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In 2011, Building Trust International launched an International design competition asking Architects, Designers and Engineers to come up with an innovative design solution for a mobile, modular school for a displaced community of migrants and refugees on the Thai/Burma border. The winners of The MOVING Schools 001 were architects Dan La Rossa and Amadeo Bennetta; […]
It may not seem like it, but the influenza (flu) virus is one of the most dangerous in the world due to the speed with which it evolves – each year, several new strains appear, making existing vaccines (and sometimes treatments) obsolete. The bird and swine influenza are just two examples of recent outbursts caused […]
Humans and other mammals show particularly intensive sleeping patterns during puberty – this is also the period during which the brain matures the most; but when pubescent lab rats were administered coffee, their brains matured much slower and not so efficient, a new study shows; considering that children’s and young adults’ coffee consumption has increased […]
The Earthquake A major earthquake hit a remote part of Pakistan (near the border with Iran), claiming 45 lives and prompting a new island to rise from the sea just off the country’s southern coast. According to the USGS, the earthquake has a magnitude of 7.7 and tremors were felt all the way to New […]
Over 83.000 volunteer science citizens, 16 million galaxy classifications, 300.000 nearby galaxies: this is what you get when you ask the public for help in learning more about our universe. The project, which was named Galaxy Zoo 2, is the second phase of a crowdsourcing effort to categorize galaxies in our universe. Researchers say that […]
Among the criticism that wind energy gets, one main idea some people complain about is that wind turbines are noisy; some people have even went as far as to claim that even though most of the created noise is way below the range of human hearing (infrasounds), it can cause health problems, including heart issues […]
Mauritius is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) off the southeast coast of the African continent. The first Portuguese explorers found no indigenous people living on the island in 1507, though there is some evidence that the Arabs discovered it in 975. Since then, French, Dutch and English colonists […]
Using low-frequency laser pulses, a team of researchers has carried out the first measurements on a mineral called herbertsmithite. This (pretty awesome looking) mineral features a unique kind of magnetism. Insite it, magnetic elements constantly fluctuate, leading to an exotic magnetic state, unlike conventional magnetism in which all magnetic forces allign in the same direction […]
A magnitude 8.3 earthquake that struck deep beneath the Sea of Okhotsk on May 24, 2013 still poses a lot of questions to geophysicists. At a depth of about 609 kilometers (378 miles), the kind of rupture which generates an earthquake of this magnitude should just not happen. The vast majority of significant earthquakes takes […]
The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin jointly announced today having achieved a new world record for solar cell efficiency: 44.7% That means that 44.7% of all solar energy (from the Ultraviolet to the Infrared) is gathered and transformed into electricity. After going into research just three […]
Peter Turchin, a population dynamicist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, and his colleagues finished a study which concluded that war drove the formation of complex social institutions such as religions and bureaucracies. The study showed that these institutions helped give much needed stability to large and ethnically diverse early societies. “Our model says […]
An intelligent trash that can sort recyclable from non-recyclable garbage won first prize at this weekend’s 36-hour maker blitz, MHacks — the world’s largest college hackathon. Organized by the University of Michigan, the contest gathered 1,214 shard minds from roughly 100 schools all across the US. The team that made “GreenCan” came from the University […]
Take a moment to imagine a phone display as clear as a window, a curtain that can illuminate a room, and a smart phone that can stretch like rubber; now imagine all these things are made from the same material. Researchers from UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a transparent, […]
Even in these modern times, steam condensation is one of the main drivers of electricity production and clean water: It is part of the power cycle that drives 85 percent of all electricity-generating plants and about half of all desalination plants globally, according to the United Nations and International Energy Agency. So improving the efficiency […]
It is currently believed that we live in a lopsided Universe: cosmologists reached this conclusion by examining the detailed structure of the left over radiation from the Big Bang. Now, two cosmologists presented data which seems to suggest that our Universe is actually curved slightly, in a saddle-like fashion; if correct, their model would invalidate […]
Boredom, tiredness, stress – they can all lead to a big healthy yawn; but even when none of those are present, just witnessing someone yawn can be really contagious – and this is not just restricted to humans. Dogs yawn in response to human yawns, and chimpanzees and baboons yawn in response to each other. […]
The Herero are an ethnic group inhabiting parts of Southern Africa, inhabiting mostly Namibia. There are some 250.000 members living today; the Hereros in Namibia are still, to this day, wearing the Victorian style of clothing of the German people who once tried to wipe them out. In 1892, German colonists started arriving in Namibia. […]
