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In a study published in the January 19, 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), scientists at Tsinghua University in China confirmed that something very unusual is happening inside extremely heavy atoms, causing them to deviate from their expect chemical behavior predicted by their place on the Periodic Table of Elements.
Scientists have found that by adding slight variations in the practice routine, you can keep your brain more active and facilitate the learning process.
A new study has found a way to increase the lifespan of mice by up to 35%, by simply removing the defunct cells that stop dividing and accumulate in old age.
A surprising finding could change the history of orthodoxy.
It's a horrific disease, but one that may be going to the history books soon.
CO2 interferes with neuroreceptors in the brain of fish, causing them to behave as if drunk. By 2100, fish in half of the world's water might be intoxicated in this way.
A few months after it was proposed, the law was approved in December and it's now official.
These bizarre creatures are called Xenoturbella, and can be found at the bottom of the ocean. For years scientists have being trying to figure out which proverbial foot these fit in. Now, it seems like their place in the tree of life has been established. Not surprisingly, these are found near the base of the tree of bilaterally symmetrical animals. A fancy way of saying one half matches the other half. That's at least one thing these deep-sea sock creatures have in common with humans.
Some 50 million years ago, the world was in dire straits. Atmospheric CO2 levels were at over 1000 ppm, with some putting the level at 3500 ppm. Turtles and palm trees were thriving at the poles and sea levels were much higher than they were now as there was virtually no snow to be seen. […]
Once any ice age is over, the increased surface temperature causes the ice caps to melt which lessens the pressure on the mantle and causing increased volcanic activity. A paper published by a team from the University of Cambridge found that erosion also plays a major role and can be just as important as melting ice caps. Since erosion is largely ignored by climate models, it may be that scientists underestimated CO2 levels following ice ages.
Robots really are starting to take over jobs - a company in Japan has just announced they will open the world's first "robot farm".
The idea of six degrees of separation was introduced more than 80 years ago. It suggests that you are six introductions away from meeting anyone in the world. In other words, everyone in the world is connected through a chain of six links. For some, fewer introductions are required to come in direct contact with Barrack Obama or Stephen Hawking. A study made at Facebook suggests that, among its users at least, there are now only 3.57 degrees of separation on average.
It's all about the topography of the terrain, and whether or not it allows for niches to become connected, researchers found when they tried to explain what drives the most biodiversity. The findings could prove extremely important in gauging the future impact of migrating species to higher elevation as a result of climate change.
Discovered in ancient lake deposits in northeastern China and eastern Kazakhstan, this ancient insect looks and exhibits behavior closely mimicking the modern butterfly. The Jurassic age insect entered the fossil record 165 million years ago, while butterflies as we know them first appeared 80 to 90 million years ago. Though these are set apart by many millions of years, researchers found numerous morphological and ecological features in these two, unrelated clades.
Crash boom bang! Our planet and another protoplanet may have collided head-on in their early history.
Archaeologists from the Charles University in Prague have made a stunning discovery in Egypt: they found a stunningly well preserved long boat, buried for four and a half millennia. The discovery was made at Abusir, “the House or Temple of Osiris” and an extensive necropolis with many well documented findings. But Egypt still has a story to […]
Scottish researchers have found a way to make cancer cells get "addicted" to self-destruction.
One of Saturn's ring, which is very opaque and bright seems to have played an optical illusions all along. It is in fact much lighter than previously though -- as little as a seventh of the mass it appears to have.
German scientists have turned on a device called a stellerator, the largest of its kind. The machine could pave the way for nuclear fusion, a clean and safe type of nuclear power.
If you can see a person or an animal, then it is possible to be seen back. It's a basic caveat they train in the military when discussing camouflage. What's more, if you suspect you're being seen, you must minimize your movements. This level of abstraction was thought to be unique to humans. It's been recently shown that ravens too are capable of imagining someone is spying on them and take greater care hiding their food, as reported in Nature Communications.
Most people don't have that much of an issue with dying, like they do with being freaking old. Being old is a drag. You gain weight, the skin gets wrinkled, the mind and body weakens -- and it all gets gradually worse until you expire. Ants don't seem to share this human tragedy. By all accounts these particular ants don't seem to age and die in youthful bodies.
Researchers looked at the long-term exposure of marijuana on cognitive skills. Current users showed poorer cognitive ability across all the mediums the researchers tested. What was interesting is that among those who reported not using marijuana anymore, but used to, there was a pattern that suggested poorer verbal memory, which the ability to remember words. For every five year of cumulative marijuana use (365 days of smoking pot x 5), one in two people on average remembered one word fewer out of a list of fifteen.
New data provided by the New Horizons mission showed that water ice on Pluto is much more common than we thought.
It's a song of ice and fire - scientists have just witnessed the eruption of the Big Ben volcano in the sub-Antarctic area.
