resides relatively nearby, at 82 million light-years away. Tadpoles are rare in the local universe but more common in the distant cosmos, suggesting that many galaxies pass through a phase like this as they evolve.

Thousands of remarkable fossil birds from the time of the dinosaurs have been uncovered in China. However, most of these fossils are flattened in the rock, even though they commonly preserve fossils.

Pipelines carrying crude oil to ports in British Columbia may spell bad news for salmon, according to a new study. Exposure to an oil sands product -- diluted bitumen -- impairs the swimming ability and changes the heart structures of young salmon.

How do the cells in a human embryo know where they are located in the body and how they should develop? Why do certain cells form a finger while others do not? Biologists have explained the mechanisms that control these steps by showing why veins form at particular points in the wing of a fruit fly. The protein Pentagone spreads a particular signal in the wing that tells the cells how to behave.

A small, squishy vehicle equipped with soft wheels rolls over rough terrain and runs under water. Future versions of the versatile vehicle might be suitable for search and rescue missions after disasters, deep space and planet exploration, and manipulating objects during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), according to its creators. Their most important innovation is a soft motor that provides torque without bending or extending its housing.

The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) and collaborators at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School have completed a promising preclinical study of two Zika vaccine candidates that suggests that an effective human vaccine will be achievable. Findings from the study were published today in the journal Nature.

Two biologists have developed a mathematical model of the way social networks arise in animal populations. Though relatively simple, their model generated networks that faithfully recapitulated important properties of networks observed in field-collected data from four very different animal populations: spotted hyenas, sleep lizards, rock hyrax and bottlenose dolphins.

Researchers studying monkeys have shown that one infection with Zika virus protects against future infection, though pregnancy may drastically prolong the time the virus stays in the body.

A new study describes a technology that could lead to new therapeutics for traumatic brain injuries. The discovery provides a means of homing drugs or nanoparticles to injured areas of the brain.

A possible epigenetic link between the environment and pubertal timing has been discovered by researchers. To a large extent, pubertal timing is heritable, but the underlying genetic causes are still unexplained. Researchers have now studied how chemical modifications of the human genome (so-called epigenetic modifications) change when girls and boys enter puberty. The results indicate that such epigenetic changes are involved in defining the onset of puberty.

For the first time, a field study shows that social time cues override influence of light and darkness in regulating the natural body clock of honeybees, highlighting the complexity of clock regulation in natural habitat

There have been several mass extinctions in the history of the earth with adverse consequences for the environment. Researchers have now uncovered another disaster that took place around 250 million years ago and completely changed the prevalent vegetation during the Lower Triassic.

Researchers have discovered a rotating ring containing large organic molecules around a protostar. This observation definitively shows that organic materials formed in interstellar space are brought into the planet-forming region. Researchers also found that the molecular species brought into the planet-forming region vary from one protostar to another. Chemical composition is a new way to answer the long-standing question of whether or not the Solar System is a typical example of a planetary system.

Astronomers have concluded that a peculiar source of radio waves thought to be a distant galaxy is actually a nearby binary star system containing a low-mass star and a black hole. This identification suggests there may be a vast number of black holes in our Galaxy that have gone unnoticed until now.

A single oral dose of methylene blue results in an increased MRI-based response in brain areas that control short-term memory and attention, according to a new study. Methylene blue was associated with a 7 percent increase in correct responses during memory retrieval.

Astronomers have released spectacular new infrared images of the distant Universe, providing the deepest view ever obtained over a large area of sky.

The 2009 swine H1N1 flu pandemic -- responsible for more than 17,000 deaths worldwide -- originated in pigs from a very small region in central Mexico, a research team is reporting.The scientists say their findings represent the first time that the origin of an influenza pandemic virus has been determined in such detail.