Andrei Mihai ZME Science

Rising CO2 poses significant threat to human nutrition

If current trends continue, by 2050, the elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause many crops around the world to produce a reduced amount of nutrients, especially zinc and iron. Considering that about almost 1 in 3 people in the world (2 billion people) suffer from iron or zinc deficiencies resulting in a loss of […]

Psilocybin, the active substance in magic mushrooms, inhibits the processing of negative emotions in the brain

Negative emotions like fear, sadness and anger evolved serving a purpose – enabling people to adapt to the changing conditions in the environment, reacting flexibly and efficiently to stress and strain. However, in modern society, in certain situations, we’d really like to avoid experiencing those feelings, as well as many others, like depression or anxiety. Researchers […]

Interview with researcher Simone Kuhn about video games and the brain

A while ago, we published an article about a study which showed that playing video games improves spatial orientation, memory formation and strategic planning. You can read our article here and the full study on Nature, but here’s the gist of it: researchers made subjects play Super Mario 64 for 30 mintues a day over a period of 2 […]

Not just honeybees - wildbees, butterflies and moths are also in trouble

By now, you really should be aware of the honeybee problems that are plaguing populations throughout the world – their numbers are dwindling, and this poses a huge threat not just for the bees themselves, but for humans as well. Now, a new study has shown that it’s not just bees who are in trouble, […]

Bone marrow-on-a-chip could remove bone marrow animal testing

A new “organ on a chip” has been developed by Harvard researchers, reproducing the structure, functions, and cellular make-up of bone marrow, a complex tissue that until now, could only be studied on living animals. Bone marrow is one of the more complex and fragile parts of the human body – many drugs and toxic elements […]

Mysterious lines in Peru that predate the Nazca lines are directions to major fairs

Rock lines discovered in Peru predate the famous Nazca lines by over 300 years, a new study concludes. However, the purpose of these lines was very different – to direct people to big trading sites and fairs. The lines were developed by the Paracas culture, which inhabited the Andes area around 800 B.C. – 100 B.C. […]

New 3D printer allows you to print your own make-up at home

3D printing is the hot jazz nowadays, with applications varying from cranium and skin replacements to houses to nanoscale objects. Now, Grace Choi, a self proclaimed inventor has developed a way to 3D print makeup at home, in every color you want, as eye shadow, blush, lip gloss or whatever you need – reducing both waste […]

Climate Change is a Current Reality, lengthy US report concludes

Climate change is no longer a distant threat – it’s happening now, and it poses real, clear dangers in the US. Another report conducted by White House researchers confirms previous reports by IPCC and other scientific panels. A present problem The report is the latest update from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and it shows […]

China Officially Outlaws Eating Endangered Animals

China has finally clarified the legislation regarding the consumption of endangered species. It remains to be seen if the law will be enforced, but at least, it’s clear for everybody that it is illegal to eat endangered animals or take their body parts for trophies. Poaching, cruelty and endangered animals The phrasing of the legislation […]

Discovering Technological Attributes in The Not-So- Ordinary Computer

With all the different types of computers in modern times, special-purpose computers are becoming more and more advanced; nowadays, you can almost define the civilized world as people with computers. Most people are familiar with desktop, laptop and mobile computers – more commonly known as smartphones and tablets. Tech industry professionals, military personnel and employees […]

Superheavy element 117 confirmed

It’s a good day to be a chemist – a new, super-heavy element has been added to the periodic table after it was discovered by a team Germany’s GSI laboratory. The periodic table was (and still is) the foundation for modern chemistry – it is a tabular arrangement of all the chemical elements, organized on […]

Crazy ideas: The Phantom Time hypothesis

The phantom time hypothesis is a conspiracy theory developed in the 1980s and 1990s which claims that periods of history, specifically that of Europe during the Early Middle Ages (AD 614–911), are either wrongly dated, or did not occur at all – and there was a general conspiracy to cover that up. When Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz introduces his […]

Cicada 3301: A puzzle for the brightest minds, posted by an unknown, mysterious organization