The Zika virus that created an international state of emergency just got more scarier: apparently, it can be sexually transmitted. Such a case was reported in the US.
Some people have no trouble rising early and being productive, while others are most active during the evenings. This begs the question: are morning persons and night owls set apart by habit or biology? Habits certainly play a leading role, but all things being equal your genes might have a strong word to say in the matter.
Augmenting the simple bow and arrow marked a significant shift in human cognitive abilities.
Tornadoes are associated with the strongest and most violent storms, reaching winds of up to 300 miles per hour (480 km/h).
It may be possible to observe the presence of an advanced alien civilization by the effects produced if that civilization were to self-destruct through nuclear war, biological warfare, nanotechnological annihilation, or stellar pollution. Each case would generate unique detectable signs that could be identified by earth-based telescopes.
After shutting down its nuclear reactors, Japan needs to look elsewhere to generate energy. Problem is Japan is kinda crowded, so one ingenious company proposed a creative idea: install solar panels on water.
"Unless you've been in a wheelchair, it's very difficult to see all the various small details - what a person would actually need within an exoframe," said one Phoenix exoskeleton user. Developed by California robotics startup SuitX, this exoskeleton is the lightest on the market today. It's aim is to eventually become so cheap, durable and practical that it will make the wheelchair obsolete and the lives of millions of paraplegics a lot less daunting.
To the romantic eye, a tree swaying in the wind is a testimony of nature's heart beat. An engineer might be moved by the same feeling, but he might also add: "well, that looks like a lot of wasted energy."
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared a state of emergency following the Zika outbreak in South America. The virus was thought to be almost benign and doesn’t cause big problems. Hospitalization is almost never necessary, but Zika provided a nasty surprise. It became obvious that the disease causes birth defects such as microcephaly… but […]
The size of the brain isn't essential to superior cognitive abilities -- its shape and packing mechanism matter a lot, too. But while bran folding function is well established, 'the how' has been more elusive to determine. Now, researchers in the US and Europe claim they know what wrinkles the brain: basic physics.
The Zika outbreak in South America is spreading more and more, reaching pandemic levels.
South African scientists have recreated the quagga – an exotic animal related to the zebras that went extinct in the 19th century. Or better put, they created an animal that’s genetically similar to the quagga. The quagga is still a mysterious animal. There has been much debate over the status of the quagga in relation to […]
A new study from the University of Sydney found a surprising link between lower back pain and depression.
Using a special type of microscopy, researchers triggered and visualized a chemical reaction at atomic level.
China’s National Space Administration released a trove of images from their lunar rover and they’re spectacular. We’re talking hundreds of tantalizing, HD and never-before-seen images of the Moon! You can set up an account on China’s Science and Application Center for Moon and Deepspace Exploration website and have a look for yourself, view and download all the […]
The French government announced its plan to build a 1,000 kilometer (621 mile) long stretch of solar panel-paved roads over the next five years. The locations for deployments have yet to be revealed. The fossil fuel tax is expected to bring in between 200 to 300 million euros ($220 to 440 million) of funding for the project coined "Positive Energy" .
A few days ago, the health minister in Colombia warned that the country is extremely vulnerable to the Zika virus that’s spreading like wildfire through South America. He was right, as it turns out. Over 2100 pregnant Colombian women are already infected, as Zika has already been confirmed in 23 countries and territories in the Americas […]
The Ontario Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) mailed free nicotine patches to smokers to see if they really help you quit without any behavioral support. And for one in four of participants who kept to the treatment, it did.
In Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park poachers set thousands of snares to trap wildlife for meat. Inadvertently mountain gorillas -- listed as critically endangered -- get caught in the traps, and the young often die due to wounds or starvation. These sort of scenes are commonly witnessed by trackers working in the area to dismantle the snares, an uphill battle most of the time. What was startling though was a display of ingeniousness few cared to think was possible. Days after a young mountain gorilla was killed by a trap, trackers saw how a pair of four-year old gorillas worked together in coordination to dismantle a trap from the same area.
Using estimates of how many people are involved in some of the major alleged conspiracies, one scientist modeled how long it would take for them to be revealed to the public.
For the first time, the British have received a green light for editing the genes of embryos. They will remove or edit different genes of embryos and see how they develop for seven days, before destroying them.
Some 2,000 years ago, there were only 170 million people in the whole planet. How did we get to 7 billion?
Europe's laser communication network has taken off!
The moon does more than cause tides and delight lovers - according to a new study, it can also affect how much rainfall falls down on the ground.
Belemnites are an extinct order of cephalopods ("cephalo" meaning head and "pod" meaning leg) that lived during the Mesozoic era, some 200 to 65 million years ago. They were elongated organisms, resembling today's squids, only tinier and cuter.
A general trend was found: those animals with the highest brain/body size ratio were better at solving a problem they had never seen before.
