What we can learn from the biggest extinction in the history of Earth
...rn events. We may miss very important processes or underestimate the magnitude of changes in the future by using only the past couple thousand years as a baseline." Great Bank of Guizhou Payne has spent the past five years unearthing the deep geologic record in south China. The kilometer-thick, limestone fos...GM field trials 'underestimate potential for cross-pollination'
...al is downwind of the non-GM field, the trial will underestimate the potential for cross-pollination. 'We were struck by the strong influence of wind direction on the amount of cross-pollination', said Martin Hoyle of the University of Exeter. 'Wind speed and direction are important factors outside of our cont...Arctic ice retreating more quickly than computer models project
... less dramatic than the September loss, the models underestimate it by a wide margin as well. The study concludes that the actual rate of sea ice loss in March, which averaged about 1.8 percent per decade in the 1953-2006 period, was three times larger than the mean from the computer models. March is typically the...... complex behavior. Moreover, we have a tendency to underestimate the intelligence of animals at lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder. In fact, it is the ladder idea itself that is wrong. The best way to approach animal intelligence is from an evolutionary and ecological perspective focused on the tasks that each...New breast cancer screening tool helps general practitioners
...s, according to some, is that it may substantially underestimate breast cancer risk in the subgroup of women with hereditary breast cancer syndromes and is not well-suited for identifying these women. Led by Kent F. Hoskins, M.D. of the OSF Saint Anthony Center for Cancer Care in Rockford, IL, researchers devel...Global changes alter plant growth schedule
...ifferent species to global changes may cause us to underestimate the degree to which natural communities are already responding to changing environmental conditions."...Learning the lessons of the world's oldest ecological experiment
...monstrated that conventional field trials probably underestimate threats to plant biodiversity from long term changes, such as soil acidification, shown how plant species richness, biomass and pH are related, has demonstrated that competition between plants can make the effects of climatic variation on commun...Feeling fat in the festive season? It's all in your mind
...fect in their body, and frequently overestimate or underestimate their actual body size. The study, led by Dr Henrik Ehrsson of the UCL Institute of Neurology, used the Pinocchio illusion in combination with functional magnetic resonance imaging to study volunteers' brains. For each volunteer, a vibrating device...Fetal exposure to toxins could be behind rise in asthma
... period close to the time of birth. "Right now, we underestimate health risks that are occurring due to early exposure." He advocates a more detailed two-generation screening in which information on toxins and their impact on immune systems is recorded not only for the adult mother but also for her offspring. It ...Prevalence of infection in a population can shape parasite virulence
...noring the effects of competition, standard models underestimate the full costs of virulence - and, more important, miss a significant link between a parasite's prevalence in a population and its virulence....Traditional models underestimate extinction rates
...nore a critical parameter in projecting risk, they underestimate extinction rates. Standard models for predicting extinction assume that population growth and decline are governed by random, or stochastic, variables. But few scientists have actually tested the accuracy of these models with empirical data. To do ...One year after groundbreaking, desert research center takes shape on the Israeli-Jordanian border
...sraeli sides of the Dead Sea in January. "We can't underestimate the degree to which security is a concern to the Bridging the Ridge Foundation," Feldman noted. "Very senior security people from the Israeli and Jordanian forces have been involved in every phase of the project." "I felt very safe there," Bohannan r...How the battle of Waterloo could help doctors fight death from multiple organ failure
...terloo and Trafalgar serve as a reminder of how we underestimate the human body's ability to heal itself under the most extreme conditions. Of the 52 privates in the 13th Light Dragoons wounded by sabre, gunfire and cannon injuries at Waterloo, only two subsequently died. Prof Singer says: "Despite the non-existen...