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The Mariana trench is the deepest point on Earth; now, an international team of researchers found that the very bottom of the Mariana Trench, which lies almost 11 km beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, has high levels of microbial activity. No more than 30 years ago, we had a very different idea about […]
When a lion hunts a gazelle, he is actually hunting the weakest of the herd, the one which is the slowest. Repeating the hunt, in time only strengthens the herd. The drunken version of this is that the same things happen with alcohol and neurons: sure, alcohol destroys some neurons, but it’s only the weaker […]
The study, led by the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), has managed to eliminate mouse lung tumours by inhibiting Myc, a protein which acts as a regulator gene that codes for a transcription factor. That’s just a fancy way of saying that if Myc mutates, cancer will probably occur. Furthermore, their results showed that […]
A few months ago, we were telling you about the mind boggling properties the new material called graphene has, and how practical uses will not take long to follow. Apparently, things moved even faster than we expected them – Berkeley researchers have created the first ever graphene audio speaker: an earphone. Their quality, even in […]
NASA space observatory sends back a couple of mind blowing eye dazzling images of the Sun. I guess I’m exaggerating a little bit, but I’m really loving these pics. The people working at NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) had another of their periodic “wow” moments when the latest transmissions from space turned up a couple […]
It is indeed a war of manipulation and misdirection, but the main actors are not the ones you may think about first. As a new study concluded, some 3 out of every 4 climate change denial books have direct, easily verifiable connections to conservative organizations. A research conducted by Riley E. Dunlap of Oklahoma State […]
Despite all the magnificent advancements in the field, we are still in the infancy of our research on extraterrestrial planets, so it shouldn’t really surprise anybody if a new type of planet is found. Mysterious dense bodies outside the Solar System which have puzzled astronomers for quite a while may in fact be remnants of […]
You often hear discussions about how much oil there is still left in the world’s underground. Listen to oil companies they’ll tell you there’s plenty to go around, absolutely no need to worry; listen to fanatic environmentalists and they’ll tell you that in two decades, we’re pretty much screwed. So why not listen to someone […]
Ok, so big news on the horizon: alien life forms have been found in a meteorite that recently crashed in Sri Lanka, on December 29, bringing along a new perspective on how we view the origin and movement of life. But… have they really? Well, sorry to burst your bubble ladies and gentlemen, but in […]
Apparently, every month brings forth a new theory on the demise of the Neanderthals – the cookies one being that bunnies were the main culprit. This month’s theory claims that the Neanderthal skull has larger eye sockets than the human one, therefore it had bigger eyes, therefore the brain spent more of its processing power […]
Imagine if the chip in your phone of laptop could not only defend, but also repair itself on the fly, recovering from simple scratches or battery issues to total transistor failure. It may sound like science fiction, but it is exactly what a team from CalTech has done. The team working at the High-Speed Integrated […]
A new analysis of data from NASA’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) shows that molten rock created by lunar impacts has been around for much longer than previously believed. During its earliest days, the Moon was covered in an ocean of molten rock, pretty much like every planet out there. As that lunar magma ocean […]
A pair of newly discovered stars is the third-closest star system to the Sun – the closest astronomers have found a star system since 1916. The discovery was made by Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University. Both stars in the system are brown dwarfs – not exactly stars, […]
Researchers have for the first time conducted a remote reconnaissance of a distant planetary system with a new telescope imaging system. Peeking at other planets Project 1640 is a dedicated high contrast imaging program at Palomar Observatory with the goal of obtaining images and spectra of brown dwarfs and planetary mass companions to nearby stars. […]
You’d be tempted to think that clogged arteries are a problem of the modern world, with all the lack of exercise and unhealthy eating; but as ancient mummies revealed, even when we were hunter-gatherers, people still had arterial issues. “There’s a belief that if we go back in time, everything’s going to be OK,” says […]
The inevitable 2012 title was ‘Human population reaches 7 billion‘, surpassing anything anyone could have imagined 100 years ago. Now, we’re approaching a very worrying milestone – CO2 levels in the air will reach 400 ppm (parts per million), for the first time in human existence. CO2 levels have risen at a quick, steady pace […]
We’ve been telling you on and on – millions and millions of sharks are perishing each year, mostly due to shark finning – people fish sharks, cut off their fins, them let them go, only to suffer a slow, painful, humiliating death, unable to move at the bottom of the ocean. Shark fin soup is […]
