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Mass extinctions present both a mortal threat and opportunity. During these events, a great deal of all terrestrial and marine life perishes, but this also makes room for the next lineage to flourish in its stead. Like a bush fire, mass extinctions may be nature's way of "cleansing" - a reboot for new experimentation to start fresh. Despite being extremely important (it doesn't get more dramatic than "mass extinction"), the kill triggers that spur these events in motion are still poorly understood. But we're learning. For instance, a team reports that ancient malform plankton are a proxy for mass extinction events.
A beautifully preserved skull fragment belonging to the earliest baboon species was found in a South African cave. The site in Malapa has constantly offered archaeologists and anthropologists plenty of work, since it was populated by various hominid species across millions of years. In fact, it is here that scientists discovered a distinct hominid species, Australopithecus sediba, for the first time. Apart from the ancient baboon, no other non-hominid animal was found in the cave.
The revolutionary wave that swept Arab nations beginning with 2011 displaced millions and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands. On the bright side, the dampened economic activity caused a significant lapse in greenhouse emissions. In some extreme cases, nitrogen dioxide values have decreased by 40 to 50% over Damascus and Aleppo, according to a new study published by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.
Though initially made for narcoleptics (people having trouble sleeping), many soon caught on that modafinil can enhance cognitive abilities. Right now, it's a favorite among students who use it when preparing for exams with visible results, they claim. But modafinil isn't the first such "smart drug" we've come across. It's likely that you've seen some TV or internet ads marketing 'smart pills' that supposedly enhance cognitive abilities, but with mere anecdotal evidence backing it up. In contrast, modafinil really seems to be a legit smart drug, according to a systematic review of reports documenting the effects of the drug. The meta-analysis was made by a team at University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School.
When someone yawns near us, we naturally feel an irresistible urge to yawn in response. Even dogs seem to yawn when humans do it. This contagious behavior has fascinated psychologists and behaviorists for many years, and while there are many reasons scientists have proposed for why people yawn (it's a bit complicated, what we know for sure is that's important and actually has a purpose), social cohesion might play an important role. The more emphatic you are, the likelier it is you'll yawn in response. On the contrary, psychopaths barely register yawns and seem impenetrable.
Just in time for back-to-school season, a group of researchers report that lice in more than 25 states have become resistant to the common over-the-counter treatments. Every year, up to 12 million kids aged 3 to 11 get infested with head lice, which apart from being extremely unpleasant and annoying can create complications when a child overly scratches its scalp, forming wounds that can get infected. Now that lice populations have grown resistance to insecticides, it will be increasingly difficult to get rid of them.
These subatomic particles are created in the aftermath of violent cosmic events, like the explosion of a star or interactions with black holes. By capturing them here on Earth scientists can effectively peer into far away corners of the galaxies and tell what event spurred them to travel million of light years.
Though humans might not be as fierce as a lion or white shark, we're definitely the greatest predatory species in the world, ever. The extent of humanity's super-predation was assessed by a team at University of Victoria in British Columbia which compared our hunting abilities to those of both land and marine predators in all the oceans and continents, besides Antarctica. The findings reveal humans lack any real competition preying on adults of other species at rates up to 14 times higher than other predators, especially marine ones.
A company from Japan wants to become the first to advertise a product on the moon. The sports drink producer, Pocari Sweat, has contacted SpaceX - an American company that regularly ferries cargo to the International Space Station and is close to sending astronauts to the International Space Station - to land a canned sports drink. This would mark a milestone in human history: the first ad on the moon - both disturbing and interesting at the same time. Maybe any kind of interest in moon exploration (who knows what happens when you try to land a can on the moon?) in this moment is welcomed. Maybe.
Possibly the most hyper animal, the hummingbird, feeds by darting its thin tongue 20 times per second inside the flower to extract the precious nectar. Previously, biologists thought the nectar was being collected through capillary motion. However, after analyzing 18 different hummingbird species while they fed using high frame rate cameras, a group at University of Connecticut found that the fast flapping birds use a totally different way to suck food: the tongue employed as a tiny pump.