It’s perhaps the most enigmatic and intriguing thing on the internet, which promises an “epiphany” when you solve it. No one knows who sets it or what the prize is at the end, but Cicada 3301 has posted mysterious, extremely difficult puzzles for three years in a row, in an attempt to recruit and enlighten the […]

The 2014 Smithsonian Photo Contest Finalists

Smithsonian has just announced the 60 finalists for their 11th Annual Photo Contest. They selected the 60 photographs out of over 50.000 entries, sent by photographers all over the world. They selected 10 finalists for each of their 6 categories The Natural World, Travel, People, Americana, Altered Images and Mobile – which is a newly added category. Everyone and anyone can vote! You can cast […]

Photographing the oldest living things in the world

Rachel Sussman is a contemporary artist who focuses on photographing the oldest living things in the world. As part of her project “The Oldest Living Things in the World” (creative, I know), she researches and works with biologists, traveling all over the world to take pictures of things older than 2000 years old. Stewart Brand calls her […]

Old tires become material for new and improved roads

Scrap tires, which are very problematic to dispose of and can cause many problems, can now be used to lower road noise and reduce need for road maintenance. Almost 300 million scrap tires are generated every year in the US alone, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). You may wonder what’s exactly happening with these wheels, […]

Bark beetles killing trees, affecting Rocky Mountains stream quality

A Bark Beetle infestation are killing millions of trees in the Rocky Mountains, up to the point where the quality of the streaming water is affected. Some species of the beetles, such as the mountain pine beetle, attack and kill live trees. Others feed and thrive on the behalf of diseased trees. In Colorado alone, […]

Thinking ‘obesity is a disease’ makes you more likely to eat high-calorie foods

A study has concluded that if obesity is thought of as a disease instead as a problem related to diet/lack of exercise, people will continue to eat high calorie foods. On June 18, 2013, the American Medical Association officially recognized obesity as a disease. This was met with mixed opinions, but the largest US medical […]

The science (or art?) of growing tree root bridges

In the depths of northeastern India, in one of the wettest places on earth, bridges aren’t built—they’re grown. India has over 1 billion people, and many of them live in poverty – 21% of all people in India fall below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 per day. In many parts of the country, especially in the north-east, it always seems […]

Frozen in time: Three-million-year-old landscape still exists beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet

A geological study has revealed that the massive ice sheet has fixed the landscape in place, rather than destroying it. Ice is usually really good at scouring stuff away – it doesn’t take a scientist to tell you that. But according to this new study, some of the sub-glacial landscape may have remained unchanged for almost 3 million […]

Distant Black Hole Spins at Half the Speed of Light

About half of the Universe’s lifetime ago, it was feasting time for supermassive black holes – they were eating galaxies left and right, a new study might suggest. Taking advantage of a galaxy which acts like a natural zoom lens in space, astronomers have analyzed a black hole powering a quasar about 6 billion light years […]

Excitons observed in action for the first time

A technique developed by MIT researchers reveals the motion of energy-carrying quasiparticles (excitons) in solid material. Let’s work that out in common English. Quasiparticles aren’t technically particles, but they act like they are. It’s hard to give a definition without going into more complicated physics here, but a quasiparticle is a disturbance, in a medium, that behaves […]

MIT and Harvard researchers develop 100% internal cochlear implant

A cochlear implant that can be wirelessly recharged using the natural microphone of the middle ear rather than a skull-mounted sensor was developed by a joint team from MIT and Harvard. The cochlea is the auditory part of the inner ear – t’s where the hearing takes place. Cochlear implants are not really a new thing […]

Europe will blast the top of a Chilean mountain to install the first telescope which directly studies signs of life on other planets

You just gotta love European engineers! They’re about to blast away the top of a Chilean mountain to create a site for the European Extremely Large Telescope. This telescope will, for the first time, allow astronomers to directly observe planets outside the solar system. The telescope will be called the European Extremely Large Telescope… which is really […]

Internet reduces retirees' depression

According to a new study, spending time online can make drastically reduce depression rates in retirees, especially the ones who live alone. In the article, authors describe that Internet use reduced the probability of a depressed state by 33 percent for retirees. Late life depression is a major problem, affecting some 10 million people in the US […]

