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It is always better to prevent than to treat, but when you have no other choice but treatment, the absolute best thing you can do is treat it early.However, by the time the first symptoms appear, it is often too late to do anything. Thus, helping victims cope with it is very difficult as it […]
Yosemite is one of the best places to visit in the whole world, and it’s been fascinating people from all over the world since it was declared a national park in 1890; huge granite cliffs, splashing clear streams, massive sequoia groves and epic waterfalls all contribute to its unique charm. Among these natural wonders, a […]
In a slapp across Beijing’s face, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to imprisoned Chinese scholar Liu Xiaobo, for “his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”. The decision of the Nobel jury goes totally against the Chinese government, who claims Liu Xiaobo is nothing more than a criminal. The Nobel […]
This is perhaps not the right attitude and I’m sure people will frown, but I have to say I had very mixed feelings when watching the video. An Ukrainian lion tamer, Oleksie Pinko was brutally attacked by two lions during a representation, and it was all caught on tape by tourists. But there are some […]
I’m really not sure what to think about genetically modified food; in theory, it seems like one of the best ideas ever, but if we don’t fully understand the ramifications of the modifications, it can have really harmful effects. But still, the study I’m going to tell you about is not that. It’s about the […]
In case you don’t know, a few days ago a toxic red sludge “broke free” from a Hungarian metal plant reservoir, and the damage it has done is huge. Several people have been killed, over a hundred have been injured, and the damage done to the nearby houses and the environment is very significant. But […]
It’s always nice when new species are discovered, and this time it was an expedition from Papua New Guinea that made the discovery. A frog no bigger than a peanut, a brilliant green katydid with bright pink eyes and a white tipped tail mouse are the stars of the over 200 newly discovered species. The […]
The Google Lunar X-Prize is a great initiative that awards $20 million to whoever manages to fly a robot to the Moon, travel 500 meters and then send pictures back to the Earth first (prizes drop for 2nd, 3rd, etc). One of the most interesting competitors, the Romanian team fought a year’s worth of bad […]
The Cape ground squirrel takes sex very seriously. For the males, the scrotum is about 20% of their body length, and the penis is twice as long; if you don’t believe me, this particular image will probably change your mind – but be warned ! It will be burned onto your brain for quite a […]
A recently discovered planet is just about the right size and is in the right place to host life; as a matter of fact, astronomers seem quite sure it hosts life, and we’re talking more than microbes. Still, current technology doesn’t allow scientists to search for chemical markers of life. About 20 light years away, […]
It seems that more and more species are threatened by extinction, and this doesn’t apply only to animals. A recent analysis conducted the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew together with the Natural History Museum, London and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) concluded that 22% of all the plants in the world are […]
I’ve seen a whole lot of pictures of the red giant spot (it’s about as big as Earth), but this one is by far the best one so far; and it’s been posted by an amateur astronomer, Björn Jónsson, on one of my favorite forums: unmannedspaceflight – lots of great pics and discussions there. Well […]
A long lost footage of the best minutes of the moon landing (Neil Armstrong going down the ladder) has been found in Australian archives and will be released next week in Sidney. Wait, What ?! How do you lose footage of the Moon landing ? Just like that, according to Australian archivists. The film was […]
Just a few days ago I was telling you about the APOD Wallpaper software, that automatically changes when a picture is uploaded to APOD. This time, the software is a bit different. It has to be said, some of the best pictures and wallpapers ever have been posted on National Geographic, but downloading them is […]
No, the people in the photo are not sniffing the bra or… something. This is Emergency Bra, or Ebra, for short may very well be the thing that saves your life; literally. How does it work ? Well, it converts into a respiratory mask. Good thing about it is that since it has two cups, […]
The future is here, baby ! Robot archers, that’s what it’s all about ! This little humanoid robot, nicknamed iCub may be using just arrows with suction cups, but hey – you have to start somewhere ! Italian researchers developed an algorithm that can teach the robot how to shoot arrows. So, after being taught […]
Fossil hunters have recently unearthed the fossil remains of a species that can easily claim the title of the horniest dinosaur ever to be found. Kosmoceratops lived some 76 million years ago, in the warm and wet swamps of (what is today) Utah; but what’s really fascinating about him is the fact that he has […]
Well despite what you may think, the oil industry is doing better than ever. With a length of 468 meters, this giant will be exploiting the Prelude gas field, about 500 km away from Australia, relying on a Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) plant. However, the vessel will be too far away from land to […]
