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Looks matter a lot. One recent research suggests that short men and overweight women earn on average £1,500 ($2,100) less per year than taller men and slim women, respectively.
If we want to have a permanent or long-term mission to Mars, then growing crops locally would be very useful.
Hydras are tiny freshwater animals which trap their prey with a set of tentacles.
The latest, most complete tree is the result of a three-year effort by researchers from over a dozen institutions from around the world. They combined tens of thousands of diagrams into one single tree, most easily read as a circle.
A series of experiments surprisingly found that sudden insight may yield more correct solutions than gradual, methodical thinking.
New research shows that the first vertebrates had a surprisingly easy time adapting from fins to legs.
Researchers found a positive association between the amount of time spent playing video games and children's mental health as well as their mental and social aptitudes.
It seems that while most of us do not like to behave like extortionists, we choose to elect those that are extortionists for us. What's more, this study seems to prove that Machiavellian cooperation works: all parties involved win at the end, it's just that extortionists benefit more, while fair parties benefit less. Chances are no one will ever win, though, in a room packed with extortionists.
You might be able to grip, grab and direct hand movements with a prosthesis as if it were your own biological hand, but without the exquisite sense of touch life is not only stale, but also challenging. We're coming close to a singularity in prosthetic research, however -- having bionic arms that sense pressure, texture, temperature and humidity just like their biological counterparts.
Mindset and learning go hand in hand. It's important to be confident in one's own abilities to learn new skills and meet goals. Overconfidence, however, can also hinder learning according to Washington State University researcher Joyce Ehrlinger.
Anxious people may be more prone to associate neutral environmental cues with emotional experiences. Psychologists call this over-generalization, and research into the matter might explain why a seemingly minor event can sometimes unleash a full blown anxiety episode. We might also learn more about the wiring of the anxious brain which fires in different patterns than the 'normal' brain.
Ken Buesseler studies marine radioactivity. He uses radioactive elements such as thorium that are naturally occurring in the ocean as a technique to study the ocean’s carbon cycle, as well as fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing and recently, the sources of radionuclides from Fukushima Dai-ichi in 2011. Following the 2011 earthquake in Japan and the subsequent tsunami, […]
A study conducted by Australian researchers found that scientific journals discourage the study of ‘ugly’ rodents and bats.
A study made by researchers at Forida Atlantic University and Cleveland State University assessed the effects of paid sick leave, or lack thereof, had on employees' health. Those who didn't have this benefit were at a much greater risk of forgoing medical care, either to treat or prevent an illness or injury.
A meta-analysis of 29 previous studies has confirmed what many researchers were already suspecting: depression affects the entire body.
A team of Harvard researchers have literally added a new dimension to 3D printing - time.
When the MESSENGER spacecraft found carbon rich material on Mercury, researchers were surprised and couldn't quite explain the source. Now, they believe that the material may be the remnants of a primordial graphite crust, which would also explain why Mercury looks darker than expected.
India's massive investment into solar energy is already starting to pay off - much earlier than anticipated.
The bad intentions that precede doing harm to someone are visible in the brain, researchers claim.
A new paper suggests that we've been overlooking how two key human responses to climate -- the total area farmed and the number of crops planted -- will impact food production in the future.
One study estimates that over the next 35 years, nine African countries would have to spend $98 billion to $261 billion to buy drugs and prevent infections.
Iowa State University engineers have created a flexible, tunable "meta-skin," a material that uses rows of liquid-metal devices to cloak an object from radar detection.
An artificial ‘skin’ can stretch up to 480 percent its original size, and can sense changes in pressure – a haptic feature that could lend both robots and human prostheses a sense of touch.
Around 65.5 million years ago a 10-km wide asteroid crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, suddenly altering all life on the planet.
Recently, a treasure trove of a dozen ancient lizards trapped in amber came to scientists' attention. Everyone was impressed by the pristine preservation, but what particularly caught their eyes was a chameleon-like creature that's 100 million years old. That's 78 million years older than the previous record holder.
It was a bittersweet moment for SpaceX, as the space flight company successfully launched a communications satellite to a distant orbit but failed to land the remnants safely. This wasn’t completely unexpected though, as this was more a way to test the waters for the next launch. After a bunch of frustrating delays, SpaceX successfully launched […]
A new study confirms previous findings: the best way to fight peanut allergy is by consuming peanuts as an infant.
Awesome? Undoubtedly. Useful? Well, according to Kagome, which claims to be Japan's largest supplier of ketchup and tomato juice, people taking part in the Tokyo marathon really need this.
The largest floating solar array in the world is to be unveiled later this month, on the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir, at Walton-on-Thames. The array is estimated to generate almost 6 million kWh in its maiden year of operations. The energy will be used to power London's water treatment plants.
Seals from colonies on the North Atlantic island of North Rona that had higher levels of the hormone oxytocin in their blood stay closer to pups. This suggests that the hormone, often called the love hormone because of its role in love and in female reproductive biological functions, is paramount to forming mother-child bond.
Mars was never the same after a monster volcano erupted on the Red Planet some 3.5 billion years ago. Before the massive eruption, its poles were in completely different locations, so where it rivers and ice sheets. Moreover, the crust buckled and twisted in alien ways, like the skin and flesh of a peach shifting in relation to its pit.
An early land lover, the Tortobu might have been a key part of the land ecosystem that eventually grew to foster complex land life.
Using only five atoms, a team of international researchers showed how to factor a prime, albeit a trivial one for demo purposes.
Researchers have documented a more familiar curiosity: what dust particles on a comet look like.
NASA and ESA astronomers have pushed the Hubble telescope more than ever before.
Scientists have known for quite a while that obesity increases the chances of colon cancer, but hey were unable to figure out why.
In what has to be one of the biggest blunders of science publishing, PLoS ONE has published an article about the human hand which attributes its design to "the Creator."
Astronaut Scott Kelly returned to planet Earth on Thursday, after a landing in which everything went smoothly, as expected.
These predatory amoebas are usually very good at finding enough to eat by themselves, but when food is short they do something astonishing.
A new study found that rather than weakening their host, brine shrimp parasites actually help it cope with arsenic contamination in the water.
Up until now, there was no reliable way to measure the temperature of nanoscale objects, like viruses.
A new study of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), a deadly fungus which affects amphibians worldwide, found that it spreads by making males' mating calls more attractive to females. The pathogen alters the reproductive habits of different species of amphibians, explaining why frogs and related species continue to disappear across the globe.
Breeding birds and alligators have developed an unlikely partnership, where the birds build their nests on alligator territory for protection.
A revolutionary new supercomputer powered by Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy source for every living cell in your body, is ridiculously small and much more efficient than a traditional supercomputer. That's because instead of electricity, this computer is powered by biological agents. This means it needs little to any cooling, and can be scaled to the size of a book.
Biologists at Rutgers University-Newark found that the world's longest distance flier is a small dragonfly.
Learn more about how they formed billions of year ago.
“Cleopatra was a poet and a philosopher, she was incredibly good at maths [..] but when we think of her, we think: big breasted seductress bathing in milk.” Dr Bettany Hughes argues that women have been largely written out of history and this seems to be a recurring theme. Bettany Hughes, an English historian and author discussed with […]
Schools in Estonia's capital Tallinn are piloting a new program, gradually moving to PC workstations running on free and open source software.
Indonesian authorities lifted a tsunami warning issued after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the island of Sumatra – the largest earthquake since the 2004 disaster. “There is no info on casualties or damages yet,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman at the national disaster mitigation agency, said via text message. “The tsunami warning is based […]
Dammit, people!
