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Today, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket blasted off Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 4:10 p.m. EDT (2010 GMT) carrying the Dragon capsule to orbit, on slate for its rendezvous with the International Space Station where it's tasked with a resupply mission. Instead of dropping in the ocean like the gazillion other rockets before it, the first stage of Falcon was programmed to make a controlled landing on a "autonomous spaceport drone ship." The rocket did land on the spaceport, which is amazing in itself, but unfortunately it flipped over post landing and was damaged beyond repair. So, just almost!
Some 900 Dutch citizens have banded together and filled a lawsuit against the Dutch government over human rights, citing the latter's lack of decisive action against climate change. This is the first such case in Europe where a group of citizens holds its government responsible for ineffective climate policy, and also the first to be based on human rights law.
This is the first map in a series of maps that will be stitched together to form a grand picture of how dark matter is distributed across the Universe. Dark matter is basically invisible, which is why it's called dark in the first place, so scientists rely on indirect observations like the gravitational effects it poses to locate and map it. What we're seeing now is only 3% of the area of sky that the Dark Energy Survey (DES) will document over its slated five-year-long mission.
Strange weather in the East Coast and California's worst drought in history have been linked to a peculiar warm mass of water out in the Pacific Ocean. A new study published in the Geophysical Research Letters explain its origins and how its warm waters also warmed surface temperatures out in the coast, and displaced marine life, a major concern at the moment. Worth noting that research thus far suggests that 'warm blob', as it's been dubbed, has been primarily attributed to natural variability, and not global warming.
The threat of punishment and humans' seemingly innate tendency to copy other behaviors form the basis of a psychological model that explains how traditions or entrenched ideals are formed and maintained in society.
It's common sense - in order to brush your teeth, you need water, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. Well, a company from Japan wants to change all that: they've developed a nanotechnology toothbrush that basically eliminates the need for toothpaste.
With the development of the internet and technology, data availability is rarely a problem - it's what you do with the data that actually matters. As a matter of fact, analyzing huge data sets and looking for patterns is a big part of what programmers do today. In what promises to be a huge change, computer scientists have developed so-called probabilistic programming languages, which let researchers mix and match different machine-learning techniques.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft already has an impressive resume - it's traveled to the strange area between Mars and Jupiter and managed to start orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres, even though Ceres measures only 950 kilometers (590 miles) in diameter and has a very small gravitational field. But it's not stopping just yet - after previously revealing a number of black and white pictures, Dawn has now provided a color photograph, but here's the thing - it poses more questions than it answers.
A "massive methane hotspot" sounds pretty bad... and bad it is - much worse than previously thought. In 2014, NASA reported that the methane hotspot is responsible for producing the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane seen over the United States – more than triple the standard ground-based estimate. But the methane, a potent greenhouse gas, might have even more drastic consequences on the climate of our planet.
You’re standing in a crowded space when suddenly the fire alarm goes off. Do you a) immediately proceed to the exit, or b) wait for other people and head out as part of a group? The answer probably depends on who you’re with at the time, and according to a paper published recently in the journal PLOS ONE, the distinction may be crucial during emergency evacuations.
Researchers have long known that Mars has water in the form of ice, but now, after years and years of research, we might finally have the decisive clue that our planetary neighbor has liquid water on its surface. The key find was perchlorate - a substance that significantly lowers the freezing point, so that water doesn't freeze into ice, but remains liquid and briny.
There's so much you can do with a smartphone today - much more than just browsing the web or social media. When you can combine them in a network, however, the possibilities might be endless. For instance, researchers at Caltech and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) are working on an earthquake early warning system based on the collective data fed in by thousands of smartphones. Only a couple of countries in the world give vulnerable cities an early warning - often just enough time to hit cover and save your life - but smartphones are virtually ubiquitous all over the world, even in poor countries which lack basic infrastructure like roads or flushing toilets.