Well the title is a bit deceiving, so let me clear this out a bit: this 100 year old Belgian tree doesn’t talk, in the old fashioned way. He does however, run a website, have a few thousand facebook friends and he tweets pretty often. I’ve gotta tell you, I absolutely loved this idea ! […]
Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have conducted a study showing that the deletion of a particular gene makes mice smarter by unlocking a mysterious part of the brain, thought to be totally unflexible until now. When the gene, RGS14, is disabled, mice learn how to figure out mazes faster and more effective than […]
As any amateur photographer can tell you, in order to take a clear picture, you require a good light source; so in poor light conditions, the solution was the intense flash. However, there are some obvious disadvantages. Still, computer scientist Rob Fergus started thinking if we actually need such an intense light source, or if […]
A probe that has been launched no less than 30 years ago has come across a force that has baffled the scientific world and could rewrite the laws of physics. In 1983, Pioneer 10 took some photos of Jupiter, then left the solar system. However, it’s being pulled back to the Sun by a force […]
Well this is definitely not your average fossil hunt, by any standards. The excavating team was doing it’s thing, just as in any other day, when they heard a weird scraping sound. Gino Calvano, a paleontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum was nearby, heard the sound, and headed straight towards the point of […]
When I saw this picture, it was morning, my eyes hadn’t opened up quite yet, and I thought “what’s so special of a picture of a road?”. But then it hit me. It wasn’t a road. It’s a Louisiana waterway literally covered with dead fish, crabs, stingray, eel, and there have been reports of even […]
As the dramatic decline of the tigers becomes more and more abrupt, it seems more and more possible that pretty soon, we will be living in a world without tigers. Numerous plans and various approaches have been taken, but the results have been pretty scarce so far, and the fate of these wonderful felines seems […]
Robotics is developing faster and faster, partially thanks to the technological growth of Japan, which has quite some awesome plans for the not so distant future. This time however, it’s a team of researchers from University of California, Berkeley, led by Ali Javey that is in the spotlight. You see, it’s not the strength that […]
About 125 million years ago, these hunchback dinosaurs roamed today’s central Spain, measuring approximately 6 meters and feasting off of smaller animals of all sorts. However, what’s really surprising about the dinosaurs is its “hump”, a body structure never before seen in dinosaurs. A recently exposed skeletal structure revealed some unique features that has researchers […]
Recently, numerous developments in Alzheimer research have been made, including a ‘brain pacemaker‘ and the discovery of an extremely promising chemical, p7c3, that might help treat patients. This time, researchers went for a different approach; what happens in Alzheimer is that the brain basically grows some lumps of protein, developing formations known as amyloid plaques […]
Seahorses are just as elusive as they are cute, so diver Neil Garrick-Maidment, the executive director of the Seahorse Trust was absolutely thrilled when he spotted a 1.5 inch long baby female seahorse “clinging onto a piece of seagrass”. This trule remarkable sighting was made in the waters of Great Britain, in the Dorset waters, […]
The race for oil drilling is tougher than ever, and the effects are quite often extremely damaging for the environment (I’m sure pretty much everybody knows about the BP oil spill already). However, the UN has come up with an initiative, the first of its kind, that promises to protect at least a handful of […]
It was more than 300 million years ago that reptiles made tracks on earth. The exact moment when this happened is unknown, however; oh, and by exact moment, I’m talking about pinning it down to a couple million years (you gotta love geologists for their sense of time). So, a discovery of fossilized footprints was […]
When the ultra-strong glass was invented more than 40 years ago, it was labeled as interesting, but a manufacturing use for it was hard to find. This glass is about three times harder than regular glass, while it’s also thinner (about as thin as a dime). The so called Gorilla glass will probably be worth […]
Boy, you just can’t have enough octopus, that’s for sure – they’re really amazing creatures, that often surprise us. Now, a venomous octopus living in the frozen waters of Antarctica is definitely awesome, but how is this useful? Well, according to Bryan Fry, of the University of Melbourne, it is. He and his team have […]
Finally, it seems researchers have taken a new strong step towards developing an HIV vaccine, which could send HIV on the road to hell, so to speak. Researchers at the National Institute of Health (NIH) announced their discovery of three new HIV antibodies; this in itself is not big news, because HIV antibodies get discovered […]
Ethiopian authorities announced that thanks to large-scale reforestation campaigns the forest cover of their country has tripled since 2000. The African country has suffered from severe droughts in the past, and their solution to this problem turned out to be just great. “Ethiopia was able to increase its forest coverage to nine percent now from […]
This is possibly one of the earliest sex toys in human history.