MIT researchers have published a detailed analysis of all the factors that could limit the efficiency of such a system, basically laying a roadmap for a research program to improve the efficiency of so-called artificial leafs. An artificial leaf has to produce a storable fuel, such as hydrogen, instead of electricity for immediate use; the […]
With the continuous advancements in medicine, it’s easy to forget that not only are we adapting to new species of germs, but they are adapting to our medicine as well – sometimes even much faster than us. The danger posed by growing resistance to antibiotics should be ranked along with terrorism, the government’s chief medical […]
Creating glasses that don’t fog or freeze up could not only bring a world of comfort to millions of people, but it could also have a myriad of applications in cameras, microscopes, mirrors and refrigerated displays – to name just a few. While there have been many advancements in this field, so far, the main problem […]
Just a few days ago, we were telling you about the exciting new findings in lake Vostok – a new bacteria unlike anything else found so far retrieved from the lake sealed beneath 2 kilometers of ice for 1 million years. Now, the head of genetics laboratory at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics […]
About a decade ago, researchers started paying closer attention to the much hailed healthy properties of red wine. Particularly, a compound found in red wine (resveratrol – also found in the “anti-cancer beer”) was shown by some to provide a healthier and longer life. However, while the claim was supported with evidence by several teams, it […]
The mystery surrounding Stonehenge is still actual, puzzling archaeologists for decades; how was it built, why there, and most interesting, what purpose does it serve? Now, after dating some bone fragments of men, women and children, a team of researchers believe they have the answer. Centuries before the imposing monument was raised, the site started […]
Paleontologists spend a majority of their working years studying fossils with only one objective – to unearth a discovery that will further benefit mankind’s understanding of dinosaurs. One such recent discovery established the presence of a hitherto unknown herbivore dinosaur. This discovery was made possible thanks to efforts by Clint Boyd of the South Dakota […]
A single molecular switch can make the transition between the active, malleable brain of an adolescent and the mature, stable brain of an adult; yep, a single gene can turn us back to the childlike curiosity we exhibit as adolescents. Researchers have known for quite a while that adolescent brains are typically more malleable (or […]
Life finds a way – the red alga Galdieria sulphuraria gives a really good argument to support that statement. In the hot springs of Yellowstone Park, it uses photosynthesis to produce its necessary nutrients. But in dark, murky, toxic mineshafts in drainage that are about as acidic as battery acid, not only does it survives, […]
Ever since the days of the ancient Greek, people were puzzled by the fact that apparently, hippos sweat blood; this belief propagated for more than a millenium. Now, we know that the thick red substance, which oozes from glands all over its skin, is one of the hippo’s many ingenious survival tools. Thing is, hippos […]
3D printing is the stuff of the future – today. It’s one of the most stunning pieces of relatively accessible technology; most notably in medicine, the precision offered by 3-D printing can make tiny surface details on the replacement part that encourage the growth of cells and allow the bone to attach more easily. In […]
By observing several indicators, a team of researchers from Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences concluded that in as few as 87 years from now, temperatures are expected to be bigger than anytime in the existence of the human species. Paleoclimatic research is providing a more detailed look on how the […]
A while ago, we were telling you about the very exciting environment that is lake Vostok. The lake has been sealed under ice for more than a million years; researchers believed that it still harbored life, possibly bacterian life that evolved on a parallel evolution line. Now, Russian researchers believe they confirmed that hunch, finding […]
You may understand that all people are different, but it takes a lot of genetics to understand just how different humans really are. Albert Perry for example has something spectacular in his genome: his Y chromosome is so distinct, so easily identifiable that it basically revealed new information about our species. Working their way around […]
To be quite honest, there are moments when I feel that I don’t understand quantum mechanics at all – the phenomena involved in the field are so complex and counter intuitive one can only stop and wonder if God does in fact play dice with the Universe… but at any rate, the advancements produced by […]
Paleontologists from the University of Florida have unearthed remarkably well-preserved fossils of two crocodilians and a mammal previously unknown to science during recent Panama excavations that began in 2009. The animals lived during the Miocene, a period that lasted from about 23.03 to 5.332 million years ago; the flora and fauna from the Miocene was […]
