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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 […]
A 350 million year old fossilized scorpion has become the world’s oldest known land animal to have ever walked the supercontinent Gondwana. Ancient history It’s 350 million years ago – take a moment to ponder that. Take a long human lifespan of 100 years, and multiply it by 100, and again by 100 – now […]
For infertile women everywhere, regardless of age, health and status, one thing was sure – they were never going to have children; and I say ‘were’ because now we have a precedent, a way through which that can be changed: an infertile Australian woman is now pregnant after growing new eggs in ovarian tissue transplanted […]
The government of Ecuador has abandoned a plan that would have kept part of the Amazonian rainforest off limits to oil drilling – as it turns out, one of the world’s biggest and most special natural parks lies on top of one of the world’s biggest (yet) unexplored oil fields; a classic case of nature […]
A new study has shown that young men are threatened when their female signficant others are more successful than them, ultimately triggering their fear that the partner might leave them – and it’s exactly this fear which usually gets them. The researchers conducted their study, published online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, […]
Snoring is a universal problem that affects a huge chunk of the population around the world. It doesn’t matter how rich you are, how smart you are, if you snore – you snore. There are various causes for snoring. As is the case with the other common conditions that affect a large number of people […]
For some reason which continues to elude me, people are eating less and less fruit – but perhaps the increasing consumption of juice has something to do with this. Now, a new study led by Harvard School of Public Health researchers has shown that eating more fruits, particularly blueberries, grapes, and apples, was associated with […]
MIT and Chilean researchers working together have developed a fog harvesting system which can provide drinkable water for even the world’s driest regions. In the full drought areas, where rainfall is extremely rare or virtually non existent, a few specialized plants and insects have devised ingenious strategies to cope with the harsh conditions and get […]
Pollution is real, and it’s a global phenomenon; it doesn’t happen only in the Captain Planet cartoons, and it’s not restricted to Africa or China. Sobering data from MIT’s Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment has shown that air pollution is having a dramatic impact on American health: over 200.000 lives are claimed early because […]
As we know by now, most galaxies, including our own, have a supermassive black hole at their center. However, the one in our galaxy, Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star) has a surprisingly small appetite, something which has puzzled astronomers for years. Sagittarius A* is 4 million times as massive as the sun, but it is […]
Just like we get a tan and our skin gets darker in response to sunlight exposure, whales increase the pigment in their skin as well, but not only do they do this, they also accumulate damage to the cells in the skin as they get older, just like humans. “Whales can be thought of as […]
Physicists have successfully reproduced a pattern resembling the cosmic microwave background radiation in an experiment which used ultracold cesium atoms in a vacuum chamber. This is the first experiment which recreates at least some of the conditions from the Big Bang. “This is the first time an experiment like this has simulated the evolution of […]
Fatal overdoses due to painkillers have reached epidemic levels, greatly exceeding those from heroin and cocaine combined, becoming the worst drug epidemic in US history. Prescriptions for painkillers in the United States have nearly tripled in the past two decades, and the results are dreadful. In 2012, enough painkillers were prescribed to keep every single […]
Farms produce food to feed the urban population but with some relatively simple modifications they are capable of supplying significant amounts of energy to the urban areas as well. This is being done in several ways across the United States, but in all fairness, the US is lagging significantly behind even third world areas in […]
Geophysical data from Greenland have revealed the existence of a canyon comparable in size with the Grand Canyon beneath the ice sheet. The canyon has the characteristics of a winding river channel and is over 750 km long and it is often as deep as 800 m. This immense feature is thought to predate humanity […]
Usually, it’s scientists who gather the data, but this time, they were the data themselves – a poll of 3700 American researchers showed that a significant portion of scientists are receiving less federal help than they were three years ago, despite spending much more time writing for grants and applying for projects. Nearly one-fifth of […]
A surprisingly diverse range of life forms exists deep in the oceanic crust, but they live at an extremely slow pace. Long lived bacteria, which reproduce only once in 10.000 years, have been found in rocks 2.5km below the ocean floor, rocks which are 100 million years old. Viruses and fungi have also been found […]