I have to say, this is one of the most attractive initiatives I’ve come across in quite a while. Basically, you live in the museum and breathe science for 30 days, and if you do that, you win 10.000$ and a lot of other prizes. That’s pretty much awesome if you ask me. You can […]
The major fault in Sierra Nevada is believed to have been “quiet” for more than 3 million years has shown signs of becoming active and it is believed that it can trigger quakes that can reach magnitudes of up to 7. This comes as a rather unpleasant surprise to geologists, as well as the people […]
Peter Higgs is not the rockstar type of scientist; the particle physicist rarely gives interviews, despite the fact that he is the one who proposed the existence of a fundamental particle that gives all matter its mass. Almost as mysterious as the particle itself, he simply calls it the “boson named after me”. Higgs visited […]
The Wave, Arizona The Wave is an astonishing sandstone formation that fascinates photographers and attracts numerous hikers every year. It formed in the early Jurassic (190 million years ago) when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and compacted through the years, calcifying in vertical and horizontal layers. The lovely curves we see today are a result of erosion […]
Wildlife researchers from Sri Lanka have reported photographing one of the world’s most reclusive animals, the Horton Plains slender loris, an animal thought to be extinct for more than 60 years (1939 to 2002). Slender loris populations are native to the rainforests of Sri Lanka and southern India have been in decline for decades, but […]
A recent study conducted by a Montana State University doctoral student and one of the world’s top paleontologists shed some new light on more than 100 years of thought regarding the dinosaurs known as Triceratops and Torsaurus. The general belief since the late 1800s was that they were two separate dinosaurs: Triceratops had three horns […]
Two years ago, Dr. Alexander Khoruts took on a patient suffering from an awful infection of Clostridium difficile; she was suffering from diarrhea. Now we’ve all probably had our bad moments, but this is not your average case. It was so bad that she was practically stuck in a wheelchair wearing diapers. She was also […]
Storm elves and sprites are electric luminous fleeting phenomena that sometimes naturally occur in the upper atmosphere. A team of Spanish researchers managed to make a high speed recording of the phenomena and publish it in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Practically, sprites are electrical discharges shaped like a carrot or a column that form […]
First of all, I have no idea how this rumour started, but a number of people signaled this already; the rumour sounded something like this: I was talking to my son last week (he works on Mauna Kea), and he mentioned some new observations (that will no doubt get published eventually) of “Beetlejuice”; it’s no […]
While America seems to have delayed it’s Moon base ambitions, Japan seems to have no such plans; according to their own statements, they have absolutely no intention of letting perfectly good lunar lands go to waste. An ambitious plan of (just?) $2.2 billion investments is in the works at JAXA (Japan’s space agency), with the […]
Mycobacterium vaccae is a type of bacteria that naturally leaves in soil and has been in the attention of researchers for a while now, due to the fact that it decreases anxiety. Recent studies sugest that in fact, it also stimulates neuron growth and thus intelligence and the ability to learn. Dorothy Matthews and Susan […]
A new study has shown that most people who think they have food alergies (over 80% in fact) actually don’t suffer from such problems. This has taunted some doctors for years and years, and AOL Health looked into this misdiagnosis. The study concluded that it is in fact a number of factors that lead to […]
To be quite honest, I was never really fond of the man, but ever since he quit his executive positions at Microsoft, I’m starting to like him more and more. The reason is not that he’s giving money away, but the causes he’s giving the money for. I’m not really sure how practical this idea […]
Everest is known as many things; first of all it’s the highest point in Asia, and in the world. It’s perhaps the peak over 8000 meters that most people try to climb (due to obvious reasons); but it also kills. Despite not being the most dangerous peak on the face of the earth, it has […]
