The Discovery Files

At a time when bat populations are declining worldwide, a new University of Michigan study shows the bat's impact on ecological systems. The study reveals that bats exceed birds in their ability to devour coffee-eating insects on organic coffee farms.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have made it possible to digitally reproduce music in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3 file by recreating in a computer both the real world physics of a clarinet and the physics of a clarinet player.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst have made a breakthrough in the development of "green gasoline," a liquid identical to standard gasoline yet created from sustainable biomass sources like switchgrass and poplar trees.

Using global databases and sophisticated computer models to analyze patterns of emerging diseases, scientists from four well-known institutions are able for the first time to plot, map and predict where future pandemics might originate.

New research at the University of Chicago finds evidence for a clever way that people manage to alleviate the pain of loneliness: They create people in their surroundings to keep them company.

A new study from the University of Montana Flight Laboratory regarding the evolution of flight suggests birds evolved by learning to use their wings to run up steep surfaces in order to avoid predators and, eventually, became strong enough for true flight.

Electronic voting technology easily passes the tests of voter confidence and satisfaction, but users still make too many mistakes, says a major new study led by the University of Maryland and conducted with the University of Rochester and the University of Michigan.

A team of international astronomers reported the discovery of a solar system nearly 5,000 light years away containing scaled-down versions of Jupiter and Saturn, suggesting that our galaxy could conceivably contain many star systems similar to our own.

University of Washington engineers have for the first time, combined a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.

A team of Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists and cognitive neuroscientists have found a way to identify where people's thoughts and perceptions of familiar objects originate in the brain by identifying the patterns of brain activity associated with the objects.

A study at Michigan State University shows that rising divorce rates have a negative impact on the environment due to increased levels of energy and utility consumption.

A research team from Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy have discovered the missing link between whales and their four-footed ancestors.

Countering a common theory that evolution in modern humans has slowed to a crawl or even stopped, a new study from the University of Wisonsin-Madison examines data from an international genomics project that describes the past 40,000 years as a time of supercharged evolutionary change.

According to a new "soup and sandwich" hypothesis, Earth's first life may have formed inside a primordial soup that was sandwiched between the many layers of the mineral mica.

Two studies conducted by researchers working through the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, suggest that children entering school with behavior problems, as a rule, can keep pace with classroom learning, but persistent behavior problems can be a strong indicator of how well students adapt to the work world.