Within the next 50 years, numerous lizard species could become extinct due to global warming, a research by Daniel Pincheira-Donoso, from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Lincoln (UK) concludes. Not all lizards lay eggs – some are viviparous, and develop their embryos inside the mother’s body as opposed to an egg. […]
If you were to lick the surface of Jupiter‘s icy moon Europa, you would actually be sampling a bit of the ocean beneath – at least that’s what a new paper by Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and Kevin Hand from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory concludes. Their […]
Researchers have, for the first time, calculated the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy neighboring the Milky Way. Care to take a guess? According to these calculations, it’s just 163.000 light-years away. For measurements inside our solar system, researchers use a technique called parallax. Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent […]
The veined wing of the clanger cicada kills bacteria is able to destroy bacteria by its structure alone – one of the first structures ever found that can do this. The clanger cicada is an insects that looks like something between a fly and a locust; its wings are covered with a vast hexagonal array […]
I’m an absolute fan of the Cassini spacecraft – this is hands down my favorite mission. I mean, it’s been providing us incredibly valuable information for years now, in a very interesting area of our solar system, the Jupiter-Saturn area. This mission is one of the main reasons why we now believe places like Europa […]
A new study that may bring a smile to the face of teenagers concluded that not all zit bacterias are bad – on the contrary, some can make your skin glow. Everyone’s skin is crawling with this type of bacteria – everyone’s! The thing is, only about 1 in 5 people develop acne, and why […]
Apollo 14 was the eighth manned mission in the United States Apollo program and the third to land on the Moon. Here, we present a stunning photo album with the shuttle, the crew, and the Moon.
Climate change deniers were ecstatic – our planet wasn’t warming as fast as models predicted it; ha! Everything crumbles down, global warming is a hoax and all is good in the world, right? Wrong. The main question in science is “Why?”, and researchers started asking the question. Are all the models wrong, is there something […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover has been put into “safe mode” after some files which it relies on running have defected. Exactly what damaged the files on the robot’s flash memory is not known. “We’re still early on in the process,” said project manager Richard Cook.”We have probably several days, maybe a week of activities to get […]
In what may very well become a historic day, Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University described the first documented case of a child cured of HIV. Dr. Persaud, an amfAR grantee, detailed the case of a two-year-old child in Mississippi diagnosed with HIV at birth; the child was immediately put on antiretroviral therapy for […]
Braving the weather in rough conditions is standard biker procedure, but it’s always more fun when the weather is fine – and with spring on the way, we don’t have too long to wait. But before you renew your motorbike insurance and get back in the saddle, sit your ass back down and check out […]
Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have obtained what is likely the first direct observation of a forming planet still embedded in a thick disc of gas and dust. If the finding is confirmed, it could significantly boost what we already know about forming planets. An international team led by Sascha Quanz (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) […]
A ring of radiation that scientists knew nothing about fleetingly surrounded our planet last year, before being blown away by a powerful interplanetary shock, researchers say. Astronomic intuition Usually, whenever NASA launches a spacecraft, they wait weeks or even months to finely tune all its instruments. It’s a rite of passage that all shuttles (and […]
NASA has, for the first time, released a global map of ocean salinity. The first thing that popped up for me was the pulse of freshwater gushing from the Amazon, but other major features are worth noticing. An invisible seam divides the salty Arabian Sea from the fresher waters of the Bay of Bengal and […]
Chris Hadfield, quite possibly my favorite current astronaut has snapped a spectacular photo of Italy’s Mount Etna volcano streaming ash toward the sea early this morning. Mount Etna is the tallest active volcano in Europe, and in an almost constant state of activity, regularly spewing gas, ash, and lava from the four craters at its […]
As you sit in the morning and have your daily coffee or tea and enjoy your breakfast, take a moment to think where that food actually comes from. Odds are, it’s not coming from your local farm; nope, odds are, it comes from a handful of companies. Three companies now account for more than 40 […]
Just one of the many reasons why I love geology – paleontologists have unearthed extraordinarily preserved fossils of a 520-million-year-old sea creature, one of the oldest animal fossils ever found. The animal in case is an arthropod called a fuxhianhuiid – you may remember him from this post, in which I described a lovely book […]
