Humans, along with many other mammals, must make do with four different light-sensitive proteins in the rods and cones of our retinas. However, fish species living in the deep sea can have up to 40 different proteins aiding their vision. This means that they most likely see some sort of color where humans would only see pitch-black darkness.

Exhaust gas emissions have doubled the amount of ground-level ozone. Vegetation is being destroyed. Food production is decreasing. Researchers now fear that the damage is greatest in the Arctic regions.

New data and analysis show that land-based glaciers outside of the main ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland have lost more than 9,000 billion tons of ice since 1961, raising sea levels by 27 millimeters.

Salt precipitation, which creates trouble when injecting CO₂ into porous stone, has the potential to clog leakage pathways in the caprocks.

A study of Ethiopian women’s use of traditional medicinal plants during pregnancy has come up with several surprises. The most worrisome is that most women don’t tell their doctors about the practice.

Professor Fahri Saatcioglu at the University of Oslo leads a research group that has discovered a new treatment with very strong effect against the growth of prostate cancer cells, both in animal experiments and in cell cultures.

Ancient DNA from 19 horses found in Viking graves on Iceland have been examined, and the researchers found that all the horses, except one, were male. This implies that the virile and somewhat aggressive male horses were slaughtered in a ritual that was intented to demonstrate power and status.

A new ancient DNA study shows that 14th century plague outbreaks might have resulted from repeated introductions of Yersinia pestis to Europe. Commercial trade routes, including the fur trade routes, would have contributed to the rapid spread of plague in whole Europe during the Middle Ages.

House sparrows are closely associated with humans and are found in most parts of the world. By investigating the DNA of several species of sparrows, researchers at CEES have shown that the house sparrow diverged from a sparrow in the Middle East – and started to digest starch-rich foods – when humans developed agriculture some 11 000 years ago.

How can we use aerial photos of glaciers from the 1930s to obtain new and exact information about the Earth's changing climate?  That is one of the main questions Luc Girod looked into in his doctoral thesis.