gear Push settings
Western society is becoming ever sedentary, as more and more jobs have transitioned to the office and technology offers people all kinds of comfortable reasons not to leave their homes. It’s well documented how a sedentary lifestyle can affect health, exposing the body to a slew of diseases, still a careful assessment of sedentary energy […]
Renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, are gaining ground fast against fossil fuels in terms of energy production, but unfortunately not that fast as we’d hoped for. One big obstacle in the way of renewable energy is storage. A refined look at an older idea that dates back from the XIX century seeks to […]
Summer’s just around the corner, for those of us living in the northern hemisphere at least, and while we’ve been yearning for it all winter long, the scorching noon heat wave is here to remind us that summer’s not all fun and games. If you’re a commuter, then most likely summer’s your biggest worst enemy […]
In March, a medium sized meteorite slammed into the moon’s surface causing the greatest explosion observed thus far, ever since the moon’s surface was first monitored by NASA looking for such events eight years ago. The meteorite collided with the moon at a mind-boggling 56,000 mph (90,000 kph), creating a new crater 65 feet wide (20 […]
Scientists closely working with the Large Hadron Collider, the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, have identified evidence of the minuscule droplets produced in the aftermath of high energy proton and lead ions collisions. If their calculations are right, then these are the smallest droplets of liquid ever encountered thus far, just three to […]
Buried deep at some 2.4 kilometers beneath the surface, in the vicinity of an underground mine near Ontario, Canada, scientists have stumbled across what may actually be the oldest water on Earth. Isolated for more than a billion years, the water pocket holds invaluable clues that may hint how ancient life formed, while also shinning hope that […]
Dire news came today. Astronomers, and people dreaming of life beyond our solar system alike all over the world, are morning the loss of the Kepler – the space telescope tasked with discovering exoplanets capable of supporting life. One of the telescope’s wheels failed and as such, the telescope can’t stabilize its gaze on a […]
Hubble just never ceases to surprise. The latest astronomical find discovered using the ever resourceful space telescope is a never before encountered double ring pattern known as an Einstein ring. This very rare pattern is the result of a peculiar optical alignment in which three galaxies are perfectly aligned with each other, like beads on […]
Serving as one of the strongest metaphors nature has to offer, at the later stages of its evolution the caterpillar - a soft bodied, not very pretty, ground based insect - morphs into a butterfly - a majestic flying insect of varying coloring and shape. What exactly goes inside the chrysalis the caterpillar wraps itself with for the many weeks required for metamorphosis remains a mystery, though.
The life expectancy gap between men and women is a rather attested fact, and while in the past a laborious, physically tense lifestyle for men was used to serve as an explanation, in our day and age of gender equality this doesn’t quite cut it anymore. Researchers in Japan might have stumbled across a clue […]
Meet Susan Barry. She’s an accomplished neurobiologist and a professor of biological studies at Mount Holyoke College. For 48 years of her life, however, Susan was visually stuck in 2-D world. You see, she was born with her eye crossed and could only see in two dimensions. Our eyes each produce an image, and since they’re […]
Yesterday, residents in many parts of the US were treated to a wonderful sight as the sun became wrapped in a rainbow halo. Like a brilliant all seeing eye, the sun cast its rays from a most privileged position prompting some unsuspecting people to believe an alien invasion is nigh. ZME Science folks, however, know […]
A bit late with on this story, but considering the importance of this rather unfortunate milestone, it’s best you all hear it again. On the 9th of May NOAA reported CO2 levels of 400.03 parts per million (ppm), which is a level unseen for three million years. This is the first time in human history that atmospheric […]
A great evolutionary leap forward in our lineage occurred once our hominid ancestors first began to hunt game to acquire meat, which once part of their diet greatly helped them to develop larger brains – especially cooked meat. When exactly this first occurred is controversial to answer. A team of archaeologists, however, have come across […]
A longstanding question in mathematics that has puzzled countless bright minds throughout the ages is the twin prime conjecture. The conjecture, that some believe was first stated by ancient Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, says that that there is an infinite number of prime “twin pairs” – pairs of prime numbers that differ in value by 2. These […]
A new alien planet has been found by astronomers who have a novel planet hunting method which makes good use of Einstein’s special theory of relativity. The newly found exoplanet is slightly larger than Jupiter and is the first such planet found with this method. The planet orbits a star in the constellation Cygnus, about […]
Researchers at the Cambridge-based National Institute of Agricultural Botany have cross-bred an ancient species of wheat with a modern variant to produce a new strain that is not only stronger (i.e. more resistant to pests), but which also yields a higher productivity. Preliminary tests found the ‘superwhat’ could outperform modern wheat variants by as much as […]
