My picks from ScienceDaily

Earth's Magnetic Field Reversals Illuminated By Lava Flows Study:

Earth's north magnetic pole is shifting and weakening. Ancient lava flows are guiding a better understanding of what generates and controls the Earth's magnetic field - and what may drive it to occasionally reverse direction.

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Current evidence suggests we are now approaching one of these transitional states because the main magnetic field is relatively weak and rapidly decreasing, he says. While the last polarity reversal occurred several hundred thousand years ago, the next might come within only a few thousand years.

Mother Of A Goose! Giant Ocean-going Geese With Bony-teeth Once Roamed Across SE England:

A 50 million year old skull reveals that huge birds with a 5 metre wingspan once skimmed across the waters that covered what is now London, Essex and Kent. These giant ocean-going relatives of ducks and geese also had a rather bizarre attribute for a bird: their beaks were lined with bony-teeth.

From One Laying To Another, The Female Collembolan Adapts Its Eggs To Environmental Constraints:

Reproductive plasticity - the ability of individuals to modify their reproduction and the characteristics of their progeny according to environmental or social conditions - is a crucial factor in the demographics of animal populations, including man.

Weak Bladders Deter Many Young Women From Sports Participation:

A weak bladder is putting many young women off participating in sport, or prompting them to give it up altogether, suggests new research.

Captive Breeding Introduced Infectious Disease To Mallorcan Amphibians:

A potentially deadly fungus that can kill frogs and toads was inadvertently introduced into Mallorca by a captive breeding programme that was reintroducing a rare species of toad into the wild, according to a new study in the journal Current Biology.

Australian Frog Species Chooses Not To Put Eggs In One Basket:

A groundbreaking new study into the mating and nesting practices of a common Australian frog has found they partner up to eight males sequentially - the highest recorded of any vertebrate.

Animals Farmed For Meat Are The No. 1 Source Of Food Poisoning Bug, Study Shows:

A study by researchers from Lancashire, England, and Chicago, IL, found that 97 percent of campylobacteriosis cases sampled in Lancashire were caused by bacteria typically found in chicken and livestock. The work is based on DNA-sequence comparison of thousands of bacteria collected from human patients and animal carriers.

Bees Can Mediate Escape Of Genetically Engineered Material Over Several Kilometers:

A study by scientists from the Nairobi-headquartered international research centre icipe, in collaboration with the French Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) has established that bees have the potential to mediate the escape of transgenes (genetically engineered material) from crops to their wild relatives over several kilometres.

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