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The Isle de Jean Charles that lies on the Gulf coast of Louisiana is sinking. In less than 70 years, over the 90 percent of its landmass has washed away from erosion triggered by industry, as well public works which redirected rivers. Then there were the hurricanes.
Self-driving car tech is moving fast -- so fast the laws haven't had time to catchup.
Here's something you'd never expect to happen in a place with average temperatures of -67 degrees Fahrenheit -- Mars' flowing water is boiling!
In April, the United States hit an important milestone in the quest for full renewable energy transition after the one-millionth solar system was installed.
Animals have evolved all sorts of gimmicks for either attack or defence. Some are really over the top, but that doesn't make it less effective. Take the bombardier beetle, for instance, which sprays a deadly mix of boiling chemicals from its butt. This is one insect you don't want to mess with.
A rocky body that's neither exactly a comet nor an asteroid, may hold some interesting clues about how the planets in the solar system formed, including Earth. The tailless so-called Manx comet, named so after a breed of cats without tails, originates from the Oort cloud -- a shell of icy objects that exist in the outermost reaches of the solar system. Although it's more than a trillion miles away, this Manx comet is likely made of the same stuff that eventually coalesced to form Venus, Mars or even Earth.
This beast is called GE9X -- the largest jet engine ever built. Standing at 13 feet in diameter, it's wider than a Boeing 737's fuselage.
A team of engineers piggy-backed photosynthesis using a nifty pot called the Bioo Lite. Just place almost any plant inside, add water and plenty of sunlight and you'll be able to charge your phone via the provided USB port up to three times a day. Or so they claim.
If you're old enough, you might remember how some flowers around where you live blossom earlier or that summers and winters are unusually harsh. In short, freak weather is more common to the point it's becoming the new norm. Human memory is fallible, which is why we keep records of things like temperature, humidity, concentration of gases in the atmosphere and so on. These record don't go back that long though -- maybe only a century. Some, however, go way back and scientists are using these to keep track of climate change over the centuries.
Renewable energy is growing furiously fast.
There's good bacteria and bad bacteria, but the gut seems to be so diverse in its bacterial offering from person to person that scientists have always found it difficult to say "hey, this is what a healthy microbiome should look like." Analyzing thousands of bacteria species in your guy is challenging and we're still not there, but a recent effort involving 4,000 participants has some good hints as to what makes a healthy gut.
How can some people actually like a serial killer, like Dexter from the eponymous TV show ? What about a meth dealer like Walter White from Breaking Bad or Tony Soprano, the gangster from HBO's The Sopranos?
Scientists have also quantified the effects of climate change as they relate to oxygen depletion. Their analysis suggests that by 2030 oxygen dissolved due to climate change will overpower the natural variability in the ocean, putting further stress on marine life.
This remarkable research could open the doors for biological thermometers at the nanoscale which might tell us a thing or two about how our bodies function at the smallest level.
A new research investigated various light intensity scenarios and reported their findings. For optimal learning performance, "cool" light is better while "yellow" or "warm" light is the most relaxing.
Spanking was associated with a high risk of children defying their parents, becoming aggressive and anti-social. In the long run, mental health issues and cognitive difficulties may arise.
“How do you do very high-level science or engineering with very little?” Asks Martin Thuo, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Iowa State. With a little help from science and lots of innovation, Thuo and colleagues found an elegant solution to a complex problem.
Physicists have crammed water inside extremely small cracks about ten-billionth of a metre and found the molecules entered a never before seen state. In this brand new state, the water molecules don't adhere to strict laws of classical physics anymore, nor do they behave like a liquid, gas or solid.
As CO2 builds up in the atmosphere, this warms the planet, acidifies the ocean and melts glaciers. It also promotes plant growth -- after all, that's why it's called the "greenhouse gas effect". A huge collaborative effort spanning 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries found that in the last 33 years the area occupied by vegetation has significantly increased.