Astronomers have known for quite a while that Mars has distinct polar ice caps, but the Red Planet might also have belts of glaciers at its central latitudes in both the southern and northern hemispheres. These huge glaciers are covered by a thick layer of dust which masks them and makes them seem like they are actually part of the surface of the ground.
European males are on average 11 centimeters taller now than they were in the 1870s, which is quite a lot by all means. Everybody makes fun of Napoleon for being short, but as a matter of fact he was actually standing above average height! Thank better nutrition and medicine for that. Even so, what in the world are the Dutch eating that makes them this tall? The average Dutchman now stands over six feet tall, and while the rest of the world seems to have stopped, they're still riding a growing trendline. The answer by actually be evolutionary - the tall Dutchmen have more babies.
The US Department of Energy (DoE) has sealed a deal with Intel worth $200 million to build what's supposed to be the world's most powerful computer in 2018: the Aurora. The behemoth will be based on a next-generation Cray supercomputer, code-named “Shasta,” and will use Intel’s HPC scalable system framework. Aurora will likely reach a peak performance of 180 petaflop/s, or 180 quadrillion floating point operations per second (completed algorithm action, not just instruction). For comparison, a 2.5 GHz processor has a theoretical performance of 10 billion FLOPS.
Some kids seem to enjoy school activities more than others, but while efforts seem to be concentrated on improving teaching, a new research suggests that genes play a major role as well - sometimes they're more important than the environment, as far as motivation and doing well in school are concerned. The findings were reported by a team led Yulia Kovas of Goldsmiths, University of London that aggregated a swath of studies which included 13,000 twins aged nine to 16 from six countries, including the UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, Russia and the US.
Just like our own planet, the sun goes through seasonal changes in its activity, waxing and waning over the course of nearly two years driven by changes in newly discovered bands of strong magnetic fields. This variability helps shape the sun's long-term 11 year cycle, yet again part of a longer cycle that lasts 22 days. Largely unpredictable, the sun constantly spews highly charged particles known as coronal mass ejections which can severely affect power grids, satellites and even airplane passengers. During its seasonal peaks, however, the sun is much more prone to solar storms, so understanding how this cyclic variability happens is key to averting a potential disaster.
Dealing with invasive species is one of the challenges that accompanies globalization and in many areas of the world, it's becoming harder and harder to tackle this issue. In the Colorado lake, 3,000 Koi fish (Japanese carp) are now swarming the water, wiping out native species and dramatically altering the environment.
When tyrannosaurs ruled the world, no one was safe from them - not even other tyrannosaurs. The skull of an unfortunate adolescent tyrannosaur shows signs of brutal fight; the individual was defeated and then eaten by members of its own species, new research shows.
The same genes that are responsible for height have been linked to heart disease as well, according to British researchers who found shorter people are at a greater risk. For every 2.5 inch difference in height, the chance of contracting a heart disease increases by 13.5 percent. In other words, a 5-foot-tall person has an average 32 percent higher risk of heart disease than a person who's 5-foot 6-inches tall, according to the researchers.
Renewable energy and electric vehicles not only need high density storage mediums to become successful, but ones that can be replenished fast as well. A new battery, very similar to the popular lithium-ion variety used to power your smartphone, charges in under a minute and still works perfectly after 7000 cycles. Moreover, the battery is based on aluminium making it both easier and cheaper to manufacture.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge in England claim to have unraveled one of the great mysteries of electromagnetism, and believe their work in ultra-small antennas could not only revolutionize global communications, but also explain some of the tricky areas where electromagnetism and quantum physics overlap.
Hallucinogenic tea brewed from South American plants might treat depression, according to a new study - but don't start your homebrewing just yet; it's a small study, and there are still unclear aspects about it.
When it comes to alien life, we’ve had our hopes crushed time and time again. As the Moon was being observed with telescopes in medieval times, many thought it might be inhabited, but then we learned there’s not atmosphere and no water on it. Then Venus, our sister planet turned out to be completely unsuitable for life, […]
Arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, is one of the most common phobias humans have. But out of all the spiders that live today, really very few are dangerous - so why is it that we fear them so much then? Researchers from Columbia University believe they might have found the answer to that - and it's strictly related to human evolution.