Only 2% of the human genome is comprised of genes, while the vast majority of genetic material is known as noncoding DNA – that is to say DNA that doesn’t code proteins. A complex plant, the carnivorous bladderwort plant, known as Utricularia gibba, recently became the center of attention for evolutionary biologists after a recently published paper by […]
With the world’s population hitting the magic seven billion a mere few years ago, new solutions are required to feed the growing number of hungry people, estimated at being almost one billion strong at the moment or one in every seven people being hungry, according to the World Hunger Education Service. A panel of experts […]
Google is notorious for its ambitious projects, and its latest one falls nothing short. Capitalizing on its extremely powerful Google Earth engine, the company teamed up together with the US Geological Survey (USGS) and Time Magazine to release Timelapse – a visual representation of how the Earth has changed during the past 28 years. Carefully […]
The nucleus of an atom is closely shaped like a sphere or rugby ball, signifying that mass is evenly distributed inside it. What happens when you encounter an atom whose nucleus stays away from this conventional shape? Well, this would be a good hint to start finding alternative theories, and wouldn’t you know it scientists […]
This Thursday marks a special occasion for star gazers once with the setting of the annular eclipse, an event which Earth, the moon and the sun align such that only a ring of light around the moon will become visible. Unfortunately, only those living in the Pacific area will be able to see it in […]
The human genome has been sequenced a mere few years ago, and since then a great deal of advancements have been made in the field. This is extremely important since in the future, personalized medicine needs each individual’s genetic markup such that treatment may get the most effective punch or diseases and afflictions might be […]
Some of you will definitely rejoice over this news piece. Apparently, scientists in Europe have developed a treatment that has been proven to reverse the massive oxidative stress developed in hair follicles or gray hair. Moreover, the same compound has been found to be effective in battling vitiligo, a skin condition that causes de-pigmentation of sections of […]
Two fantastic space telescopes, Hubble and ESA’s Herschel, have teamed up to image one of the most popular astronomical sights in the sky, the “Horsehead” nebula, in infrared as well as longer wavelengths to provide unprecedented insights as to what’s going on in this stunning star hatchery. Listed in catalogues under “Barnard 33”, but better known […]
In an extraordinary feat of ingenuity, a team of Swedish researchers have converted an all too common commercial DVD drive into a fully working laser scanner microscope capable of performing blood sample analysis and cellular imaging. They achieved this simply by replacing a few hardware pieces in the drive and developing a software that perform the analysis tasks. […]
A matter of great debate and ardent discussion in the field of evolutionary biology today is the transition of complex life from a watery environment to land. So far, there have been numerous speculations put forward in attempt to explain how tetrapods (four-legged land animals) first evolved and washed ashore to start life fresh as […]
The ever resourceful Kepler mission has recently unveiled several new possible Earth-like planet candidates, two of whom are favored by scientists with the best odds yet of supporting alien life. The pair actually orbits around the same star, called Kepler 62, after NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which is smaller and dimmer than our own star. Kepler 62 […]
Bone is a really awesome material, being hard and flexible at the same time. For something so ubiquitous and studied for so long, it might come as a surprise to some of you to hear that the molecular bone structure of bone has alluded scientists for such a long while. This is because, even though the constituent elements […]
Researchers Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the University of Toronto have demonstrated for the first time that is possible to confirm or independently assess clinical diagnoses of autism in children simply by analyzing their brain activity. Reliable and efficient, their method might be employed at a massive scale as a means of […]
How do you check a multi-billion dollar particle accelerator for defects or malfunctions? Sure, you could use various, equally expensive and sophisticated tools, but in some instances low tech comes in the aid of high tech, say a ping-pong ball. Wait, what ?! Yup, today researchers sent a carefully sterilized, slightly-smaller-than-regulation ping-pong ball through a 2-mile […]
A new study that examined ice core samples found that parts of Antarctica‘s ice are melting at at the highest pace this millennium. The findings put modern global warming into a historical context emphasizing the link between human induced climate change and rapid ice melting in the Arctic, considering it has increased tenfold since the dawn […]
Despite it makes up more than 85% of all matter in the Universe, dark matter, staying true to its name, has eluded scientists for decades ever since they’ve been trying to identify it with high power particle accelerators and detectors. Recent efforts seem to be paying off as various underground labs, as well as those […]
Scientists at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have synthesized a form of niobium oxide that exhibits extraordinary energy storage capabilities, basically combining the tremendous advantages of lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors all into one material, while at the same time stripping the individual disadvantages out of the picture. The material is […]