Matter accounts for 31.7% of the mass-energy content of the universe, and 84.5% of the matter is dark matter. In other words, what we can measure today (ordinary matter) accounts for only a tiny fraction of the Universe's mass-energy content. For years, scientists have been on the lookout for the elusive dark matter particles, as well as signs of dark energy. Efforts so far have been to no avail. Despite the setbacks, we know a thing for sure: dark matter exists. If it's there, we'll eventually find a way to detect it, but what if we've gone about this the wrong way? US physicists suggest a different approach: instead of looking for dark matter particles, we should be looking for evidence of their collision - dark radiation.
Virtual reality and 4K displays, coupled with ever more powerful processors and graphic chipsets will see gaming make a huge leap, and Intel wants to be at the forefront of the scene.
A team at George Washington University has found a way to hit two birds with one stone: mitigate climate change by pulling CO2 from the atmosphere and make a valuable material at the same time. The solar powered setup reacts a molten lithium carbonate in the presence of heat and an electrical current to produce carbon fibers, recently highly prized in engineering applications from cars and airplanes to wind turbines to tennis rackets.
Researchers at University of Southampton, England report finding an alternative pathway to activate a key enzyme involved in cellular glucose uptake, mimicking the effects of exercise (some of it). In type two diabetes the enzyme in question is "lazy" and drugs are usually used to activate it, allowing glucose to enter the cell and produce energy (adenosine triphosphate or ATP for short). It's not clear yet whether the new molecular compound, for now simply called 'compound 14', is better than current treatments.
For the first time, a group of researchers from Canada showed that the grime on buildings can emit ozone when exposed to light. Ozone is the main compound found in smog, a dangerous mixture to public health. Up until now, grimy urban buildings weren't included in models that assess how polluted an urban area is, but the new findings suggest their contribution is significant. Dirty buildings are thus not only unpleasant to look at, but also detrimental to your health.
Seriously – after making a complex cross-scenario examination, scientists found that given humanity’s current population growth momentum, not even WW3, a global pandemic or stringent fertility restraints will be enough to keep the global population at sustainable levels. In light of these findings, Australian researchers at Univ. of Adelaide’s Environment Institute conclude that lowering our environmental impact through […]
Octopuses are like aliens and there are few creatures weirder than these eight legged critters. They survive freezing waters, perceive light through their skin, are masters of camouflage and can do many other things, some still oblivious to science. One uncanny feature of octopuses is their mating behavior or social order. Most octopus species mate at a distance, with the male using its reproductive arm to reach the female's mantle. They have to do this to avoid being cannibalized by the female. Either way, once the job is done, the male dies while females only lives a little longer, just enough to lay the eggs. That's the peak of both the octopus' sex and social life. Besides a few instances, octopuses live their lives in isolation, alone in some shell or barren rock. However, there's one octopus that seems to be totally different, even human-like: the Larger Pacific Striped Octopus.
Video games don't make kids more aggressive. This myth needs to stop.
Glaciers covering Asia's Tian Shan mountains have lost a quarter of their mass over the past 50 years, at a rate four times higher than the global average due to the particularly dry climate of the area. At this rate, by 2050 half of the remaining ice that covers the 2,500 kilometers long mountain rage could melt, threatening the water supply and affecting millions of people. If left unchecked, the situation might even turn into a conflict for the most basic resources (water and food).
One of the most peculiar languages in the world, whistled Turkish, is challenging the long-standing idea that the left brain hemisphere is solely responsible for processing language and extracting meaning. Any language, be it spoken, written or signed is processed in the left hemisphere, but whistled languages are processed equally by both sides of the brain. It's a striking discovery that suggests people devoid of left hemisphere processing abilities, following a stroke for instance, can still communicate using their right hemisphere. Just whistle.
Two of the biggest pension funds in California have lost $5 billion in assets last year by sticking to their fossil fuel investments. The report released by Trillium Asset Management suggests that the loss was due to the huge dip in oil and coal prices registered between July 2014 and June 2015.
