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Just yesterday we were telling you about a change in diet 3.5 million years ago, modifying the way our hominid ancestors evolved and, in turn, how we evolved. Now, we’re moving a little closer to the present day – researchers calculating the barium levels in fossil teeth claim that they’ve found a difference in the […]
In a quest to make concrete not only more durable but also more sustainable, a group of geologists and engineers have found inspiration in the ancient Romans – whose imposing buildings have passed the test of time, surviving two millennia. Geology and the Romans Using classic microscopy, as well as the Advanced Light Source at […]
A team of researchers from Cologne, Munich and Dresden have managed to create artificial magnetic monopoles, similar in many ways to a fundamental particle postulated by Paul Dirac in 1931. Monopoles and Dipoles Until now, a magnetic monopole, the magnetic analogue to an electric charge has never been observed – all we had until now […]
It’s not quite what scientists expected – the width of blood vessels in the eye, at the back of the retina, may indicate brain health risks, such as dementia and alzheimers years before they actually set in according to a new study published in Psychological Science. It is already well known that young people who […]
To fully understand the processes and mechanisms that work at a cellular level, biologists should study them in their native, watery environments. But how would you go on doing this? Well, leave it to engineers to solve everyone’s problems – they have now deviced a kind of atomic force microscopy that works on samples sitting […]
Eggs, drugs and human lives For the standards of the criminals who poach and smuggle animals in Central America, it was just another day. But for the rest of the world, the murder of conservationist Jairo Mora Sandoval is a tragedy – a tragedy highlighting the risks faced by biologists whose passion for nature puts […]
The reemergence of the critically endangered population of Huemul deer (Hippocamelus bisulcus) marks a fantastic achievement by local governments and conservationists worldwide. Brought back from the brink of extinction, when populations measured less than 1% of original numbers, the Huemul populations have not only stabilized – but have started increasing, according to a new study. […]
New analysis of fossil teeth from extinct fossils has shown that human ancestors greatly expanded their diets 3.5 million years ago, moving on to eat grasses and also other animals. Before this, the humanlike creatures (hominis) ate a forest based diet, pretty similar to what chimps and apes eat today. Researchers from the California Academy […]
Despite the fact that triceratops are some of the most well known dinosaurs, finding a complete skeletons is an extremely rare treat. It was one of the last non-avian dinosaur genera to appear before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event – the extinction which caused the end of dinosaurs and the Mesozoic. The scientists from the Black […]
The only two (significant) places in our solar system, that we know of, which can create opals are Central Australia and Mars, so by studying the geologic processes which led to the creation of these minerals in the first place, we can perhaps find out more about the Red Planet. As a geologist, I was […]
Soil is becoming endangered – this is the reality a meeting between experts in Reykjavik has reached. They explain that this has to receive public awareness if we want to feed 9 billion by 2050. Soil degradation is life degradation The main culprit is the one also responsible for global warming: Carbon. “Keeping and […]
Tho global meat giants with shady food and environmental safety records shook hands as they are planning to become the world’s biggest meat producer. Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the U.S., has been bought by China’s Shuanghui International Holdings Limited for $4.7 billion. The global meat industry, which is grasped firmly by a […]
Babies learn to babble before they can talk, usually starting with the “ba-ba”, or “ga-ga”, or in the really fortunate cases – with “ma-ma”. After that, they start stringing a few random syllables together, and only after that, they actually start talking. Songbirds exhibit the same type of behavior when they start singing, and the […]
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper went to unusually great lengths to prove that hydraulic fracking is safe and does no environmental damage. The politician told the press that he actually drank a glass of fracking fluid. “You can drink it. We did drink it around the table, almost rituallike, in a funny way,” he told the […]
In terms of materials, graphene is definitely the hot cherry at the moment; it is basically a one-atom thick layer of the mineral graphite (carbon), with more such layers stacked together forming crystalline graphene. It is very light, with a 1-square-meter sheet weighing only 0.77 milligrams, but also very durable and has a number of […]
As we’ve already posted today, NASA’s GRAIL mission did a great job of mapping out the gravitational features of the Moon. Just as a quick add to that, here’s two maps which I hope you’ll find interesting:
“Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die” – seems to be the motto at big oil companies. At Wednesday’s meeting for ExxonMobil shareholders in Dallas, CEO Rex Tillerson told participants that the economy is currently relying on oil, and that will not change anytime soon. He concluded that cutting down on carbon emissions […]