It’s the favorite hash tag we’ve had since #OverlyHonestMethods: scientists are flooding Twitter with their own revelations and reasons why they feel they’re scientists. It’s awesome because it highlights how special and unique being a scientist really is. #IAmAScientistBecause I want to explain to people how much we all NEED nature. http://t.co/LaX9G8jAkx pic.twitter.com/5AVVPBwD6f — Mark Spalding […]
Dr. Milton Wainwright is trying to convince the world that the found alien life floating some 25 miles in our planet’s atmosphere – but while tabloids gobbled up his story like no tomorrow, the scientific community is much more reluctant to accept his results. Is there any truth to these claims? Let’s have a look. If […]
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, if one galaxy is located directly behind another, then the front one would bend the light of the more distant one, in such a way that you'd only see the behind one as a ring. Less than 100 years ago, many researchers thought we'd never see one, but astronomers have managed to take several pictures that confirm it - as is the example you see below.
What happens when NASA and IBM sponsor a hackathon and offer their infrastructure to 10,000 researchers, coders, entrepreneurs end educators? Well, I'm not really sure... but it's definitely gonna be something awesome.
You've heard all about controlling robotic arms or prosthesis with thoughts, but what about genes? In a deceptively simple experiment, bioengineers in Switzerland combined a classical brain-computer interface with a biological implant, which effectively allowed a genetic switch to be operated by brain activity. Imagine wearing a "funny" cap fitted with electrodes and a tiny implant, then controlling your mood by thinking the perfect "pure" thoughts that would cause a cascade of feel good chemicals. The same could be made for painkillers, so you can deliver just the right amount. Really, there's a lot of potential floating around this thing.
There aren't blood vessels you're seeing, but itsy bitsy strands of artificial spider silk. For some years, researchers have been investigating synthesizing spider silk for a variety of very good reasons. Spider silk is the toughest known natural material, and has been explored in its synthetic variety for use as bulletproof vests, synthetic skin, biodegradable water bottles and even computer electronics. These strands presented above, however, serve a different purpose: as a bandaid meant to help regenerate skin and heal wounds.
By the time you've finished reading this sentence, thousands of lightning bolts had already discharged enormous amounts of energy onto Earth's surface. Now, a map compiled by NASA using two decades worth of measurements shows which places are hit most often. For instance, land is hit more frequently than the ocean, as is the equatorial region compared to other regions of the globe.
Just like Pluto, the iconic dinosaur genus was demoted decades ago and classified under another sauropod genus. But a more sophisticated taxonomy recently published by researchers in the UK and Portugal warrants a revisit of the shelved, but never forgotten Brontosaurus.
"Lose weight NOW", "You'll never believe how [this person] got slim", "An easy way to lose extra pounds" - big claims, with little to back them up. Diets and weight loss programs are popping everywhere nowadays, and they've done so for years and years, but does the science actually back them up? Kimberly Gudzune, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins found that many diet plans have zero or very little rigorous scientific evidence backing them up.
The human brain is one of the biggest and most intriguing mysteries scientists are tackling. It's an incredibly active, bustling place that keeps us going and effectively makes us the people we are. There are about 100 billion neurons processing and transmitting information through electrical and chemical signals and to make things even more complicated, each of these neurons has about 10,000 different connections to neighboring brain cells.
A 1,000 year old Anglo-Saxon ‘eye salve’ made from onion, garlic, wine and part of a cow’s stomach wipes out 90 percent of antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) - much better than modern antibiotics. It also does a great job at treating styes, small abscesses on the eyelid.
Blind rats learned to navigate mazes just as well as those that could see, after scientists strapped a simple geomagnetic compass - the kind that's found in your smartphone - fitted with electrodes directly onto their brains. Though they're not naturally equipped to sense magnetic fields, the rats' brains demonstrated tremendous plasticity and effectively incorporated a new sense! We can only presume this is possible in the case of humans as well, so the team from Japan which made the study believes blind people could incorporate a similar device - minus the brain hack. There are other alternatives after all, like say an iPhone app that acoustically alerts the blind person which way to turn or a sensor directly fitted into a walking cane.