In a milestone of modern medicine, medical researchers at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have produced the first bioengineered kidney and then successfully transplanted it in a host rat, where it become functional. Each year millions of people die of liver related diseases, and even those who go through the living hell […]
After much heated discussions, Hawaiian officials have granted a permit which will finally allow the highly anticipated Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) to be built on the site of the Mauna Kea summit. Once completed it will stand as the largest optical telescope in the world, allowing astronomers to achieve things they’ve only dreamed about in the […]
A topic of great interest in neurology and psychology is memory. While a lot of efforts have been made towards identifying what mechanisms and processes govern memory formation and retrieval, very few things are understood with respect to its storage. This is because our memories aren’t static, they always shift position and become either more […]
Paleontologists have discovered an ancient nesting site in China where the oldest fossilized dinosaur embryos to date have been found. The find is extremely exciting from multiple perspectives. For one, many embryos in various development stages have been found which will certainly help scientists better their understanding of how dinosaurs grew (how fast, what bones […]
New observations have tracked the “rain” of charged water particles over Saturn spewing from its rings with unprecedented detail. The findings show that the rain is dispersed across a larger surface of the planet than previously thought, which might explain some peculiar meteorologic phenomenae. The study concludes that due to erosion, Saturn’s icy rings discharge […]
Billions of dollars and decades worth of research have been invested in fusion propelling technology, so that one day we might breach current spaceflight limitations that offer little hope of straying too far from our planet. Researchers at Washington University have recently made great strides forward in this respect and have successfully tested each stage […]
In the 1980s a report described how a ginormous patch of plastic trash was guided by currents and concentrated right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in an area that some estimated as being roughly two times the size of Texas. Naturally, people all over the world were outraged, but I guess it didn’t last too […]
While dinosaur walking and locomotion is a subject of great interest and study for paleontologists, whether some could swim too is a controversial matter. Recent evidence found by an US graduate student sheds new light on the subject and suggests some dinosaurs could paddle for long distances through water with coordinated leg movement. Scott Persons, […]
Billions of years ago, Mars had a much richer atmosphere than it has today, which is rather an understatement considering how thin it is. Some scientists hypothesize that once Mars was capable of holding liquid water at its surface, with recent evidence adding weight to these claims. Recent measurements made by Curiosity‘s instruments highlight a […]
One of the most mysterious, and weirdest at the same time, phenomenae in quantum physics is quantum entanglement, in which two connected particles can share information instantly despite being separated, no matter the distance. Two particles, or so the theory holds, could be parted by light years in distance and still reflect each others’ stances instantly, […]
This might strike some of you as a surprise, but turbulence, a phenomenon we all encounter on a daily basis – be it while mixing coffee, starting your car (fuel and air mixture) or of course while flying – and which has been first scientifically described some 600 years ago, remains today one of the […]
Possibly the most exciting technological innovation of the decade, in terms of the impact it’s projected to have, 3-D printing never seems ceasing to amaze us with its unrivaled potential. We’ve seen 3-D printed titanium jaw bones for implants, nanoscale F-1 cars, an ear or live tissue by 3-D printing of stem cells. A number of […]
What’s the difference between a solid and liquid? You might find this question trivial – naturally, liquids flow and solids… well, they don’t. From a physical point of view, however, things aren’t that simple. Intrigued by some ever so often encountered exceptions in the current accepted theory that describes the differences between the states of […]
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have come across the farthest supernova of its type found thus far – a type Ia supernova which exploded some 10 billion years ago. The discovery isn’t just about setting milestones, however. Supernovae act as beacons that help astronomers measure the expansion of the Universe, and this latest finding will help […]
Since it was first described sometime in the 1960s, the ionic thruster has remained confined to hobbyists basements, shadowed by the century old jet engine. Recent research at MIT, however, shows that in some respects the ionic thruster overwhelms the jet engine in terms of efficiency, suggesting that it definitely worth of more attention. “Ionic wind” […]
Driven by technological demand to breach the gigahertz (10^9 hertz) switching speed limit of today’s magnetic memory and logic devices, a team of researchers have devised a novel technique of switching magnetism that is at least 1000 times faster than that currently employed opening up the terahertz age (10^12 hertz). Hard drives, magnetic random access memory (RAM) and other computing […]
