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I’ve always found it strange that beavers are considered by some pests; besides being amazing animals with some amazing habits, they also have been proven to have a positive effect during the droughts which occure quite often these days. They can help mitigate the effects of drought, and because of that, their removal from wetlands […]
Think of the territory which was once cald the wild west; what’s the first image that pops up in your head? For most, it will probably be a dusty scenery, with some bush rolling about, an image of solitude. If you thought about that, then you were pretty close to the truth. During the last […]
The science of clothing has evolved greatly: we have light skiing suits that keep us warm at -20 (and more) Celsius degrees, we have clothes that allow transpiration from the inside to get out but don’t allow water from the outside to come in, and also a whole lot of other inventions which aid our […]
There are still so many things we don’t know about our solar system, and if by some way we manage to acquire information about it, probably many mysteries would be solved. Still, it’s always nice to see that scientists are not wasting time and almost every week they find something incredible. For example, gaps in […]
To understand this, you need just a very basic knowledge of chemistry, nothing fancy. When small parts of organic matter break down, they could go into rivers or ponds where they could cause a buildup of yellow-brown organic matter that amasses as the tiny plants die. Of course, this matter decomposes into something which is […]
Probably all of us have, at a certain point, went on a trek in the mountains, or at least went up a hill of some sort. The shortest way to walk on flat terrain is still a straight line, but it has been proven that if you are going up a hill, zig zagging is […]
I had every bit of admiration for BP when they announced they were going towards some greener alternative, although this meant cutting back on some profits. Under the leadership of former CEO Lord Browne, British Petroleum had made steps to move its business model beyond only petroleum and into newer and greener energy sources. But […]
The return of three Antarctic marine science research vessels marks the crowning of one of Australia’s most ambitious International Polar Year projects, a census of life in the Antarctic seas. The ships (Aurora Australis and collaborating vessels L’Astrolabe from France and Umitaka Maru from Japan) came back from the Southern Ocean, their decks overflowing with […]
Everyday you hear about something that cures (or almost cures) cancer; some stand out and are quite effective, some are not. This drug appears to be in the first category, as it is highly potent compound with a unique structure, and scientists are thrilled to have found it. It was discovered by a collaborative team […]
A long time ago, sharks had no natural enemy; they were on top of the trophic chain. All this has changed when man entered the chain, and suddenly (in geological terms) there was no animal safe; some were forced into extinction, many more were threatened, and all feared dire days. Although this may sound a […]
A laser is an electronic-optical device that produces coherent light radiation. It’s very useful in various fields, such as medicine (bloodless surgery, laser healing, survical treatment, kidney stone treatment, eye treatment, dentistry), industry (cutting, welding, material heat treatment, marking parts) research (Spectroscopy, laser ablation, Laser annealing, laser scattering) and many many others. Now picture the […]
This has been talked about for ever, and as much as we admit it or not, a big mass of people is in fact quite easy to manipulate, because of our… flock mentality. Results from a study at the University of Leeds show that it takes a minority of just five per cent to influence […]
What seemed to be a very natural and obvious conclusion needed a whole lot of studies and research to be proven; terrestrial planets might form around many, if not most, of the nearby stars which are similar to the sun, or at least resemble it greatly. These studies suggest that life may be actually quite […]
A new study has shown that not even a square meter of the world’s oceans has been left untouched by human activities. Oceansystems face probably the largest of threats from humans including overfishing, pollution, and rising ocean temperatures and ocean acidification caused by global warming. The study has been led by an international team of […]
Nowadays almost everybody, even most bad ass bikers wear safety helmets, and there is a very good reason for that. Because science has evolved significantly, their design and material are so good that they can save your life in most cases! Now, things have gone to a bit higher level, as Brycen Spencer, an engineering […]
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a strategy to capture, store and even recycle carbon from vehicles, in this way keeping the carbon from finding its way from the car to the atmosphere. In their vision, a car with zero emissions and completely free of fossil fuels is really close. Technologies that […]
That’s right, from the sandy fields of Sahara, scientists have uncovered the bones of two new ferocious dinosaur predators, of which one kills, and the other feasts off the leftovers. The fossils belong to some previously undiscovered species that roamed the Earth about 110 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. One is called Eocarcharia […]