No joke – and yes, you can play World of Warcraft, or any other computer game for that matter. So, do you need some time off from your stressful life, while making good money and also helping science? If the answer is ‘Yes’, then pack your bags and head on to Houston because NASA wants […]
For some 50 years, scientists have tried — but failed — to find a way to use microbes against termites. What makes these magnificent creatures (which are often destructive for humans, and even regarded as pests) so resistant in the face of very dangerous microbes – designed specifically to kill them? University of Florida researchers […]
Could the Yellowstone supervolcano be waking up? In his 53 years of monitoring seismic activity in and around the Yellowstone Caldera, Bob Smith has never witnessed two simultaneous earthquake swarms; now, the Utah University geophysicist has seen not two, but three such swarms. “It’s very remarkable,” Smith said. “How does one swarm relate to another? […]
Archaeologist and professor Martti Pärssinen from the University of Helsinki has made a sensational find: he found signs of a unknown ancient civilisation in the Amazonian area, unearthing several unique artefacts, including entirely new forms of ceramics. As bad as the clearing of Amazonian rainforests is, Pärssinen took advantage of it and studied some mysterious […]
It’s hard to find Kivalina on the map as it is, but soon it will be impossible – the place is quickly disappearing. Kivalina is a small Alaskan village whose inhabitants have relied on the sea for many generations. But due to a huge retreat of Arctic ice which left it very vulnerable to erosion […]
Instead of digging through layers of rocks, a few paleontologists focused their efforts on ‘digging’ through museum collection instead – and their efforts were quite successful. Their unique approach led to the discovery of never-before seen structures, which they think are something called dino-fuzz. The fluffy structures trapped in the small bits of ancient amber […]
What you’re seeing above is the Hofstadter’s butterfly – a mathematical object describing the theorised behaviour of electrons in a strong magnetic field. It took physicists 40 years, but they have finally found experimental evidence that the model, proposed in 1976 by Douglas Hofstadter is valid. Thing is, to catch this kind of fractal butterfly, […]
For the first time in history, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have been able to eliminate dangerous drug-associated memories in mice and rats without apparently affecting other memories. Erasing memories If you’ve ever seen The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (truly a remarkable movie, which I highly recommend) […]
Evidence of surprisingly diverse life forms have been found in the 100.000 year old sediments of a subglacial lake in Antarctica. British scientists working on the site have apparently gathered samples without contaminating them. The possibility of life existing in these cold, dark lakes, hidden beneath (sometimes) kilometers of ice has fascinated researchers. We’re talking […]
The United Nations General Assembly has just released its second annual World Happiness Report, measuring happiness and well-being in countries around the world in an attempt to help guide public policy; it has been consistently shown that happiness plays an important role in society – happy people live longer, have more productive lives, earn higher […]
According to a post in the Navy Times, training and testing will likely “inadvertently” kill hundreds of whales and dolphins and wound thousands in the next five years. Most of the damage will be done by explosives, though some might come from testing sonar or animals being hit by ships. Rear Adm. Kevin Slates, the […]
Last year, an astronaut named Don Pettit started an unusual, but very poetic and insightful writing project on NASA’s website: “Diary of a Space Zucchini” detailed the life and ‘thoughts’ of a zucchini onboard the International Space Station (ISS). “I sprouted, thrust into this world without anyone consulting me,” wrote Pettit in the now-defunct blog. […]
Patrick Blanc is a French botanist, typically wrongly credited as the inventor of the vertical garden (aka. Green Wall, Botanical Brick), a title which belongs to Professor Stanley Hart White at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1938). Still, Patrick Blanc is certainly modern innovator of the green wall – a wall, either free-standing or part […]
You might think that the worst thing shampoo can do to you is sting your eyes or make your hair look bad, but as it turns out, a study has shown that some 100 well known shampoo brands include a carcinogen known as cocamide diethanolamine (cocamide DEA). “Most people believe that products sold in major […]
NASA’s black-hole-hunter spacecraft, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has located its first 10 supermassive black holes. The mission is the first ever which can focus the highest energy X-ray light into detailed pictures. If everything goes as NASA planned, then over the next two years, the mission will locate several hundreds of such […]
A study has shown a trade-off between mating prowess and parenting involvement – in other words, men with smaller testicles appear to be better fathers. Not only are fathers with smaller testicles more involved when it comes to taking care of their offspring, but their brains are also more responsive when they see picutres of […]