Most people have an outdated belief that solar energy is too expensive. For most people living in the United States, this isn't true for some time and Google just released a new project to make a point of this. Called Project Sunroof, the tool uses extensive satellite imagery from Google Maps and superimposes sunlight energy flux data over them.
A drug called Flibanserin, also known under the name of Addyi, is marketed as the first designed to boost a woman's sexual desire. This week the FDA will decide whether to approve the drug or not, however looming safety concerns could count against Sprout Pharmaceuticals, the parent company marketing the Flibanserin.
Thoth Technology, a Canadian company, was granted an US patent for a space elevator. Technically, though, it's not exactly a space elevator since cargo and astronauts would only be ferried about 12 miles above sea level into the stratosphere. From here, a shuttle would carry the cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station or some other dropzone in space (maybe even the moon) for a third of the cost it currently takes
After Utrecht, another Dutch town is joining the basic income social experiment to see whether receiving an unconditional sum of money each month will make society more productive or slacking
Maybe the most amazing of social insects, ants use complex cues of pheromones to determine to which cast in the colony each individual ant belongs to. A team at University of California at Riverside found ants do this by sniffing out hydrocarbon chemicals present on their cuticles (outer shell). These cues are extremely subtle, but the ants can sense them with great sensitivity due to the way they're hardwired. It's enough to notice that ants have more olfactory receptor proteins in their genome than we humans have. Amazing!
The buzzing racket of quadcopters and drones may be stressing wildlife, a new study shows. Drones have long ceased to be the provision of the military, and are now extensively been used for civilian purposes. Amazon, for instance, wants one day to deliver all its goods with unmanned aerial vehicles. In research, drones have proven to be particularly useful in observing wildlife. But these aren't as unobtrusive as some might believe and future research should take into account that flying drones overhead should be done carefully so as to not disturb the wildlife.
Some conservationists are considering introducing the Tasmanian devil, currently only found in Australia's island state of Tasmania, back to the mainland. The devil went extinct on the mainland some 3,000 years ago, and scientists hope the predator might restore balance to the local ecosystem, currently destabilized by too many cats and foxes.
A lot of women in their thirties choose to delay motherhood by freezing their eggs to later fertilize them when they feel the time is right. Cryopreservation of eggs is still a field in its infancy, though, and there's not much we know about its effects of pregnancy or rate of success. Doctors are steadily gathering stats, though, and a recent analysis suggests there may be some drawbacks to freezing eggs. The report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests fresh eggs have a significantly higher chance of success than cryopreserved ones. This is news for most, even for doctors working in fertility clinics and would be mothers (eventually) should understand this risk when they choose to bank their eggs in a clinic's frozen basket.
Every five years for more than a century, National Geographic releases an atlas of the world complete with the latest geographic and geologic cartographic representations. The latest edition of Atlas of the World can be quite terrifying if you move up north, in the Arctic, for it shows just how dramatic ice loss has been in the past decades. For comparison, the GIF above stitches three edition (7th and 10th) from 2000 to 2015. The latest caption shows the Arctic as it had been in 2012, during its record low ice extent.
Faced with the worst drought in recorded history, officials in California are turning to all sorts of creative methods to curb the rising water shortage. Most recently, 96 million black plastic balls were thrown in the LA Reservoir, which is filled with enough water to last the whole city of four million for weeks. Together, the millions of plastic balls act as a cover, shielding the water inside the reservoir from the sun's rays, especially the UV frequencies. This way, less water becomes evaporated or degraded through chemical means - about 300 million gallons of it.
University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers devised a new method that grows graphene nanoribbons directly on a germanium wafer. The ribbons are of excellent quality and the technique is compatible with current manufacturing methods. These sort of ribbons have been heralded by industry experts as the component of the future which will make electronics faster and more efficient. The only thing that's been missing until now was a sound way to make them.
