Permafrost melting has been a concern for a long time as it can cause rising sea levels and it releases tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. New research from Peking University warns that 60% of Alpine permafrost could melt due to global warming which would release the sequestered carbon and could accelerate climate change.
Achy muscles are a sign of a good workout, but scientists from the University of Tsukuba say we could skip the physiological stress that occurs after the lactate threshold has been passed. By blocking the hormones that regulate an important indicator of this stress the team managed to skip this post-workout step.
Kyoto University researchers have found that streams that run through forests have a higher number of threatened fish species. By scanning DNA “like barcodes” the researchers were able to find where the threatened fish species appeared more frequently and saw that this occurred when streams had forests along them.
When faced with predators many animals play dead, but did you know that bugs do the same? Okayama University researchers have found that red flour beetles choose to employ different survival tactics for each type of predator. Against a jumping spider the beetles play dead but when faced with a stinkbug the beetles simply froze in place.
A new type of armoured dinosaur has been found in China by a team of scientists led by Yunnan University and the Natural History Museum of London. The bones were found in Yunnan’s Yuxi City and so was named Yuxisaurus kopchicki. Yuxisaurus lived in the early Jurassic period whereas armoured dinosaurs were thought to have lived during the late Jurassic period.
Children and teenagers with disabilities are twice as likely to face abuse as those without disabilities says study by Beijing Normal University, the University of Oxford, the University of Leeds, and Colombia University. The team looked at almost 100 studies from 1990-2020 representing 16 million young people and a mix of high- and low-income countries.
