Soil Types News

August 20, 2025

Top Headlines

Tiny Microbes May Secretly Rewire the Brain Before Birth

Aug. 19, 2025 — MSU researchers discovered that microbes begin shaping the brain while still in the womb, influencing neurons in a region critical for stress and social behavior. Their findings suggest modern birth practices that alter the microbiome may have ...

Scientists Just Found a Hidden Factor Behind Earth’s Methane Surge

Aug. 17, 2025 — Roughly two-thirds of all atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas, comes from methanogens. Tracking down which methanogens in which environment produce methane with a specific isotope signature is difficult, however. UC Berkeley researchers ...

The Parasite That Turns Off Your Body’s Pain Alarm and Sneaks In

Aug. 12, 2025 — Scientists have discovered a parasite that can sneak into your skin without you feeling a thing. The worm, Schistosoma mansoni, has evolved a way to switch off the body’s pain and itch signals, letting it invade undetected. By blocking certain ...

Dirty Water, Warm Trucks, and the Real Reason Romaine Keeps Making Us Sick

July 19, 2025 — Romaine lettuce has a long history of E. coli outbreaks, but scientists are zeroing in on why. A new study reveals that the way lettuce is irrigated—and how it’s kept cool afterward—can make all the difference. Spraying leaves with untreated ...

Mojave Lichen Defies Death Rays—could Life Thrive on Distant Exoplanets?

June 24, 2025 — Lichen from the Mojave Desert has stunned scientists by surviving months of lethal UVC radiation, suggesting life could exist on distant planets orbiting volatile stars. The secret? A microscopic “sunscreen” layer that protects their vital ...

From Cursed Tomb Fungus to Cancer Cure: Aspergillus Flavus Yields Potent New Drug

June 23, 2025 — In a remarkable twist of science, researchers have transformed a fungus long associated with death into a potential weapon against cancer. Found in tombs like that of King Tut, Aspergillus flavus was ...

How Life Endured the Snowball Earth: Evidence from Antarctic Meltwater Ponds

June 19, 2025 — During Earth's ancient Snowball periods, when the entire planet was wrapped in ice, life may have endured in tiny meltwater ponds on the surface of equatorial glaciers. MIT researchers discovered ...

Clever Worms Form Superorganism Towers to Hitch Rides on Insects

June 17, 2025 — Nematodes tiny yet mighty form wriggling towers to survive and travel as a team. Long thought to exist only in labs, scientists have now spotted these towers naturally forming in rotting orchard fruit. Remarkably, the worms aren t just piling up ...

Nitrogen Loss on Sandy Shores: The Big Impact of Tiny Anoxic Pockets

June 2, 2025 — Some microbes living on sand grains use up all the oxygen around them. Their neighbors, left without oxygen, make the best of it: They use nitrate in the surrounding water for denitrification -- a process hardly possible when oxygen is present. This ...

Student Discovers Long-awaited Mystery Fungus Sought by LSD's Inventor

June 2, 2025 — Making a discovery with the potential for innovative applications in pharmaceutical development, a microbiology student has found a long sought-after fungus that produces effects similar to the semisynthetic drug LSD, which is used to treat ...

New Velvet Worm Species a First for the Arid Karoo

May 30, 2025 — A new species of velvet worm, Peripatopsis barnardi, represents the first ever species from the arid Karoo, which indicates that the area was likely historically more forested than at present. In the Cape Fold Mountains, we now know that every ...

The EU Should Allow Gene Editing to Make Organic Farming More Sustainable, Researchers Say

May 30, 2025 — To achieve the European Green Deal's goal of 25% organic agriculture by 2030, researchers argue that new genomic techniques (NGTs) should be allowed without pre-market authorization in organic as ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:15pm EDT

Agriculture in Forests Can Provide Climate and Economic Dividends

May 30, 2025 — Forest-based agroforestry can restore forests, promote livelihoods, and combat climate change, but emerging agroforestry initiatives focusing only on tree planting is leading to missed opportunities ...

Rock Record Illuminates Oxygen History

May 29, 2025 — A new study reveals that the aerobic nitrogen cycle in the ocean may have occurred about 100 million years before oxygen began to significantly accumulate in the atmosphere, based on nitrogen isotope ...

Chemists Recreate How RNA Might Have Reproduced for First Time

May 29, 2025 — Chemists have demonstrated how RNA (ribonucleic acid) might have replicated itself on early Earth -- a key process in the origin of ...

When the Forest Is No Longer a Home -- Forest Bats Seek Refuge in Settlements

May 28, 2025 — Many bat species native to Germany, such as the Leisler's bat, are forest specialists. However, as it is becoming increasingly hard for them to find ...

Songbirds' Great Risk Results in Great Genetic Reward

May 22, 2025 — Songbirds who make the arduous flight from their nesting sites in northern boreal forests to warm, southern climates in the winter may be rewarded for their journey with greater genetic ...

Cool Science: Researchers Craft Tiny Biological Tools Using Frozen Ethanol

May 20, 2025 — Imagine drawing on something as delicate as a living cell -- without damaging it. Researchers have made this groundbreaking discovery using an unexpected combination of tools: frozen ethanol, ...

A Head and a Hundred Tails: How a Branching Worm Manages Reproductive Complexity

May 20, 2025 — Scientists have uncovered the genetic underpinnings of one of the ocean's most bizarre animals: a branching marine worm named Ramisyllis ...

Cover Crops May Not Be Solution for Both Crop Yield, Carbon Sequestration

May 20, 2025 — People have assumed climate change solutions that sequester carbon from the air into soils will also benefit crop yields. But a new study finds that most regenerative farming practices to build soil ...