$42,000 Prosthetic Hand OutPerformed By $50 Printed Cyborg Beast

Over the last few months, we’ve written a lot about some fantastic 3D designs which can be very useful in medicine – a cranium replacement, 3D printed skin, and especially bone and limb prosthetics. Now, 3D universe, a website dedicated to 3D printing, published an article comparing a $42.000 conventional prosthetic, with a $50 3D […]

Facebook activism rarely goes deeper than a single click

While there’s nothing wrong in getting involved in Facebook campaigns… there’s nothing inherently good either. According to a new study, viral causes/pledges/petitions that spread via social media rarely go deeper than a single click on the “Like” button. Apparently, social media’s ability to mobilize the masses into action has been overrated – at least when it […]

Grand Canyon Geology Lesson - brought to you by NASA

The Grand Canyon is a favorite for tourists all over the world – but if you think it’s cool to see it from the ground level, you haven’t seen it from above – the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona is also a favorite for astronauts shooting photos from the International Space Station. The Grand Canyon is […]

Scientists get paralysed patients to move again by zapping the patients' spine with electricity

For people who become paralyzed after a spinal cord injury, the result is usually a life sentence of paralysis. However, science is here – once again – to save the day, as researchers report that they helped paralyzed patients regain movement after zapping their spine with electricity during physical training. Previously, they reported that one individual who […]

Scientists discover the animal kingdom’s first ‘female penis’

A female insect has developed a spiky penis which it uses to get in charge . It’s a role reversal, basically: not only do the females have a penis, but the males have a vagina. The males still have sperm, but the female extracts it from the male vagina using its penis. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? […]

NASA reports the first Earth-sized Exoplanet in the Habitable Zone

Remember a few days ago, when I was telling you about the big conference NASA had planned for today? Well, they sure didn’t disappoint! The team of astrophysicists from the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center have just reported a major milestone: for the first time, they have found an Earth-sized planet at the right distance […]

NASA spots 5 volcanoes erupting at the same time in Russia

Remote, cold, rugged, and fiedy – that’s the Kamceatka Peninsula for you! Out of all the 1,550 volcanoes that have erupted in the recent geologic past, 113 are found on Kamchatka. Of those, 40 Kamceatkan volcanoes are active, either erupting now or capable of erupting anytime, without any notice. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite captured […]

The man who gave up money and lives in a cave in Utah

A while ago, we were telling you about the Iranian man who lives alone in the desert and hasn’t washed in 60 years; today’s story is similar, but very different. New footage has revealed insight into the life of Daniel Suelo – the man who has chosen to live without money for the past 12 years […]

GeoPicture of the Week (2): Volcanic eruption seen from the space shuttle

In this incredible capture taken on 30 September 1994, we see a major eruption of Klyuchevskaya Sopka as seen by the astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. It is yet another testament of the immense power that volcanoes have, as the ash rose 60.000 feet into the air (almost 19.000 meters) and spread as far as 640 miles […]

Toyota confirms confirms fuel cell launch for 2015; zero local emissions and 500-mile range

Toyota has officially announced that it will launch a hydrogen fuel cell-powered car in 2015, but said sales volumes would be limited. The company announced they will use a high-density fuel stack which will have the potential to cover 500 miles on a single fuel tank. The technology will take a while to be implemented and accepted […]

Nanoparticles make turkey eggs microbe-resistant

Australian brush turkeys incubate their eggs in places most animals would stay clear of: moist piles of rotting vegetation. There are some advantages to this approach, most notably that the heat released by the microbes keeps the eggs warm but those same microbes can also get through eggshells and kill the embryos. However, even though the risks […]

Ancient throwing: archaeologists find a contract to "fix" a wrestling match in Ancient Greece

Prostitution may or may not be the oldest job in the world, but rigging goes a long way too. Researchers have recently deciphered a Greek document that shows an ancient wrestling match was fixed. The document, which was dated from the year 267, is a contract between two teenagers who had reached the final of a very […]

Two children have a gene mutation which protects them from many viruses, including influenza, hepatitis C and HIV

