51 news posts in Frontiers Highlights

Environment

20 Apr 2022

Most read articles of March 2022: Secrets of ancient leftovers revealed and endangered shark discovered in pet food

By Colm Gorey, Science Communications Manager, Frontiers Image: Shutterstock.com Each month, Frontiers shines a spotlight on some of the leading research across a wide range of topics. Here are just some of the highlights that resonated strongly with readers on our news site in the month of March. Leftovers in prehistoric pots let scientists peek into the kitchen of an ancient civilization How do you reconstruct the cookery of people who lived thousands of years ago? Bones and plant remains can tell us what kind of ingredients were available. But to reconstruct how ingredients were combined and cooked, scientists need to study ancient cooking vessels. “Fatty molecules and microscopic remains from plants such as starch grains and phytoliths – silica structures deposited in many plant tissues – get embedded into vessels and can survive over long periods,” said Dr Akshyeta Suryanarayan, a researcher at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, and co-author on a recent study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. In their study, Suryanarayan and co-authors analyzed such ‘leftovers’ in Copper and Bronze Age vessels – including pots, vases, goblets, jars, and platters – from today’s Gujarat, India. “Our study is the first to combine starch grain […]

Climate action

05 Apr 2022

The hidden effects of deforestation on our planet and 3 other fascinating Frontiers articles you may have missed

By Colm Gorey, Frontiers Science Communications Manager Image: Shutterstock.com At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, many often fly under the radar. Now, as part of new series each month, Frontiers will highlight just some of those amazing papers you may have missed. The Unseen Effects of Deforestation: Biophysical Effects on Climate Research published to Frontiers in Forests and Global Change offers the most comprehensive and detailed evidence to date that forests are more important to the climate – both globally and locally – than we think due to the way in which they physically transform the atmosphere. The first-ever research conducted by a team from the US pinpointed the local, regional and global non-CO2 benefits of specific forest zones worldwide to find that the entire world gains the most benefits from the band of tropical rainforests spanning Latin America, central Africa and Southeast Asia. It finds that, together, forests keep the planet at least half of a degree Celsius cooler when we account for the understudied biophysical effects – from chemical compounds to turbulence and the reflection of light. These effects in […]

Neuroscience

28 Mar 2022

Most read articles of February 2022: Does life really flash before our eyes before death?

By Colm Gorey, Frontiers Science Communications Manager Image: Shutterstock.com Each month, Frontiers shines a spotlight on some of the leading research across a wide range of topics. Here are just some of the highlights that resonated strongly with readers on our news site in the month of February. A replay of life: What happens in our brain when we die? Imagine reliving your entire life in the space of seconds. Like a flash of lightning, you are outside of your body, watching memorable moments you lived through. This process, known as ‘life recall’, can be similar to what it’s like to have a near-death experience. What happens inside your brain during these experiences and after death are questions that have puzzled neuroscientists for centuries. However, a new study published to Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience suggests that your brain may remain active and coordinated during and even after the transition to death, and be programmed to orchestrate the whole ordeal. Article link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2022.813531/full 2. Eating vegetables does not protect against cardiovascular disease, finds large-scale study A long-term ‘UK Biobank’ study on almost 400,000 people published to Frontiers in Nutrition found little or no evidence that differences in the amount of consumed cooked or […]

Possible treatment for tinnitus? 4 fascinating Frontiers articles you may have missed

By Colm Gorey, Science Communications Manager Image: Shutterstock.com At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, many often fly under the radar. Now, as part of new series each month, Frontiers will highlight just some of those amazing papers you may have missed. 1: New treatment for tinnitus shows promise for further study More than 10% of the world’s population is estimated to live with a condition called tinnitus, where a range of sounds ranging from ringing to buzzing are heard in the ears that never goes away. While ranging in severity, between 0.5% and 3% of people diagnosed with it say their quality of life is impacted, with no known cure. However, researchers in South Korea have published a paper in Frontiers in Neuroscience putting forward hopeful findings that suggest a new treatment method could be possible for subacute and chronic tinnitus. The small study saw 55 patients undergo repeated nerve blocks after stimulation of the trigeminal and facial nerves to modulate the auditory and non-auditory nervous systems via the vestibulocochlear cranial nerve pathways. In more than 87.5% of patients, tinnitus disappeared or […]

Psychology

28 Feb 2022

Origins of life and plastic invasions: The most viewed Frontiers news articles of January 2022

By Colm Gorey, Science Communications Manager Image: DisobeyArt/Shutterstock.com Each month, Frontiers shines a spotlight on some of the leading research across a wide range of topics. Here are just some of the highlights that resonated strongly with readers on our news site in the month of January. Likely energy source behind first life on Earth found ‘hiding in plain sight’ Life on Earth arose roughly 4bn years ago. How it arose, and from what energy source is of interest to everyone because we humans like to know where we come from. The team of Prof William Martin at the University Düsseldorf’s Institute of Molecular Evolution investigates early evolution. In a recent paper in Frontiers in Microbiology, they argue that the source of energy required at life’s origin has been hiding in plain sight: under the environmental conditions at deep sea hydrothermal vents, hypothesized to have been the sites where life on Earth originated, the central biosynthetic reactions of life do not require an external energy source. Article link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2021.793664/full 2. How do we define a well-lived life? First scientific evidence helps us get closer to an answer A transition, such as the beginning of a new year or entering the second half of life, […]

Earth science

08 Feb 2022

5 fascinating Frontiers articles you may have missed in January 2022

By Colm Gorey, Science Communications Manager A newly born desert tortoise. Image: K. Kristina Drake/ USGS. At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a worldwide audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, many often fly under the radar. Now, as part of new series each month, Frontiers will highlight just some of those amazing papers you may have missed. 1: Too hot to nest? In a hot summer, one tortoise can switch from nesting to developing eggs internally Researchers from Australia and South Africa published an article in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution identifying what may be a novel reproductive strategy in Chersina angulate tortoises that has the potential to enhance the resilience of species to global warming. After observing a captive colony of in Cape Town, South Africa and checking back through historical data, Gerald Kuchling of The University of Western Australia and Margaretha Hofmeyr of the University of Western Cape found that local ambient temperature altered how females deposited their last clutch of eggs. Periods of unusual heat may result in females switching from depositing their eggs in a nest to develop(oviposition), to growing the egg in their body […]