50 years ago, if you took a cod from European waters, you’d have to cut it to be able to cook it. Nowadays, cooks easily fit one fish in a frying pan, even with a few vegetables. As unimportant as this fact may seem,it is actually a good reflection of the huge drop in fish […]
This ancient Egyptian trinket may not look like much, but it hides a very interesting story. Researchers have found that the 5,000-year-old iron bead is actually made from a meteorite. Archaeologists have found iron objects in ancient Egypt, dating them to 2-3 millennia BC. But the earliest evidence of smelting only appeared much later […]
Detailed analysis and review have confirmed the scientists’ initial opinion – the pebble containing slabs Curiosity stumbled upon last year were indeed part of an ancient streambed. When the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, it was expecting to find lots of things – but finding evidence of ancient water so close to the land site […]
NASA’s GRAIL mission had been studying the Moon’s gravitational field for 9 months, with great results – they have discovered the massive regions which cause irregularities in the Moon’s gravitational field, making it uneven. Planetary gravitational fields The Earth, the Moon, and pretty much all planets have irregular gravitational field – first of all because […]
Black holes are the single most interesting and puzzling objects in our Universe – that we know of. But as if they weren’t mysterious enough, researchers have found that if you apply a quantum theory of gravity to these bizarre objects, the all-crushing singularity at their core disappears, opening a whole new Universe of possibilities […]
Over the past decades, what we mean by glue has changed significantly; techniques have emerged, materials have been developed, and one of the most viable candidates for a superglue is gold. Researchers have found numerous applications for attaching molecules to gold; the approach uses chemicals called thiols to bind the materials together. But while this […]
Mosquitoes are not only extremely annoying, but they’re some of the most lethal creatures out there, with malaria infecting over 200 million people each year. But genetically modified mosquitoes that lack some of their sense of smell cannot tell humans from other animals and no longer avoid approaching people who are slathered in bug spray. […]
In a never-before seen feat, astronomers using NASA’s Swift X-ray Telescope have observed a spinning neutron star suddenly slowing down, something which can provide valuable clues to understanding these mysterious objects. Neutron stars Neutron stars are the cores of former high-mass stars, the remains of supernovae after the blow-up. As the core of the massive […]
The fossil, which still retains impressions of feathers, is 160 million years old, predating the oldest Archaeopterix fossil found by 10 million years. Scientits have named it Aurornis, which means “dawn bird”. Aurornis and Archaeopteryx Aurornis enables us not only to better understand the emergence of birds, but also to understand how powerful flight originated. […]
A study has shown that genetically modified salmon that breed with wild trout can produce a fast-growing, competitive fish that not only screws around with the local ecosystem, but because it also alters the fish genome in ways which cannot be anticipated. What do you get when you cross a genetically modified salmon and wild […]
It’s no surprise that Germany is just giving lessons in terms of managing renewable energy sources – year after year, the country features more and more cities and now, even villages, which harness most of their energy from renewable sources. Wildpoldsried, a municipality in the district of Oberallgäu in Bavaria has a population of only […]
It’s the outskirts of our solar system – spherical particles of rocks and ice, way beyond the familiar planets, and even the former planet Pluto, there lies the Oort Cloud – a spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that may lie roughly 50,000 AU from the Sun (AU = the distance from the Sun to […]
When you think about photosynthesis, the color green probably comes to mind – almost all plants are green, and they rely on photosynthesis, right? But purple bacteria have been around for a long time, and they are among the most efficient organisms at turning sunlight into usable chemical energy. Now, a key to their light-harvesting […]
MIT engineers have taken one step forward to the realm of sci-fi gadgets, transforming bacterial cells into living calculators that can compute logarithms, divide, and take square roots, using three or fewer genetic parts. Using cells as analog circuits Inspired by how analog electronic circuits function, the researchers created synthetic computation circuits by combining existing […]
An itch is a sensation that causes the desire or reflex to scratch. Researchers have long tried to characterize itch, but in its typical annoying fashion, the sensation resisted any such attempts. For a very long time, the itch has been thought of as a low-level form of pain, but now, a new study conducted […]
Rodents are able to move their eyes in different directions, thus always keeping an eye on the the airspace above them, researchers from Max Planck Institute have shown. Using miniaturised high-speed cameras and high-speed behavioural tracking, they found that rats can move their eyes in different directions, both in the horizontal and in the vertical […]