A new study on which a swarm of scientists worked on showed that two children (an 11 year old boy and a 6 year old girl) have a mutation which greatly reduces viral replication in HIV, dengue fever, herpes simplex virus type 2 infection, and hepatitis C – effectively protecting them from the viruses. The two […]

Over 70% of sea otters have H1N1 swine flu, and researchers don't know how they got it

Sea otters have entered a select, but unfortunate club: they joined the ranks of ducks, chickens, pigs, whales, horses elephant seals and humans – all of which can contact the influenza. According to a new study conducted by the US Geological Survey and the CDC, sea otters living in a remote area in Washington state were found to […]

Sperm RNA carries marks of trauma

Scientists have shown that trauma can leave epigenetic marks – chemical changes that affect how DNA is expressed without altering its sequence. Basically, your traumatic experiences genetically affect your offspring. Scientists have recently focused on the long term after effects of trauma, finding them to be numerous and diverse. The offspring of traumatized people are at […]

Harmless bacteria turned deadly just 30 years ago - now, it kills 500.000 every year

It’s a truly terrifying story, and a truly terrifying disease. The flesh-eating culprit in question is called GAS, or Group A β-hemolytic streptococcus, a highly infective bacteria. Apart from causing the flesh-eating disease necrotizing fasciitis, GAS is also responsible for a range of less harmful infections. But like most bacteria, it was harmless at one point in its […]

NASA to host conference to announce a (big?) discovery made by Kepler

NASA will host a news teleconference at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) Thursday, April 17, to announce a new discovery made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope. NASA hosts conferences all the time, what makes this one so special? Well, two reasons: first of all, there’s a big paper published in the […]

Study concludes: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

Oligarchy vs Democracy Democracy is a pretty familiar term, at least it should be! Democracy is a form of government in which all eligible citizens participate equally (either directly or indirectly) in the proposal, development, and creation of laws. Technically, all citizens are equal – they all have one vote, they all have the same rights. Democracy […]

French students develop the world's first 3D printing tattoo machine

Three French students transformed a 3-D printer — a MarkerBot Replicator 3D printer, to be exact, into a tattoo machine! So we can now add “makes tattoos” to the impressive list of things 3D printers can do! It all started with an idea that came to Pierre Emm, a young student in France, while he […]

True Blood redux - artificial blood to be manufactured in factories

A few months ago we were telling you about the researchers from Transylvania, Romania, who developed artificial blood. Now, the production of blood on an industrial scale could become a reality as other researchers found a way to develop artificial blood from patients’ stem cells. Marc Turner, the principal researcher in the £5 million programme funded […]

Graphene speakers easily outperform traditional designs

I feel like a broken record – graphene is awesome at this, graphene is awesome at that… graphene is just awesome! A few months ago, we were telling you about the first graphene ear buds, which were really promising, but researchers still had a lot of work to make them commercially viable. Well, they’ve turned it up […]

NASA to conduct unprecedented twin experiment: one twin will spend a year circling the Earth, while the other stays grounded

It’s something that puzzled me for years now: consider a pair of identical twins; say, one gets a job as an astronaut and rockets into space. The other is also an astronaut, but he decides to skip this one and stay home. After a while, they reunite, but are they still identical? That’s exactly what NASA […]

Glow-in-the-dark roads make debut in Netherlands

They not only look awesome, but they may actually save a lot of power. Light-absorbing glow-in-the-dark road markings have replaced streetlights on a 500m (0.3 mile) stretch of a highway in the Netherlands; this is just a test, and if everything goes alright, then authorities will implement them over longer and longer sections. The design was […]

Bing images: the January edition

I don’t really use Bing all that often, but I think that they do some things significantly better than the competition. However, I don’t want to get into a discussion about search engines and all that, that’s not what this is about. When I was using Bing, I noticed that they add an awesome image […]

Everything you wanted to know about homeopathy but never asked

Last week we described a study which concluded that homeopathy is nothing more than a placebo effect — it was just one of the many scientific studies which found the same thing. But many people swear by homeopathy and, judging from what’s happening in the comment section and our inbox, they feel very strongly about it. So […]

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