It has been inferred that, during the Archaean eon, there must have been a high concentration of atmospheric CO2 and/or CH4, causing a greenhouse effect that would have compensated for the lower solar luminosity at the time and allowed liquid water to be stable in the hydrosphere. Here it is shown, however, that the mineralogy of Archaean sediments is inconsistent with such high concentrations of greenhouse gases. Instead it is proposed that a lower albedo on the Earth helped to moderate surface temperature

It has been thought that the basal metabolic rate of organisms increases as body mass is raised to some power, p. But the value of p has proved controversial, with both 2/3 and 3/4 being proposed. It is found here that the relationship between mass and metabolic rate does not follow a pure power law at all, and requires a quadratic term to account for curvature. Taking temperature and phylogeny into account, this explains why different data sets have produced different exponents when a power law has been fitted

A deletion on human chromosome 22 (22q11.2) is one of the largest genetic risk factors for schizophrenia. Mice with a corresponding deletion have problems with working memory, one feature of schizophrenia. It is now found that these mice also show disruptions in synchronous firing between neurons of the prefrontal cortex and of the hippocampus, an electrophysiological phenomenon that has been linked to learning and memory and which is also thought to be disrupted in schizophrenia patients