Cockroaches, the blight of every urban apartment; they’re adaptable, they’re sturdy, and they reproduce really fast. The nasty, disease carrying bugs can eat pretty much anything they find around the house, from mold and rotten food to the thing they love the most – sugar. When given the opportunity, cockroaches always go for the sugary […]
It’s the Middle Ages, the 1600s, and the Little Ice Age is striking the planet. The Little Ice Age, as the name describes it pretty much was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period (Medieval Climate Optimum). It is usually described as lasting from the 16th to the 19th centuries, but […]
Think about mucus – what comes to mind? It’s slimy, it’s gross, no one really likes it, right? Well, as a team from San Diego State University showed, mucus is also home to a very powerful immune system that has the possibility to change the way doctors treat a number of diseases. Bacteriophages are basically […]
Here we go: once again, Colorado’s fracking boom raised fears that something dangerous will be leaked in the water, and what do you know? Carcinogenic benzene it is! A plant for fracked natural gas processor Williams Energy, near Parachute, Colo., spilled an estimated 241 barrels of mixed natural gas liquid into the ground, some of […]
Well the title may be a little flashy, but here’s what it’s about: some highly unusual minerals have been found at the centers of impact craters on the moon. Geologists working on the case believe that they may be the shattered remains of the space rocks that made the craters, but didn’t exhume any material […]
Two generations from now, the over 9 billion people which are likely to walk the face of the planet will face dramatic water shortage, as climate change, pollution and overusage of resources start taking their toll, a group of 500 researchers warns. The thing is, if we, as a society continue developing at the same […]
Last week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization suggested that consuming edible insects can not only fight world hunger and help secure the global food supply, but also reduce greenhouse gases, and help save the environment. As far fetched and sci-fi that idea may sound, it’s not really as crazy as it sounds. 2 […]
It’s the early 1950s, and some strange experiments are going on at Tulane University in Louisiana. Well, maybe not weird, but definitely pushing the limits of neurophysiological knowledge one step further. Dr. Robert G. Heath is at the forefront of these experiments, and he found that he can manipulate both the pleasure and pain centers […]
People with higher IQ have a much better ability to ignore background distractions, because they are just much better at filtering out useless information. Now personally, I’m not a big fan at defining intelligence, especially using the IQ type of tests, and even less any results that are demonstrated starting from here. Reality has shown […]
The Pavlof volcano lies in the long chain of the Aleutian Islands off the west coast of Alaska, and is one of the most active volcanoes in the United States. It’s about seven kilometers (4 miles) across and 2500 meters (1.5 miles) high; after being quiet since 2007, it started erupting again in May 2013. […]
A team of Canadian researchers has discovered a bacterium that thrives in the Arctic regions, much below freezing point, at -15 degrees C in one the coldest temperature ever reported for bacterial growth. The discovery of the bacterium Planococcus halocryophilus OR1 was made in Ellesmere Island, Canada, a part of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, […]
Lately, the sun has received a lot of thrash talk for the harm it causes with exposure, increasing the risk of skin cancer. But a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Edinburgh has shown that the benefits of exposure to UV rays may be greater than the risk of getting skin cancer, […]
“Marijuana use is associated with an acute increase in caloric intake” – marijuana preconception #234. The thing is, even though they eat more while high, pot smokers have been showed to be thinner, have a lower body mass index, and even lower cholesterol. Researchers at the University of Nebraska, the Harvard School of Public Health, […]
3D printing is the stuff of the future, today. Basically you can create absolutely anything, just by using a digital computer model of it. In the latest of its remarkable feats, 3D printing has saved the life of a 20 year old baby by creating a bioresorbable splint that stopped a life-threatening condition called tracheobronchomalacia. […]
Japanese climber Yuichiro Miura, 80, reached the top of Mount Everest Thursday, thus becoming the oldest man to reach the highest summit in the world. Miura and his nine-person team climbed on the southern ridge, the same path that Edmund Hillary took 60 years ago when he became the first documented man to climb Everest. […]
In case you didn’t know, bee popullations all around the world are dwindling. The disorder which is causing this massive decline in bee numbers is called CCD – colony collapse disorder. In 2012 alone, a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder (CCD) wiped out about half of honeybee hives [read more here]. What happens in CCD […]
When you think about a spider, you usually imagine a big, silky, web used to trap unfortunate insects. But a new study conducted by biologists of the Kiel University and the University of Bern has shown that about half of all spiders have found an alternative to that and don’t use web at all. These […]
