Return of the bat: European species make a comeback

Defying years of shrinking habitat and disappearing roosts, bats are making a comeback in Europe.Bat numbers – collected from 6000 hibernation sites in nine European countries – have increased by 43 per cent between 1993 and 2011, according to a new report by the European Environmental Agency (EEA). The study, which tracks 16 of Europe's 45 bat species, is the most comprehensive population study of bats on the continent to date."This trend is a definite...

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Black bloom in the Atlantic skirts Brazil's coast

(Image: NASA) What is this dark stain reaching along Brazil's Atlantic coast to São Paulo? It showed up in a recent satellite photo, stretching nearly 800 kilometres across the ocean.The snapshot was taken on 19 January by Aqua, a NASA spacecraft designed to track the Earth's water cycle. Local biologists say the black bloom is made up of hosts of a microscopic animal called Myrionecta rubra. Seen close up, the bloom is deep red, but the play of...

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Mud dump in Great Barrier Reef park could choke life

Australia will dump millions of tonnes of sludge inside the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park so that it can export more coal. And that could be just the beginning.Plans to start mining and exporting coal from one of the country's biggest deposits – the Galilee basin – require the expansion of the Abbot Point shipping port in north Queensland, within the boundaries of the famous marine park. In December, the federal government gave the go-ahead for...

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Today on New Scientist

Threatwatch: Mother virus of China's deadly bird flu Ten years after H5N1, yet more deadly bird flu has emerged from China. Is it time to do something about the virus spawning them all?Green sky thinking: Astronomy's dirty little secret Astronomy produces a lot of carbon emissions, but it could be one of the greenest sciences if observatories harness their solar and wind resourcesStar next door may host a 'superhabitable' world The closest star to...

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Threatwatch: Mother virus of China's deadly bird flu

Threatwatch is your early warning system for global dangers, from nuclear peril to deadly viral outbreaks. Debora MacKenzie highlights the threats to civilisation – and suggests solutions Exactly 10 years after H5N1 bird flu exploded across south-east Asia, the virus is still widespread, and has been joined by new killer types of bird flu. Human cases of H7N9 flu are surging in south-east China, and a new type of bird flu, H10N8, has claimed its...

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Too much sugar in food? Follow the salt solution

ANYONE who worries about their diet must have had a few anxious moments about sugar in recent weeks. The media has been full of stories about its effects on health, from obesity and diabetes to liver disease. Some stories were exaggerated, but many got it right (see "Sugar on trial: What you really need to know").It's hardly news that sugar is bad for you, so why the sudden interest? One underappreciated reason is the success of a public health battle...

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Healthy-weight toddlers protected from later obesity

Prevent obesity in the under-5 and the benefits can last years. This was the message of a widely reported study published this week. So how do you help youngsters maintain a healthy weight?The new study involved 7700 children and was led by Solveig Cunningham of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her team showed that if children reach their fifth birthday without becoming overweight or obese, their chances of developing obesity as a teenager are...

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First graphene radio broadcast is a wireless wonder

Three letters beamed across a lab bench may spark a revolution in wireless communication. The seemingly simple transmission of "IBM" was received by the first working radio chip to be made from the modern wonder material, graphene – sheets of carbon, each just one atom thick.Graphene, with its flat, hexagonal lattice, was first isolated a decade ago. It won its discoverers a Nobel prize in physics, in part because its high electrical and thermal...

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First glimpse of how HIV swamps the gut's immune cells

Video: First glimpse of how HIV swamps the gut's immune cells We've been given the first glimpse of HIV in attack mode in the gut, shedding light on how the virus hijacks immune cells, multiplies and spreads throughout the body.A team of biochemists have used electron tomography microscopes to capture the first high-resolution, 3D images of the HIV virus lurking in the intestines of "humanised" mice, whose immune systems are made up largely of human...

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First brain map of speech units could aid mind-reading

Video: How speech sounds activate the brain "He moistened his lips uneasily." It sounds like a cheap romance novel, but this line is actually lifted from quite a different type of prose: a neuroscience study.Along with other sentences, including "Have you got enough blankets?" and "And what eyes they were", it was used to build the first map of how the brain processes the building blocks of speech – distinct units of sound known as phonemes.The map...

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Conversation app helps parents boost child's language

A smartphone-based system that listens to parents converse with their child can build the child's language skills by offering parents cues in real time A CHILD'S development depends on the world around them and chatting with parents is crucial. But around 1.3 million children in the US alone have trouble picking up language skills, meaning their parents must visit therapists to learn strategies to help them communicate. A app that listens to their...

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Stem cell timeline: The history of a medical sensation

Stem cells are the cellular putty from which all tissues of the body are made. Ever since human embryonic stem cells were first grown in the lab, researchers have dreamed of using them to repair damaged tissue or create new organs, but such medical uses have also attracted controversy. Yesterday, the potential of stem cells to revolutionise medicine got a huge boost with news of an ultra-versatile kind of stem cell from adult mouse cells using a...