It has been previously shown that during ovulation, women tend to increase their attractiveness to men (though not necessarily conscious). Not only do they change their voice pitch [1], but they also tend to dress more fashionable [2]. A new study published in Psychological Science adds to this growing body of research by suggesting that […]
While in the Amazon, a certain pointy fish that crawls up a certain male organ sends shivers in the spines of potential swimmers, in Scandinavia, another Brazilian fish is threatening the genitals of unsuspecting skinny dippers; it’s not the famed piranha, but its cousin – the Pacu. The Pacu naturally has a small mouth, eating […]
I’ve written about our incredible biological ability to gather information about our environment by sensing electromagnetic radiation. As complex as our eyes are however, light holds far more information than what we are able to perceive with our eyes. Science has given us the means to determine far more than just that there is a […]
What do volcanic eruptions, oil spills, sewages and chimneys all have in common? Not much at a first glance – but if you ask Peter Baines, a scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, they are tightly connected; in all these events, a fluid rises into a environment stratified by density (like the atmosphere […]
A 52-year-old, part-time graduate student with no previous training in psychology and little training in math aside from high-school has discredited a very cited paper published in 2005 in American Psychologist. The paper, then written by Barbara Fredrickson and Marcial Losada suggested a mathematical ratio between positivity and happiness, claiming that humans thrive when ratio […]
Modern humans started ‘replacing’ Neanderthals some 40.000 years ago, and for a long time, it was thought this came as a result of the more advanced human intelect and a better ability to adapt; but as more and more studies unfold, the Neandertals’ capabilities are still greatly debated. Many scientists now argue that Neandertals had […]
A fossil of a small, forest-floor-dwelling animal called Megaconus puts a big question mark on the evolution of mammals – it suggests that its group predated animals, while another one, from its tree dwelling ‘cousing’ Arboroharamiya shows the group belonged to the mammals. The two fossils have paleontologists scratching their heads, not knowing where to […]
I have never in my life eaten a crab or a lobster, because ever since I was a kid, boiling an animal alive seemed extremely cruel; it just didn’t make sense that an animal doesn’t feel pain – and even today, it doesn’t, to me. Pain is your body’s way of telling you something is […]
Mona Lisa is probably the most well known picture in the world – it’s been painted thousands of times, inspired countless artists, and her enigmatic smile still puzzles researchers and artists alike; but never before has it been painted on such a small canvas. Demonstrating a very potent nanotechnique, researchers have made a miniature Mona Lisa […]
It may not look like much, but this material has wonderous properties, according to Swedish researchers. The magnesium carbonate is extremely porous, setting new records in terms of surface area and water absorbtion, potentially having all sorts of applications, from controlling moisture in electronic and medical procedures to gathering up pollutants from oil spills. Still, the practical, […]
Dolphins are simply stunning creatures – they think, and empathize; they have names, hang out in cliques, they talk like humans, and they almost always try to rescue their wounded friends. They can go without sleep for 15 days, and every day they show us that they are simply ‘non human persons’. Now, another research […]
The Sun is gearing up for a major polarity switch, NASA announced: the North Pole which was in the northern hemisphere, has now started pointing south. The solar magnetic polarity reversal cycle has an 11 year period, which is still not fully understood. “This always happens around the time of solar maximum,” says David Hathaway, […]
To most people, 3D printers are still sci-fi, and as a result, envisioning a 3D printer in every home is a huge stretch. But a study conducted by Michigan Technological University scientists concluded that personal manufacturing, like personal computers in their time, will become a common thing – soon. “For the average American consumer, 3D […]
A new study of 100 private water wells in and near the Barnett Shale showed elevated links of contaminants such as arsenic and selenium to fracking sites used for shale gas; the study, which was conducted by UT Arlington associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry Kevin Schug was published in Environmental Science & Technology. The […]
You hear a lot of anecdotal advice about how we can all ‘get by’ on just a few hours of sleep a night. Historic world leaders are said to have masterminded entire war campaigns on just two hours shut-eye. But modern scientific evidence broadly suggests we need a whole lot more. The usual recommendation is […]
The insertion of one gene can shut down the extra chromosome which causes Down Syndrome, according to a study published today in Nature. A dreadful disease Down Syndrome (DS), also known as trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. It’s the […]
A new, unusual species of dinosaur has been discovered in the deserts of Utah. The 5m-long is a member of the triceratops family, and as fierce as they may look, this dinosaur was a herbivore. The huge ‘nose’ and exceptionally long horns are unlike any other dinosaurs previously described, which explains its name – Nasutoceratops […]
