Taking advantage of a "natural laboratory" in Iceland, a research team from the University of Arizona studied how microbes colonize fresh lava flows as soon as they cooled. The research provides insights into how a biological community is established over time, beginning the very moment new habitat is created.

The climate is changing and nowhere is it changing faster than at Earth’s poles. Researchers at Penn State have painted a comprehensive picture of the chemical processes taking place in the Arctic and found that there are multiple, separate interactions impacting the atmosphere.

18 December 2025 / Kiel / Plymouth. The ocean may have absorbed significantly more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than previously calculated. A new study by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory shows that the exchange of gases between air and sea is not symmetric, and that the global ocean has taken up around 15 per cent more CO₂ than suggested by conventional estimates. In windy regions, air bubbles entrained by breaking waves substantially enhance the uptake of CO₂. The results are based on extensive direct measurements from the ocean and have now been published in the journal Nature Communications.

For the first time, scientists have analyzed metabolism-related molecules from the fossilized bones of animals that lived 1.3 to 3 million years ago, revealing insights about both the animals and their environments.

When studying how fossil hominids moved, researchers usually analyse the morphology of bones — which is crucial for understanding the evolution of bipedalism — focusing mainly on muscle insertion sites. However, the potential information of studying other types of soft tissue, such as joint ligaments, is often overlooked. Now, an article published in the journal Scientific Reports emphasizes the importance of studying the anatomy of the insertion points of the wrist ligaments to reconstruct the locomotor behaviour and manipulative dexterity of fossil hominids throughout human evolution.