This could be the plot for a Dr. Doolittle movie, without the talking to animals. Things were as follows: The villagers (from Carrbridge, Scotland) were upset because Tulloch Homes, a developer, had an industrial plan to build houses and destroy a part of the forest and wildlife, and which would increase the population by a […]
As expected, genetics evolves everyday and finds more new and unexpected solutions to some of the most puzzling problems we have faced yet. Such a problem was the ethical side of using embrionic stem cells. But now, it seems it won’t be necessary to figure out whether it’s ethical or not, because we can bypass […]
The pterodactyl derives from the word Pterosaurs, which means “winged lizard”. Pterodactyl means in fact “winged finger”. When you hear about them, you think about some huge, majestic creature, gliding and searching for its next victim. Don’t think that way any more! A fossil suggests that about 120 million years ago, a pterodactyl so small […]
When Swedish researchers published this theory of theirs, nobody took it seriously. Without paying much attention to the scientific community, they pursued and tried to prove what they were claiming. It seems now they have managed to present evidence which supports their way of viewing Earth’s internal core. The findings may be of significance for […]
This sounds truly great, and I was quite surprised to see it, but it’s a reality. Scientists invented the Prius of ocean-going submersibles — a new “green” robotic glider that runs on energy absorbed from the heat of the sea, rather than batteries. This is one of the best ways of achieving energy.Another thing […]
Charging your cell phone may be as simple as a walk in the park – literally. Scientists have created a mechanism that harvests the mechanical energy from the knees while you are walking. To prove this fascinating concept, they used six volunteers which wore the device while walking on a treadmill and were able […]
Birds evolved from lizards, (nearly) all scientists agree about that, but strangely enough there is still a debate around when the first bird showed up in the Mesozoic scene. While paleontologists who have studied fossils think that birds evolved from dinosaurs about 60 million to 65 million years ago, right when the dinosaurs went extinct, […]
Traditionally, drugs, cures, chemicals and medical devices are tested on animals to give some insight on how these would react on humans, but more and more people are trying to find an alternative to this, including scientists involved in ICCVAM. So they have made a plan to further reduce, refine and replace the use of […]
Researchers at at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have achieved something that many people call the Holy Grail of Nanoscience; this in fact reffers to the fact that they have used for the first time DNA to guide the creation of three-dimensional, ordered, crystalline structures of nanoparticles (particles with dimensions measured in […]
They say the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. You can simultaneously love and hate somebody (and something, for that matter) at the same time, but you can’t love them and feel nothing for them at the same time. So if we were to continue in that manner, hating somebody doesn’t neccesarily mean […]
MESSENGER is a spacecraft which recently made a flyby near Mercury and it gave scientists a whole new perspective over the planet. Researchers are amazed by the wealth of images and data which show a surprising diversity of geological processes which took and are still taking place and a very different magnetosphere from the one […]
There are already numerous ways of storing gas but this is in fact a new concept, very different from those existing today and it’s not an improvement, but rather a novel method. A team of University of Calgary researchers developed this process of catching gas from the environment and holding it indefinitely in molecular-sized which […]
Charging the cell phones is a drag; and the battery drops out just when you need it most. Having a battery that would last 10 times as long wouldn’t solve every problem of that type but it definetly would be very helpful. Also, an energy-efficient chip would be very helpful in other cases, and this […]
Nature has its own balance which is both sturdy and fragile at the same time; when that balance is broken (by man, what else?) it is very hard and sometimes almost impossible to set things right. That’s why we have to pay attention to the numerous fragile ecosystems because everything is connected. It goes […]
Understanding the mechanisms which take place is something scientists are have been trying to figure out for ages; because of it’s small size, maping it and understanding some things seems almost impossible, but this is a very important step in solving some molecullar puzzles. This would in fact speed up significantly the process of discovering […]
In case you don’t know, a tsunami is a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. Earthquakes, mass movements above or below water, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions, landslides, underwater earthquakes, large meteoroid or asteroid impacts and testing with nuclear weapons at sea all have […]