When global temperatures rise, ice starts to thin down, and sometimes, it breaks down. When a big ice shelf collapses in Antarctica, it opened up prime ocean real estate, and delicate but ambitious creatures called glass sponges showed up, pretty much seizing the opportunity. Hexactinellid sponges are sponges with a skeleton made of four- and/or […]
A new study has shown that European farmers used far more sophisticated practices than was previously thought. The Oxford research found that Neolithic farmers used manure as a fertilizer as early as 6000 BC. It has been previously assumed that manure wasn’t used in agriculture until Roman times. This technique is fairly complex, because dung […]
It may not seem like much, but by differentiating between bacterial and viral fevers, this new test could help doctors decide whether or not to prescribe antibiotics. Fevers are a common symptom in many infectious diseases, but it’s often difficult to know if the cause is bacterial or viral, and thus, antibiotics are often needlessly […]
Reefs, dunes and marshes – these are the key allies in protecting the threatened lives and property against storm surges and long-term sea-level rise. Two thirds of the US coastal area is protected by natural environments (coastal forests, reefs, sand dunes and wetlands) – not by man made structures. They defend both the lives, and […]
Water droplets, coffee granules, fragments of polystyrene and even a toothpick – all of these, and more, have been levitating and moving around in a Swiss laboratory lately; all of them lifted by sound waves, that is. This is the first time a device is capable of handling several objects simultaneously. This achievement was detailed […]
The king of all predators, the godfather of his time, la creme de la creme – Tyrannosaurus Rex (T. Rex) was the ultimate predator… or was he? When Jurassic Park came out, even though the cinema crowd went wild as T. Rex smashed and ate velociraptors (and the occasional human), at the time, there was […]
NASA and a company called Aerojet Rocketdyne recently finished testing a rocket engine injector created purely through 3D printing. The future – today 3D printing is pretty much what it sounds like – it is a process of making a three-dimensional solid objects of virtually any shape from a digital model. Adopting the technique even […]
An extremely challenging study published by a team of researchers from the Stanford School of Medicine claims that through some unknown mechanism mammals can bias the sex of their offspring in order to win the genetic lottery and produce extra grandchildren. The holy graal of modern evolutionary biology After analyzing 90 years of breeding records […]
Understanding how supercooled water acts can be very important for understanding basic processes during cryoprotection – the preservation of tissues and/or organs by liquid nitrogen, with the purpose of thawing without damaging them. A team from the University of Arkansas have found that surprisingly, when cooled at extremely low temperatures, water turns into an entirely […]
Lots of volcanoes erupted in 2009 – but one of them really screamed out. Its unique howls provide a glimpse into the very heart of the volcano, and also in some unexplained processes that accompany an eruption. It’s not unusual for swarms of small earthquakes to precede a volcanic eruption – it’s quite common. As […]
Less than 1.5 percent of our DNA is used in a conventional way, that is to encode for proteins – this was the common sense around this issue 10 years ago; recently, previous research has shown that 5-8% of the genome is conserved at the level of DNA sequence, indicating that it is functional, but […]
Autism is one of the biggest medical mysteries of the 21st century, and researchers are still trying to figure out the causes of this condition. UC Davis MIND Institute researchers have made a significant step forward in that direction, identifying some specific antibodies that target fetal brain proteins in the blood of women with autistic […]
The wonder material could lead to a major breakthrough in telecommunications – dramatically accelerate internet speeds by up to a hundred times, according to new research by scientists in the University of Bath‘s Department of Physics. According to their research, which was published in Physical Review Letters, an incredibly short optical response rate can be […]
A trio of papers recently published in Science link hydraulic fracking and geothermal energy production to numerous earthquakes in the United States. Most of these events have been relatively small, with a magnitude of under 5.0, but a few were quite significant – including the 5.6 event that hit Oklahoma on 6 November 2011, damaging […]
The world, known as HD189733b, has a deep azure hue, probably the result of molten silicate glass rain in the atmosphere, which scatters blue light. The giant planet is one of the closest and most studied in the exoplanets recently discovered; it is a sauna, a hazy hothouse swept by blow-torch winds powered by the […]
Our close cousins, the Neanderthals, were much more similar to us than we imagined even a decade ago, fascinating the scientific world more and more with each passing year; now, a new study suggests that they also had a type of speech and language, something which was once considered to draw the decisive lines between […]