Let's face it, even the most cutting edge robots developed today are stumbling goofs. So, in an effort to make robots less blundering a team at MIT has borrowed human reflexes to one of their lab's creation: a robot called Hermes. When the bot is just about to stumble about an obstacle, a human operator who is strapped with all sorts of actuators and motors synced to bots' movements is alerted. In a split-second, Hermes is back on his feet thanks to the innate reflexes of good ol' humans.
A new report presented by United Nations officials at the American Statistical Association meeting in Seattle estimates that by 2100 the world's population will reach 11.2 billion people. Another less conservative scenario, however, estimates a numbers of 13 billion. Right now, there are 7.3 billion living in the world or around 80 million people more than last year.
A French company called 3Dvarius partnered with musician Laurent Bernadac to see just how far they could stretch 3D printing capabilities. Why not, they thought, stretch the strings of a fully playable 3D-printed violin? Combing the leading craftsmanship of the past two centuries with the cutting edge tech of today, the engineers designed an electric violin based on the legendary Stradivarius.
Both bathroom decorators and mathematicians have a reason to rejoice (how often does that happen?). Using a computer algorithm, a group of mathematicians at the University of Washington Bothell discovered the 15th kind of pentagon that can tile in a plane. The 14th was discovered in 1985 by mathematician Rolf Stein, while the previous five before were proven by Majorie Rice, a housewife from San Diego.
In the latest in a long string of lawsuits filled against fracking operations, a Texas family is claiming damages after the water well on their property exploded. The family's ranch is located just 1000 yards away from two fracking drills, which likely leaked methane to the groundwater according to the lawyer representing the family. The explosion left Cody Murray, the 38-year-old husband of the family of four, with severe burns on his arms, upper back, neck, forehead and nose along with “significant neurological damage.” He is now permanently disfigured, disabled and cannot work. He is now asking the court for retribution.
Central America is home to one of the greatest biodiversity on the planet. It's here among its rainforests that you can still find large swaths of land where there aren't any humans living nearby. But being sparsely populated also makes the region an attractive route to smuggle drugs and other logistical operations. In Honduras and Guatemala, particularly, all law and order seems to cede in the face of the narco-cartels who are razing forests to build airfields, roads and even ranches right in the middle of protected national parks. It's all a nasty business, and the greatest victims are those who play the least part in it all: the wildlife.
No matter how puritans might hate it, the English language, as any language for that matter, is constantly shifting, expanding and transforming. Previously, languages would influence one another based on proximity. French would influence English and vice-versa. But now, the world is smaller and borders between countries are thinning. On the internet, some people seem to have a language of their own. And while parents might scorn and others laugh, you should know in all seriousness that some of the weirdest internet slang words are actually real words now, as in they can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary. Let's just look at some:
After graphene proved to be one of the greatest discovery of the century, material scientists became inspired to see if other 2D meshes (just one atom thick layer of material) could be made from other elements. In time, we've heared about silicene, phosphorene or germanene. Now, a group from China reports for the first time stanene: a honeycomb 2D arrangement of tin (Sn) atoms, with a a bismuth telluride support that buckles the whole structure. Stanene is extremely exciting because it's been previously theorized that it could transfer electricity without heat loss, implying huge energy savings and increased performance for semiconductor applications.
Women often complain the AC is turned way too high at work. Many are forced by necessity to come to work on a hot summer day with a spare sweater or a freaking Snuggie, while men coworkers seem to be all fine, comfortable wearing only shorts and a T-shirt. Clearly, some people feel colder or hotter than others when exposed to the same temperature. However, I think nowadays it's no secret that most women get terribly uncomfortable in the conditions set by most thermostats at work. Now, a new study suggests that the way climate control in office buildings has been designed in the past couple of decades is discriminatory and doesn't reflect reality. That's because although in most workplaces today you'll find men and women in equal proportion, the AC is geared to provide the optimal comfort conditions for a 154 pounds, 40 year-old man. This profile may have been representative 50 years ago, but today it's outdated. It's time to align thermostats with today's needs.