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Budgies may be behind latest spread of H7N9 bird flu

THE humble budgie has become an unexpected menace in the latest H7N9 bird flu outbreak.H7N9 emerged in south-east China last March, infecting 136 people. It returned in October, infecting 116 more. Nearly a third of those infected have died.The virus cannot spread readily between people, and most cases are linked to live poultry markets. But now Jeremy Jones at St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Tennessee and colleagues in China report that...

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UK government to ban e-cigarettes for under-18s

"Vaping" will soon be out for kids in the UK: plans to ban sales of electronic cigarettes to under-18s were announced last week by the government and could come into force within a year. The nation joins the 26 US states that have banned sales to minors on the basis that smoking e-cigarettes, or vaping, might tempt them to try smoking, which globally kills 6 million people each year."We do not yet know the harm that e-cigarettes can cause to adults,...

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Ploughable sensors help farmers get more crop per drop

AT THE end of March several small bundles of electronics will be ploughed into a field in Cheshire, UK. The sensors will measure soil temperature and moisture content, then transmit those measurements wirelessly to the surface. It is the kind of information farmers around the world need to conserve water while still growing enough crops to feed an expanding population.Currently being tested in lab soil at the University of Manchester, UK, the sensors...

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UK government to ban e-cigarettes for under 18s

"Vaping" will soon be out for kids in the UK: plans to ban sales of electronic cigarettes to under-18s were announced last week by the government and could come into force within a year. The nation joins the 26 US states that have banned sales to minors on the basis that smoking e-cigarettes, or vaping, might tempt them to try smoking, which globally kills 6 million people each year."We do not yet know the harm that e-cigarettes can cause to adults,...

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Peanut allergy cured in children using immunotherapy

A potentially life-threatening peanut allergy has been essentially cured in nine out of 10 recipients of a new treatment which gradually escalates the amount of peanut protein the body can tolerate.Other treatments such as vaccines and antibodies are also under development, but the new oral immunotherapy is claimed to be the first to successfully allow people to tolerate such a food allergy."We've shown fantastic results, with 80 to 90 per cent of...

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Zoologger: Flying snake gets lift from UFO cross section

Video: Flying snake gets lift from UFO cross section Zoologger is our weekly column highlighting extraordinary animals – and occasionally other organisms – from around the world Species: Chrysopelea paradisi Habitat: tropical rainforests of South Asia, gliding up to 100 metres from the tops of treesWhy crawl when you can fly? While their relatives slither on the ground, a few snakes take to the air, gliding from tree to tree. The most skilled of...

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Did newborn sun have weirdly weak solar wind?

OUR young sun may have been a late bloomer. The first reading of charged particles streaming from a younger solar twin shows that this constant particle flow, or wind, is rather wimpy. If our baby sun behaved like this, its timidity perhaps bought time for early Mars to play host to water.Other young, sun-like stars are much more active than our middle-aged sun, blasting out more flares and high-energy radiation. For our sun, an increase in activity...

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More harm than good? Antioxidants defend cancer in body

They may be marketed as a way to protect yourself against disease, but antioxidant supplements are increasingly thought of as more foe than friend. We now have an idea why: antioxidants may protect healthy cells from DNA damage but they also protect cancer cells from our bodies' defences.Antioxidants are chemicals such as beta-carotene and vitamins C and E, which mop up destructive free radicals produced when our cells metabolise energy. The new...

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Why you should care about the end of net neutrality

Companies can now pay for their pages to be delivered faster in the US. Does this mean the end of the internet as we know it? IS THIS the end of the internet as we know it? On 14 January, the guiding principle of internet freedom, known as net neutrality, was demolished in a US appeals court in Washington DC. Pro-neutrality activists say it is the harbinger of dark times for our connected world. Information will no longer be free, but governed by...

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Beams of sound immerse you in music others can't hear

From restaurant music that only certain tables can hear to flying emails, the ability to place sound exactly where you want it has all kinds of unusual uses IF YOU'RE sick of wading through a clogged email inbox or scrolling through endless Twitter timelines, Jörg Müller has a more fun way of sifting through your messages: sound.In his audio-enabled "BoomRoom" at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, emails and tweets fly around you like a...

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Cyclones hitting Australia plummet to 1500-year low

Off the chart: cyclone activity in Australia has been lower over the last 40 years than at any time in the past 1500 years. But the seemingly good news comes with a sting in the tail for people living on the coast.Radar and satellite records of tropical cyclones – rotating storm systems – stretch back only about four decades. For an idea of trends on the longer term, researchers must go underground.Compared with typical monsoonal rains, the severe...

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