If you don't want bed bugs biting you, then changing your sheet's colour might help. A recent study found bed bugs love red and black, but keep away from surfaces coloured in yellow or green.
Park rangers risk their lives on a daily basis to protect wildlife from poachers. They're also underfunded and understaffed, so allocating resources as efficiently as possible is critical. This is where artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning, and game theory come in. The A.I. can identify and predict poaching patterns, and adapts in time so that park patrols can transition from "reactive" to "proactive" control. Pilot programs launched in Uganda and Malaysia have so far been successful, and a similar system is currently being developed for illegal logging.
At a high-level signing ceremony in New York, more than 170 countries signed up to the landmark COP21 climate changed deal first adopted last December in Paris. Many media outlets praised the signing event, where 60 heads of state were in attendance as well as celebrities, like Leonardo DiCaprio. It is indeed a great achievement in fighting climate change on a global level, but only a small step in many yet to come.
North America was home to several mammoth species, but a new study suggests these weren't that genetically diverse as previously thought. As far as two species are concerned, the Wolly Mammoth and the Columbian mammoth, their genetic makeup was compatible enough to allow interbreeding without miscarriages.
A new study suggests that in the United States, residents might experience three to nine more days of unhealthy ozone levels by 2050.
Sauropods, or some titanosaurs at least, were not the best parents. A recent analysis of juvenile fossils belonging to a titanosaur species called Rapetosaurus krausei suggests babies were left to fend for themselves and find food since they hatched, with little if any weaning.
Men who consume high-fat diets are far likelier to feel sleepy during the day and sleep poorly at night, researchers at University of Adelaide, Australia report.
In a novel study, researchers have identified for the first time the heritable components that influence how early or how late people lose their virginity.
Engineers at the 846th Test Squadron simply shattered the Maglev record with a sled powered by a very powerful rocket. The sled raced through a magnetic levitation track at an incredible 633 mph, or 120 mph faster than the previous record which they set only two days before.
About 21 million years ago, North and South America were separated by an ancient sea called the Miocene Central American Seaway, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans formed a single tropical ocean. This separation isolated species, except those who could fly or swim over long distances. Oddly enough, South American monkeys managed to cross this seaway and migrated all the way to North America by swimming. No one's really sure how exactly they did this, but the discovery is definitely baffling.
Is size all there is to it? As far as the brain is concerned, a recent study that assessed corvid intelligence suggests the answer seems no. The researchers found crows, ravens and other corvids score the same on an important cognitive test as the big-brained chimps.
Studies show that childhood trauma like abuse, neglect, physical accidents and other hallmarks put people at greater risk of dying prematurely once in adulthood. A rough childhood is associated with heart disease, diabetes, and addiction later in life, even though the stressful events have subsided. Generally, what doesn't kill you makes your life shorter. This is true for baboons as well, according to researchers at Duke University, University of Notre Dame and Princeton University.
Each city has its own distinct germ cloud comprised of a unique microbial population and distribution, according to scientists at Northern Arizona University.
Nothing seems to work when you're sick. When I'm down with the flu, for instance, my muscles ache, my eyes are bloodshot and I don't feel like doing anything. It's pretty bad, and if you ever wondered who you have to thank, a team of scientists has singled out a prime suspect: a signaling protein called interferon-β.
The closest we've come to natural muscles is a novel elastomer developed at Stanford University, Palo Alto that can stretch 45 times its length and return to its original size. It's also self-healing.
Researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found a way to reliably produce batteries that are very cheap, but can store a lot of energy.
. In a breakthrough research, a team at Binghamton University showed that it's possible to identify a person with 100 percent accuracy based on their response to a visual stimulus like the word "conundrum" or a picture showing a slice of pizza. We each devour pizza uniquely in our minds, it seems, and that's enough to tell who you are or aren't.
There's confidence that reproducing in space is indeed possible, based on previous research. The most recent experiment made by Chinese scientists, for instance, proved that mammalian embryos can develop in microgravity.