The Ulysses spacecraft today is making a very interesting and important rare flyby over the sun’s north pole. This spacecraft is different from anyother, being able to sample winds at the sun’s poles, which are difficult to study from Earth. However, this is not the first time it has been over the Sun’s poles; this […]
A volcano in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet erupted 2000 years ago (325BC) and remains active thus giving us the first evidence of an under-ice volcanic eruption. This volcano has a volcanic explosion index of about 3-4. The heat from the volcano melt-water that lubricates the base of the ice sheet and increases the flow […]
Butterflies have fascinated people for as long as we can remember; the beauty of their wings is known to just about everybody and well just about everybody loves them. But behind their naive beauty lies a mistery which has baffled scientists as they couldn’t understand how these colours are created. Marco Giraldo has been examining […]
The tree of life is a metaphor scientists use to describe all life on Earth in an evolutionary context. Charles Darwin talks about envisioning evolution and ecosystems as a “tangled bank” in The Origin of Species; however, the book’s sole illustration is of a branched diagram that is very tree-like. This “design” has been used […]
According to wikpiedia, Autism is a brain development disorder that impairs social interaction and communication, and causes restricted and repetitive behavior, all starting before a child is three years old. It is very heritable, although the genetics of autism are complex and it is generally unclear which genes are responsible. A study showed that previously […]
About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian, and event caused a mass extinction which killed over 90 percent of the life on Earth. Ecosystems were destroyed and organisms were left to recover; it was the closest life came to being wiped out ever. The full recovery of those ecosystems took at […]
Snowflakes have fascinated most of us since the beggining of time. They say that there are no two snowflakes alike and that isn’t very far away from the truth. No two snowflakes are truly alike, but they can be very similar to each other, said Janko Gravner, a mathematics professor at UC Davis. Now he […]
Recently a study was conducted by a team led by Dr Edward Hanna at the University of Sheffield which demonstrated that recent warm summers have caused the most extreme Greenland ice melting in 50 years. This is yet another proof of the damage caused by global warming and it also helps scientists place recent satellite […]
Not a Hollywood movie or something like that; not even a pun. The title is in the most literal fashion it could be. But how could this be? Worlds can’t collide, can’t they? Hard to say. Anyway astronomers have announced that a mystery object orbiting a star 170 light-years from Earth might have formed from […]
Whoa there! I mean sometimes just about everybody feels the need to be agressive but…. agression just as good as sex? That sounds a bit weird. But that’s just a way of thinking about things. The study is about the fact that the brain processes agression as a reward offering insights into our propensity to […]
Life as we know has certain ingredients which are necessary for life to evolve and even exist. Such ingredients are the molecules methanimine and hydrogen cyanide — two ingredients that build life-forming amino acids. Researchers found these molecules in a galaxy somewhere 250 million light years away; it’s not as a few more light years […]
The ethical and moral aspects of using stem cells have been discussed a lot and it seems there is no good answer; genetic practically has no limit and since the discovery of DNA things have evolved very quickly. But the thing is that the moral aspects concerning it could be left unsolved and yet everybody […]
Antimatter is a fascinating story; basically nobody knows for sure what it could do and scientists have been trying to understand it for years. The artificial production of atoms of antimatter (specifically antihydrogen) first became a reality in the early 1990s. For example an atom of antihydrogen is composed of a negatively-charged antiproton being orbited […]
Most children are able to imagine their future selves as astronauts, politicians or even superheroes and make up imaginary friends and things such as those; but as people grow up they find it difficult to recollect past events, let alone generate new ones. A new Harvard University study reveals that the ability of older adults […]
For a lot of time man kind or at least a big part of it has been absolutely fascinated with the diamond and its fantastic glimmer. The reasons which account for its stunning beauty could be uncovered by a mathematical analysis of its microscopic crystal structure. It turns out that this structure has some very […]
Researchers are searching everyday for options which could bring an ending to the energy issue or at least delay it for an undefinite time and bacteria researching has developed a lot so it would only seem sensible to bring those two together. The point would be well to obtain a bacteria which generates electricity. Researchers […]
A drug company is a commercial business whose focus is to research, develop, market and/or distribute drugs, most commonly in the context of healthcare; from wikipedia. But according to a study by two York University researchers estimates the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and development, […]
