Why aren’t house sparrows as big as geese?
A group of researchers spent twelve seasons making some house sparrows bigger and others smaller. Their experiment yielded some important answers.
Biology
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Gunnerus Sustainability Award goes to pioneering researcher
Carl Folke, a groundbreaking researcher in his field, has been awarded the Gunnerus Sustainability Science Award for 2017.
What happens at home also comes to school
The relationship children have with their parents can sometimes influence the relationship they have with their teachers. Now we know more about why.
Stress in the nest can have lifelong effect
Why do some sparrows hatch six chicks while others don’t hatch any? How does upbringing affect the remainder of their lives? Physiological stress in the nest can actually affect birds’ DNA and possibly their lifespan.
Human Evolution in the Sea at Bioko
Did some of our human features evolve while our ancestors were living in water? The aquatic ape theory has been disregarded by paleoanthropologists, but it deserves another chance.
Avian songsters
Bird songs have many functions, but their main purpose is to attract a mate. Some of the best avian singers are described below.
Earth to ISS: Norway calling
Norway has direct contact with the ISS space station. Now CIRiS – the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Space – is opening a new control room.
Climate change, ocean diversity and women in science
Science has made great strides since Svante Arrhenius, the Swedish Nobel Laureate who in 1896 first determined that carbon dioxide from human activity could warm the planet. The same progress hasn’t been made in increasing the number of women in the sciences.
Religious individuals regret having casual sex only slightly more
Whether you are religious or not does not matter so much. You regret one-night stands about as much as other people do.
Love hormone is released during crises
When you notice your partner is less interested than you are, your brain may send out a hormone that can help you fix the relationship.
Cooled patients are treated differently
What is the best form of first aid for a cold, injured body? Mountain medicine researchers are now co-operating to find the answer. At present there is actually no “best practice” for treating this type of patients.
A preference for casual sex increases risk of harassment
Adolescents who are open to casual sex are more often involved in sexual harassment – both as victims and as perpetrators.
Putting Bluefin tuna back on the menu — by farming them
The Japanese eat one in ten of the world’s fish, and 80 per cent of the planet’s prized —and critically threatened — Bluefin tuna. Tuna aquaculture pioneered at Kindai University in Japan offers hope for both fish lovers and the fish.
One-night stand regrets
Women regret saying yes to casual sex much more often than men do. Men – almost exclusively – regret saying no. Why?
The magical reindeer nose
Every schoolchild knows about Rudolph the Reindeer and his magic red nose. But Rudolph’s real-life counterparts really do have a magic nose. The colder it is, the better it is in keeping the animals warm and hydrated.
Re-ordering plant taxonomy
Advances in our understanding of the developmental history of plants is turning botanical gardens worldwide on end.
The weeds that settlers spread
Why has ragweed – a highly allergenic plant – been spreading so quickly?
Researching the dark side of microplastics
Minute particles of plastic, called microplastics, are everywhere. An international research team is now about to investigate how toxic microplastics are to marine animals such as plankton, crabs and fish, and to find out if such plastics accumulate in the food chain.
Bombs away— WWII bombs provide living laboratories for cold-water coral reefs
Ocean dumping of munitions from WWII was common in Norway and along the European coast. Some of these bomb dumps offer a natural living laboratory where biologists can study cold-water coral reefs.
Kon-Tiki2 expedition in Heyerdahl’s wake
The Kon-Tiki2 expedition aims to both reinforce and challenge Heyerdahl’s theories – and NTNU will gather unique research material from the major oceans that the expedition crosses
Turning political pledges into action on climate change
Beginning on 30 November, the nations of the world will gather in Paris to discuss a new global agreement on climate change. But what will it take to transform international political will into real action to curb global warming?
Peering into fish brains to see how they work
Transparent fish and an ability to work in the dark are key to the research of the newest group at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience.
A new twist in understanding the brain’s maps
The brain’s GPS would be worthless if it simply contained maps of our surroundings that were not aligned to the real world. But we now know how this is done.
Many memories, many rooms
2014 NOBEL PRIZE: The brain has an enormous capacity to store memories and to keep memories from getting mixed up in part because of how these memories are stored in the hippocampus, researchers from NTNU’s Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience have shown.