There's more to seminal fluid, which makes up to 70% of semen's composition, than procreation. Scientists are only recently beginning to understand how the seminal fluid is interacting with the female brain and body, and findings so far may be surprising for some. For instance, in animals - including humans - semen affects the female reproductive tract, to maximize the changes of conception. But it doesn't stop here. The influence of semen on females might go even beyond this. In experiments on fruit flies, scientists found the females had altered gene expression post semen exposure, while males produce more seminal proteins when there are more rivals. Suddenly, semen just got a heck of a lot more complicated.
Evenwin Precision Technology, an electronics processing company, sacked 90% of its employees, replaced them with robots and saw productivity soar. Previously, there were 650 employees at the factory, now there are 60 - mostly engineers and accountants that oversee the production lines - and the number should go down to 20, according to company officials. The robots have produced almost three times as many pieces as were produced before. Quality has also improved. The product defect rate was 25%, now it is below 5%.
If you were born in 1900, you could call yourself lucky if you'd seen a day past your 50th birthday. The XXth century, however, marked an amazing leap in longevity thanks to the advent of vaccines, increased public health awareness and medical discoveries. In time, the leading causes of death and illness have shifted from infectious and parasitic diseases to noncommunicable diseases and chronic conditions. Sure, more people die today of cancer and heart disease than ever before, but it sure beats dying of typhoid. The extra decades in lifespan sure don't sound bad, either. Life expectancy at birth now exceeds 83 years in Japan—the current leader—and is at least 81 years in several other countries. The trend seems to be accelerating, especially for those at the extreme lifespan end. The population of adults 85 and older is projected to increase 351 percent by 2050, while those older than 100 will increase 10-fold between 2010 and 2050.
Self-driving cars have a promising future, and leading the pack technologically is Google, now a household name that has long transcended its status as a search engine. First and foremost, Google is a technology company and its interest are aligned with anything cutting edge, whether it's information technology or hardware (smart homes, smart appliances, cars). Since 2011 when Google first showcased its extremely successful self-driving Prius, later switched for a Lexus, the company has been making rapid progress. But Google rarely experiments just for the sake of it. Part of its philosophy is turning disruptive technology into a product, get it out to the people. But how do you go about self-driving cars, considering the auto business is one of the riskiest in the world? Well, just like it did with the Android for smartphones, Google could partner with the leading automakers supplying the technology. Indeed, Google confirmed this January that it had talks with General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Daimler and Volkswagen. But some highly interesting documents gathered by The Guardian suggests a possible alternate route. Google might actually build its own cars, all from scratch.
On Wednesday, the Department of Defense issued a report in which it highlights the global security implications of climate change. In the report, the authors note that climate change will exacerbate current world problems like " poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions that threaten stability in a number of countries."
Plants signal stress when they're affected by drought, high temperatures or a disease using the same chemical and electrical signals that animal use. In animals, these chemicals and signals are delivered, carried and interpreted by the nervous system, which is why it's surprising to find plants use this mechanism. The "machinery", however, is different suggesting plants and animals separately evolved the same communication mechanism.
A couple decades ago, satellite were solely the provision of governments, since they were the only ones that could afford launching billions dollars worth of tech into space. Slowly but surely, corporations hitched a ride and now, when an imaging satellite can fit in the palm of your hand and costs only a fraction it used to, small enterprises are flourishing. Along with them is innovation.
Taking inspiration from nature, scientists in South Korea hijacked millions of years of evolution and devised their very own robotic version of a water-strider - insects that can jump on water. Their tiny droid mimics the water-strider in both its water balancing acts and jumping on water, which is a lot harder than it sounds.
Boy, was this year a scorcher! Well, what can I say, apart from get ready for more. According to an exclusive info ran by New Scientist, all but one main tracker of global surface temperature will report that this year will mark the first full degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. I remind you that the International Panel on Climate Change warns that a two degree Celsius warming should be avoided on all costs if irreversible consequences like sea level rise, habitat loss and cataclysmic events are to be averted. This means that we're already halfway there, and the two degree mark might be reached by 2050. A four degree warming might end civilization as we know it.
