The largest fraction of carbon held in the soils of northern forests may derive from the living and the decomposing roots of trees and shrubs and the fungi that live on them.

By some estimates, the planet's soils contain more than twice the carbon in the atmosphere. Boreal forests cover about 11% of Earth’s land surface and contain around 16% of total soil carbon.

Robots built to mimic ants suggest that real ants waste little, if any, mental energy deciding which way to go when they reach an uneven fork in the road, according to a new study. Instead, the ants just take the easiest route as dictated by geometry.

"The shape of their network relieves some of the cognitive load for the ants; they don't need to think about it," Simon Garnier, a biologist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, told NBC News. "The shape of their networks has constrained their movement in a way that is more efficient for them.".

Scientists say lake muds unlikely to have created mountain at the heart of Curiosity's mission.

Wind, not water, deposited most of the sediments in the layered Martian mountain NASA's Curiosity rover was sent to study, suggests an analysis of observations from orbit. If the rover confirms this scenario when it reaches the mountain next year, it could spell trouble for its chances of finding organic material there.

THE WOODLANDS, Texas — The equator of Jupiter's icy moon Europa may be covered with huge spikes of ice, scientists say.

Astronomers have known for some time that Jupiter's moon Europa is icy, and now scientists are trying to understand just what form that ice takes by using some of the coldest places on Earth as analogues. Huge ice spikes, known as penitentes, found on Earth could form on Europa, they said.

The answer to whether or not we are alone in the universe could be right under our nose, or, more literally, inside every cell in our body.

Could our genes have an intelligently designed “manufacturer’s stamp” inside them, written eons ago elsewhere in our galaxy? Such a “designer label” would be an indelible stamp of a master extraterrestrial civilization that preceded us by many millions or billions of years. As their ultimate legacy, they recast the Milky Way in their own biological image.

There are few destinations in the solar system as enticing as Jupiter’s largest moon, Europa. Below its icy crust a liquid water ocean is thought to exist, containing not only the necessary ingredients for life, but, according to scientists, potentially complex organisms. And now, despite a squeezed budget, it looks like NASA has been allocated the seed money for a mission to Europa.

President Barack Obama announced a new research initiative this morning (April 2) to map the human brain, a project that will launch with $100 million in funding in 2014.

The Brain Activity Map (BAM) project, as it is called, has been in the planning stages for some time. In the June 2012 issue of the journal Neuron, six scientists outlined broad proposals for developing non-invasive sensors and methods to experiment on single cells in neural networks. This February, President Obama made a vague reference to the project in his State of the Union address, mentioning that it could "unlock the answers to Alzheimer's.".

It sounds like the plot for a new Indiana Jones film.

Archaeologists say they have discovered the 'Gates of Hell', the mythical portal to the underworld in Greek and Roman legend.

The site, in the ancient Phrygian city of Hierapolis, now Pamukkale in southwestern Turkey, is said to closely match historical descriptions of what was known as Ploutonion in Greek and Pluutonium in Latin.

Describing the site, the Greek geographer Strabo (64/63 BC -- about 24 A.D.) said: 'This space is full of a vapor so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground.

'Any animal that passes inside meets instant death. I threw in sparrows and they immediately breathed their last and fell.'.

A study has been able to accurately determine the age of the Neanderthal remains found in the El Sidrón cave (Asturias, Spain) for which previous studies had provided inexact measurements. The application of a pre-treatment to reduce contamination by modern carbon has managed to lower the margin of error from 40,000 to just 3,200 years.

El Sidrón cave in Asturias (northern Spain) is one of the westernmost Neanderthal sites on the Iberian Peninsula and contains a large amount of this type of remains in addition to the flint tools they used. Now, thanks to the development of new analytical procedures, a research team co-ordinated by the University of Oviedo (Spain) has managed to provide a more accurate dating for these Neanderthal populations in Asturias.

A trove of Neanderthal fossils including bones of children and adults, discovered in a cave in Greece hints the area may have been a key crossroad for ancient humans, researchers say.

The timing of the fossils suggests Neanderthals and humans may have at least had the opportunity to interact, or cross paths, there, the researchers added.

Neanderthals are the closest extinct relatives of modern humans, apparently even occasionally interbreeding with our ancestors. Neanderthals entered Europe before modern humans did, and may have lasted there until about 35,000 years ago, although recent findings have called this date into question.

Eggs occupy a special status during Easter observances. They’re symbols of rebirth and renewal—life bursts forth from this otherwise plain, inanimate object that gives no hint as to what it contains. In this regard it is a handy symbol for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it is is a symbol that has held this meaning long before Christianity adopted it.

There is a meme floating around Facebook that some people have rallied around and are sharing as a “truth” of Easter. It proclaims:
Easter was originally the celebration of Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility and sex.

Once again this spring, farmers will begin planting at least 140 million acres—a land mass roughly equal to the combined footprints of California and Washington state—with seeds (mainly corn and soy) treated with a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Commercial landscapers and home gardeners will get into the act, too—neonics are common in lawn and garden products. If you're a regular reader of my blog, you know all of that is probably bad news for honeybees and other pollinators, as a growing body of research shows—including three studies released just ahead of last year's planting season.

Male bats perform oral sex on females, apparently to make sex last longer, researchers say.

These findings, the first discovery of male-to-female oral sex in bats, match prior studies revealing that female bats perform fellatio, or oral sex, on male bats.

Scientists analyzed a colony of about 420 Indian flying foxes (Pteropus giganteus) roosting in a single fig tree in southern India, near the village of Nallachampatti. This fruit-eating bat is one of the largest bats in the world.