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The opinion of scientists is divided about the relation between mass extinctions and impact craters caused by asteroid and comet showers on Earth. Now two researchers, Michael Rampino, a New York University geologist, and Ken Caldeira, a scientist in the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, have concluded through their observations that the age of impact craters is linked to mass extinctions of life on Earth, including the demise of the dinosaurs. Read more about their research here.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University found evidence that an algae-infecting virus is capable of invading mammalian cells. Acanthocystis turfacea chlorella virus 1, or ATCV-1, is a pathogen belonging to a class of chloroviruses that was believed to thrive only in green algae. Read more about their research here.

Inspired by the behavior of Japanese tree frogs, researchers from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) have developed computational algorithms that can be used to design wireless systems and analyze social networks. Read more about their research here.

Antibiotic resistance is a global concern. The Centers for Diseases Control perceive improved use of antibiotics through identifying the best combination of drugs as one of the ways of controlling the problem. However, since the number of antibiotics is extremely large, the application of this method is difficult. To resolve this problem, the researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center have developed a mathematical approach inspired by Darwinian evolution to analyze antibiotic resistance. Read more about their research here.

A team led by Barbara Goettsch of the IUCN’s Cactus and Succulent Plant Specialist Group analyzed the cacti’s distributions, population trends, habitat preferences, ecology, conservation actions, and human uses and found that of the 1,480 known species of cactus found on the planet, an estimated 31% are threatened. Read more about their research here.

A team of researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, discovered evidence for an unanticipated role of electrons in creating the pulsating auroras. Read more about their research here.

Sertraline, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) marketed as Zoloft, is commonly prescribed for treating individuals suffering from depression. Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, North Carolina, studied the effect of this drug in monkeys and found that the medicine produced a different effect in significant areas of the brain of those who suffered from depression and those who did not. Read more about their research here.

Researchers at the Department of Geography at CU-Boulder published the findings of the longest and largest study of wildfires in Amazon, which is the world's largest rainforest. In this study lasting a decade, the researchers selected a 370-acre plot in the southeastern portion of the Amazon and tested the effects of controlled fires of different burn frequencies. Read on to know more about this study.

While studying Lake Fryxell, a frigid Antarctic lake, geoscientists at the University of California, Davis, discovered a thin layer of green bacteria that was generating a little oasis of oxygen. The scientists believe that this could be a replica of conditions on Earth two and a half billions ago when oxygen was not so common in the Earth’s atmosphere. Read more about their research here.

Eric Betzig of Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia, who won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, and his colleagues have applied their techniques to watching live cells in action and generated images and videos of protein movement and interactions as the cells internalize molecules. Read on to learn more about this.