Some areas of South America are so special and magical... that you might even find a dragon - or actually, three of them! Tiny dragons, that is, but still, it's something. Postdoc Omar Torres-Carvajal discovered three new species of dwarf dragons in the Andes of Peru and Ecuador.
The future is here - scientists at a Polish company have developed a liquid body armor. Technically speaking, it's a non-Newtonian shear-thickening fluid (STF) that is lighter than current body armor materials, and might resists the impact better than Kevlar.
In unanimous vote, the city of Vancouver, Canada, passed its Greenest City Action Plan – to become the world’s greenest city by 2020; one of their goals is to use only renewable energy in only 5 years. In light of that and other recent developments, it’s starting to feel like much of the world might actually go […]
If you ever dropped food on the pavement, don't feel too bad. It'll get scrapped bit by bit by the ever resourceful ants, so you're actually doing a favor to these swarms of critters. But have you ever wondered why ants can eat ice cream, hot dogs or just about every kind of junk food we unwittingly throw at them? Some researchers looked at this question and found that some particular ant species have seemingly adapted to consume junk food.
Settling a long debate, Princeton University researchers found that a class of materials called frustrated magnets - called so because they're not magnetic, though they should be - can exhibit the Hall effect. This happens only at very, very low temperatures close to absolute zero, when physics transcends familiar, classical behavior into the quantum domain. First observed in 1879 by E.H. Hall, the effect describes how current deflects to one side of the ribbon when an electrically charged conductor is subjected to a magnetic field. It has since been exploited for use in in sensors for devices such as computer printers and automobile anti-lock braking systems. The current study is particularly important since it may reveal more about how transmission of frictionless electricity works (superconductivity), while also offering hints and clues that may help researchers devise the oh-so heralded quantum computers of the future.
Tomorrow's bridges, tunnels and other engineering structures might be built with a different type of "smart" concrete: Belgian researchers at the University of Ghent have created a self-repairing type of concrete.
Higher education is facing a crisis, and professor Bowen offers some solutions.
This hybrid image combines low spatial components of a photo of Marilyn Monroe and high spatial frequency components of an image of Albert Einstein. At lower resolution (look at your computer screen from farther away), the low spatial component is more dominant, while at closer up the higher frequency should be more persistent. So, as the image gradually enlarges people with good eyesight should see Albert Einstein, while those with poor vision will pick up a blurry image, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who made the optical illusion.
Homes cleaned at least once a week with bleach might provide an environment that puts children at a higher risk of catching viral infections. The observational study suggests the modest, yet significant higher risk of infection may be due to a suppression of the immune system. Also, it might very well be due to the irritant properties of volatile or airborne compounds generated during the cleaning process that can damage the lining of lung cells, sparking inflammation and making it easier for infections to take hold.
Marine life is on the brink of experiencing its sixth mass extinction, a disruption that is expected to occur very rapidly once the gears are set in motion (cataclysmic chain events). Now, a new study suggests that it might take a full millennium for marine life to recover from a potential climate change-driven die off, not hundreds as previously suggested.
Exploiting plants' natural response to stress caused by drought, researchers have engineered crops that build tolerance and can withstand longer without water, while also extending the point of no return when no amount of water can save the withered plant. This "buy more" time method might hopefully help vulnerable crops fare better during long periods of drought - like the one currently in full swing in California, which is experiencing its worst drought in recorded history - and increase yields.
A new test analyzes the free DNA inside the blood of pregnant women to detect Down Syndrome in fetuses with a greater accuracy than standard tests. The test can be made by women between 10 and 14 weeks pregnant.
Most of the 100 children hospitalized with acute flaccid myelitis haven't recovered from paralysis and weak limbs. CC BY-NC 2.0
