ScienceDaily: Top Science News

Climate change is not only a human problem; animals have to adapt to it as well. Some 'warm-blooded' animals are shapeshifting and getting larger beaks, legs, and ears to better regulate their body temperatures as the planet gets hotter.

Extremely premature infants are at a high risk for brain damage. Researchers have now found possible targets for the early treatment of such damage outside the brain: Bacteria in the gut of premature infants may play a key role. The research team found that the overgrowth of the gastrointestinal tract with the bacterium Klebsiella is associated with an increased presence of certain immune cells and the development of neurological damage in premature babies.

A simple mechanism could underlie the growth and self-replication of protocells -- putative ancestors of modern living cells -- suggests a new study. Protocells are vesicles bounded by a membrane bilayer and are potentially similar to the first unicellular common ancestor (FUCA). On the basis of relatively simple mathematical principles, the proposed model suggests that the main force driving protocell growth and reproduction is the temperature difference that occurs between the inside and outside of the cylindrical protocell as a result of inner chemical activity.

Scientists have studied an ancient supervolcano in Indonesia and found such volcanoes remain active and hazardous for thousands of years after a super-eruption, prompting the need for a rethink of how these potentially catastrophic events are predicted.

Researchers combined observations and modeling to infer the distribution of cold planets in the Milky Way. The results suggest that this distribution is not strongly dependent on the distance from the galactic center. Cold planets seem to be present throughout our galaxy, even in the galactic bulge, where their existence was uncertain. The findings could improve our understanding of both planetary formation and its history in the Milky Way.