"I will make a GREAT, GREAT wall and make Mexico pay for it," Donald Trump famously said. This is a medieval statement in both approach and mindset, but the rhetoric has worked enormously well for Trump. Why are we acting so surprised, though? Trump is only the most recent politician from a myriad who have turned to demonizing immigrants to advance their own political agenda -- all in the disfavor of the American taxpayer.
Ernest Hemingway is famous for being one of the most appreciated American fiction writers. However, his personal life is no less interesting.
Security analysts rely on all sorts of automated software that spots suspicious activity. Even so, an analyst has to churn through even thousands of false positives on a daily basis, which makes it easy to miss a cyber attack. Coming to their rescue is MIT which reports an artificial intelligence 'tutored' by the best human experts can identify 85 percent of incoming attacks. Most importantly, it's not confined to a certain set of attack patterns and learns to adapt with each new attack.
A new circuit was demonstrated at the 2016 IEEE International Solid- State Circuits Conference this past February that can, among other things, double Wi-Fi speed, while halving the size of the chip. The researchers at Columbia Engineering invented a new tech called "full-duplex radio integrated circuits" which uses only one antenna to simultaneously transmit and receive at the same wireless radio frequency.
Beam is basically a huge inflatable structure which is easy to carry and provides ample living space for astronauts once it expands. Props to SpaceX for yet another successful Dragon mission, but also to Bigelow Aerospace -- a company which might become a household name in the coming decade if their plan works: build the first space hotel!
One week from now, on April 22, officials representing 130 countries are expected at a high-level signing ceremony in New York. If enough countries sign, the landmark Paris agreement on climate change reached in December in Paris could enter into force two years earlier than expected. This enthusiasm and seemingly genuine spirit of cooperation can only be saluted. But we need action, not words. This is an urgent matter that can't suffer any delay.
Heat engines, whether they're as big as a five-story building or as small as an atom, operate using the same thermodynamic processes. This was proven by Johannes Roßnagel at the University of Mainz in Germany who made a single calcium-40 atom behave like a Stirling engine. Nothing short of amazing!
We tested Microsoft's CaptionBot and had some laughs.
The prettiest carbon allotropes of them all, diamonds have fascinated royalty, collectors and window shoppers since ancient times. Some gem-grade diamonds, no bigger than a thumb, sell for tens of million. Most, however, aren't worth much. But even the most prized diamonds aren't perfect, and it is these imperfections that might settle and age long debate among chemists and geologists: what's the source of gem-grade diamonds? A recent analysis suggests both gem diamonds and the largely impure fibrous diamonds stem from the same source.
Westerners are horror-struck by the prospect of an Ebola or Zika pandemic in their very own neighbourhood. Media panic aside, that's extremely unlikely thanks to modern medical science. Our close cousins, the Neanderthals, weren't so lucky tens of thousands of years ago when they first met us, humans. British researchers analyzed ancient bone DNA and sequenced pathogens and found some infectious diseases are far older than we thought. They argue that it's very likely that humans passed many diseases to Neandertals, the two species having interbred, like tapeworm, tuberculosis, stomach ulcers and types of herpes.
After an A.I. beat the human champion at Go, a game almost infinitely more complex than chess, some might feel like tossing the towel and let our robot overlords take their rightful place. Not so fast! We're still good for something. Pressed to find a solution for a complicated quantum physics problem that neither the researchers themselves nor an algorithm could properly solve, Danish physicists turned to the gaming community. They devised a game which mimicked the task at hand while also keeping it fun, and found some gamers came up with novel "outside the box" solutions which the algorithm couldn't even touch. Points for humanity!
What if you could read a book three times faster? That definitely sounds appealing, which si why speed-reading training and, most recently, apps are very popular. Research suggests, however, that for the most part speed-reading hurts comprehension. The best thing you can do to read faster, and still understand something, is to improve your language and vocabulary, scientists say.
A Silicon Valley billionaire who made a fortunate investing in Facebook wants to beat cancer once and for all.