Ants are absolutely fascinating creatures. Not only have they discovered farming and animal husbandry thousands of years before us (sometimes even using bacteria to grow gardens), they also conduct executions for the good of the colony, follow Fermat’s principle of least time, and as it has been shown now, draft parasite ants as mercenaries. Just […]
Geophysicists trying to understand hotspot volcanoes have used a process known as seismic tomography and detected previously unknown finger-like structures of heat, some thousands of km long. The vast majority of volcanoes arises at contact zones between tectonic plates. However, another, entirely different type of volcano exists: hotspots are volcanic regions which can appear even […]
It may come as a shock to you to find out that the chemical make-up of human urine hasn’t been identified until now – but it shouldn’t. The study which led to this breakthrough took over seven years and involved 20 researchers; in the end, it revealed over 3.000 metabolites (small molecules resulted through […]
The more researchers study ecosystems, the more we learn that an ecosystem behaves, in many ways, just like a living organism: thousands of years after human hunters wiped out big land animals like giant ground sloths, the ecosystems they lived in are still suffering from the effects, much like a body suffers from past trauma. […]
It’s currently estimated that only 4,510 to 7,350 snow leopards remain in the wild – though estimates rely on outdated information and are pretty rough. Given the development of the local environment, the numbers are probably optimistic. Numerous agencies are working to conserve the snow leopard and its threatened mountain ecosystems which range across Asia, […]
Excavations conducted by the English Heritage have shown that Stonehenge has nothing to do with Sun worsipping and that the circle we see today was once complete. According to them, they discovered an important piece of the jigsaw puzzle in understanding Stonehenge – Englands greatest prehistoric site, and one of the most significant in the […]
Though built in 1933, the Fossil Cabin near the dinosaur graveyard at Como Bluff is, in a way, the oldest building in the world: the walls of the building were built out of 5,796 mortared-together dinosaur bones, dug from nearby areas. Initially, the building was part of a gasoline filling station along US 30 by […]
If you were to look at them from the safety and serenity of your home, the gas giants of our solar system seem to be quite peaceful. Their surface appears smooth, unscathed by meteor impacts or other such phenomena – but this couldn’t be further from the truth, as they sometimes show us. In 2010, […]
It’s clear that our political ideologies warp our ability to think clear – but we’re just starting to understand just how deep the problem really is. According to a new paper, our political beliefs can undermine even our most basic reasoning skills – including math. The study, which was led by Yale professor Dan Kahan […]
Many deep sea animals, such as the infamous anglerfish, use parts of their bodies as decoys, to attract unsuspecting prey. Now, researchers have found that a certain squid can do this as well – its tentacle tips flap and flutter as if swimming on their own. Biologists believe that the mesmerizing movement of the tentacles […]
A team of evolutionary biologists at Indiana University has shown for the first time that asexual lineages of a species are doomed not necessarily from a long, slow accumulation of new mutations, but rather from fast gene conversions which unmask preexisting genetic mutations. The groundbreaking research started with the sequencing of the entire genomes of […]
With new insights derived from Game Theory, University of Pennsylvania biologists offer a mathematically based explanation for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature. Their work relied on the work of John Nash, who proposed the famous Nash equilibrium and advanced Game Theory in the 1950, as well as those of computational biologist William […]
Land clearing and human habitation put significant pressure on local species – combine this with globalization and a general recklessness of the population, and you get a big, negative impact (both environmental and economic) from invasive plants. But invasive plants aren’t something new – they’ve been around for hundreds of millions of years. Scientists have […]
Some 5.000 years separate us from the birth of Ancient Egypt, in 3.100 BC. Add another 5.000 years, and you still haven’t reached the date when Göbekli Tepe was built. The temple (now in southern Turkey) took shape over 11.000 years ago, around the same time Plato’s hypothetical Atlantis goes under, 5 millennia before the […]
Of course any architect does a lot of mechanics and all that, but he also shouldn’t miss the optics classes: a high-end Jaguar has partially melted after it was parked in the sizzling-hot reflections coming from London’s newest skyscraper. Yep, a luxury car has partially melted due to the reflections from a nearby skyscraper – […]
Ever since 2010, I’ve been telling you about a group of scientists and investors which wants to send people to Mars – on a one way trip, that is. But in early 2013, this took a huge step forward, materializing in the form of Mars One – a non-profit organization that plans to establish a […]
Somebody in Tokyo is reading Game of Thrones: the Japanese government has announced plans to create a wall of ice underneath the contaminated area to contain the water leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his administration will provide the money for this. “The government needs to resolve the problem by […]