Very Different Mammals Follow the Same Rules of Behavior

May 16, 2025 — In the natural world -- where predators pounce, prey flee, and group members feed and sleep in solidarity -- animal behavior is glorious in its variety. Now, new research suggests there may be an ...

Artificial Intelligence and Genetics Can Help Farmers Grow Corn With Less Fertilizer

May 15, 2025 — Scientists are using artificial intelligence to determine which genes collectively govern nitrogen use efficiency in plants such as corn, with the ...

CT Scanning Helps Reveal Path from Rotten Fish to Fossil

May 13, 2025 — Scientists confirm CT scanning doesn't interfere with natural decomposition processes, opening new windows into understanding how fossils ...

Researchers Develop Living Material from Fungi

May 13, 2025 — Fungi are considered a promising source of biodegradable materials. Researchers have developed a new material based on a fungal mycelium and its own extracellular matrix. This gives the biomaterial ...

Helping Birds and Floating Solar Energy Coexist

May 12, 2025 — How might floating solar energy projects impact wild birds and vice versa? A paper outlines key considerations for a growing floating solar ...

Microbial 'Phosphorus Gatekeeping' Found at Center of Study Exploring 700,000 Years of Iconic Coastline

May 12, 2025 — A team of researchers investigated a sequence of coastal dunes of different ages (from 0-700,000 years old) in Cooloola National Park near Rainbow Beach to understand how soil microorganisms coped ...

Feat of 'Dung-Gineering' Turns Cow Manure Into One of World's Most Used Materials

May 7, 2025 — A new technique to extract tiny cellulose strands from cow dung and turn them into manufacturing-grade cellulose, currently used to make everything from surgical masks to food packaging, has been ...

Pioneering Research Reveals Tree-Mendous Potential of Inexpensive Drones to Help Community Forests Flourish and Unlock Restoration Funding

May 7, 2025 — New research has shown how small, inexpensive drones combined with free, open source software can be used by community forest organizations to calculate and monitor the amount of carbon stored in ...

Replanted Rainforests May Benefit from Termite Transplants

May 6, 2025 — Termites -- infamous for their ability to destroy wood -- are rarely welcomed into rainforests that have been painstakingly replanted. But a new paper suggests that termite transplants may be ...

Food as Medicine: How Diet Shapes Gut Microbiome Health

May 6, 2025 — Researchers show how mice fed a Western-style diet are not able to rebuild a 'healthy,' diverse gut microbiome following antibiotic treatment. These mice were also more susceptible to ...

Vertical Farming to Increase Yields and Reduce Environmental Impact

May 5, 2025 — Vertical farming can do more than lettuce. A research team has investigated the cultivation of six food groups in vertical farming: Crops, algae, mushrooms, insects, fish and cultivated meat. In this ...

Will the Vegetables of the Future Be Fortified Using Tiny Needles?

Apr. 29, 2025 — Researchers have shown they can inexpensively nanomanufacture silk microneedles to precisely fortify crops, monitor plant health, and detect soil ...

Less Intensive Farming Works Best for Agricultural Soil

Apr. 25, 2025 — The less intensively you manage the soil, the better the soil can function. Such as not plowing as often or using more grass-clover mixtures as cover crops. Surprisingly, it applies to both ...

Invasive Weed Threatens Southern California's Deserts

Apr. 24, 2025 — Once thought resistant to invasion, California's deserts are losing native plants to aggressive weedy species like Saharan mustard. New research shows its spread is disrupting biodiversity and ...

Hotter Temps Trigger Wetlands to Emit More Methane as Microbes Struggle to Keep Up

Apr. 23, 2025 — In the soils of Earth's wetlands, microbes are in a tug-of-war to produce and consume the powerful greenhouse gas methane. But if the Earth gets too hot, it could tip the scale in favor of the ...

Scientists Have Found a Way to 'Tattoo' Tardigrades

Apr. 23, 2025 — If you haven't heard of a tardigrade before, prepare to be wowed. These clumsy, eight-legged creatures, nicknamed water bears, are about half a millimeter long and can survive practically ...

Introduced Trees Are Becoming More Common in the Eastern United States, While Native Diversity Declines

Apr. 21, 2025 — In a new study, researchers used more than 5 million measurements from individual trees across much of eastern North America and showed the rate at which introduced species are spreading has ...

Should Farm Fields Be Used for Crops or Solar? Or Both

Apr. 21, 2025 — As farmers debate whether fields should be used for agriculture or solar panels, new research says the answer could be both. Scientists analyzed remote sensing and aerial imagery to study how fields ...

Nutrients Strengthen Link Between Precipitation and Plant Growth, Study Finds

Apr. 17, 2025 — A new study has investigated how the relationship between mean annual precipitation (MAP) and grassland biomass changes when one or more nutrients are added. The authors show that precipitation and ...

Microbes in Brooklyn Superfund Site Teach Lessons on Fighting Industrial Pollution

Apr. 16, 2025 — Using advanced DNA sequence analysis, a research team has discovered that tiny organisms in Brooklyn's highly contaminated Gowanus Canal have developed a comprehensive collection of ...

Farm Robot Autonomously Navigates, Harvests Among Raised Beds

Apr. 16, 2025 — A researcher has developed an autonomous driving algorithm for agricultural robots used for greenhouse cultivation and other farm ...

Experiment in Floodplain Forest: Using Tree Mortality to Support Oak Regeneration

Apr. 16, 2025 — The pedunculate oaks typical of Leipzig's floodplain forest and other German oak forests are struggling to regenerate in the understorey due to a lack of light. One reason for this is the ...