gear Push settings
Put down that clump of Whale vomit*, there’s a better kind of perfume now: “Sexual Sweat.” In a possible attempt to level the field for scientists everywhere, researchers Wen Zhou and Denise Chen of Rice University presented 20 women with samples of human sweat, both produced from times when male volunteers viewed either pornography or a […]
We’ve all experienced it: walking from one room to another and forgetting what you wanted to do – or get, or find. But according to a new research from University of Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky, passing through doorways might be exactly the trigger for these memory lapses. “Entering or exiting through a doorway […]
An international team of researchers working in Italy recently conducted a study which concluded that the revolutionary results claimed by their colleagues at CERN may be faulty. They studied the same neutrino particles reported to travel faster than light and claim their test clearly shows this is wrong. The announcement was made in September, and […]
Frogs are able to leap across huge distances, multiple times greater than their body length, however their leg muscles are only a fraction as powerful as they should be to support these kind of jumps. A new study by researchers from Brown University shows that this ability doesn’t come from leg muscles, but lies in […]
The idea which states that nothing can travel faster than light is a corner stone of modern day physics, upon which scientists have built up models and theories of how the world, the Universe, works. If the statement is proven to be false, than our understanding of physics becomes undermined, and as such needs to […]
As the outside world looks in, it may seem absurd that thousands of Penn State students have vehemently (even violently) protested head football coach Joe Paterno’s recent dismissal. In the wake of a horrifying, decades-long child sex abuse scandal, Paterno’s silence on the matter—effectively enabling abuse to continue for years at the hands of his defensive […]
Yesterday, NASA held a press briefing where scientists involved in a recently published study, of intense consequences to the scientific community, and people looking for signs of extraterestrial life alike, discussed how Jupiter’s icy satellite has great chances of fostering life in the warm oceans beneath its surface. Europa’s surface is covered in a […]
Fossilized moth wings, that are blue after death were yellow-green during lifetime, suggesting a colorful and creative method of camouflage. Camouflage and warning The moths lived in a difficult period, some 47 million years ago, in a period where life was still trying to fill the gaps left behind by the major dinosaur extinction; they […]
Stem cell research is still extremely controversial and problematic due to the numerous financial, social, and political pressures often applied on this kind of study. However, as some of the biggest companies working in the field throw the towel, others claim they will not stop their pioneering work, that bring eyesight to the blind and […]
Paleontologists have unearthed the remains of numerous whale fossils, dating back from seven million years ago, in Northern Chile. On further analysis it was revealed that the site in question is actually home to numerous other specimens, so far no less than 80 fossils have been recovered from the whale graveyard. “In 15 days, we […]
Mark Post is a vascular scientists at the University of Maastricht in Holland. His plan is to create a lab-grown hamburger, just to prove that it could be done. It won’t come cheap though – not by any standards. Post estimates that it will cost some €250,000 to assemble the thin layers of muscle strips […]
Ross Technology Corp, a company that focuses on steel products has created a new product based on the spray known as NeverWet – which aside from being useful, is also pretty cool. Now, this might not seem particularly interesting, but it has a myriad of applications; it is built from nanoparticles and it is hydrophobic […]
It’s only so often that you get to see geology in the making, and this is a remarkable event indeed. Volcanologists studying an undersea volcano erupting near the island of El Hierro announced that the volcano, which is located at just 70 meters below sea level, will probably create a new island. The Canarian hot […]
The Moon still holds numerous unanswered questions, and among these, perhaps the most interesting is the one regarding its lost magnetism. Why is it that the Moon had magnetism? Now, two teams working separately seem to have found two complementary explanations. Rock magnetism It all started when the Apollo missions brought back samples of moon […]
University of Nottingham researchers are currently involved in synthetic biology project, whose scope and prospects are so ambitious, that if successful it will completely revolutionize the field of science. Their aim – developing programmable cellular life which can work as an “operating system.” Currently, scientists are looking studying how to make the E. coli bacteria […]
The black and white spotted horses found on cave paintings existed during the last ice age, some 25.000 years ago, according to a new research published by scientists from the University of York. The ancient Dalmatian style painted horses have puzzled archaeologists and paleontologists for years now, as they were unable to figure out just […]
The city of Dubuque, Iowa is a quite and clean city, housing a population of 60,000, making it the 8th largest city in the state. If you happen to pass through this tranquil ville you might get fooled to think this is just another town like any other, however this is not the case – […]
There is still a good chance we might find life on Mars, but if we really want to do this, we’re going to have to dig a little deeper – literally. A new study conducted by NASA claims that if there ever was any life on the red planet, then it probably thrived below the […]
A fresh look at some already known fossilized remains revealed quite a surprise: they turned out to be the earliest people in Europe. From analyzing stone tools and other such artifacts, researchers have long believed the earliest Homo Sapiens to settle on the continent some 42-44.000 years ago; the only problem is, there were no […]
A very intriguing theory says that the Vikings used to navigate through traitorous Arctic waters, and possibly even through the Atlatic towards North America, by using a coveted mineral called the “sunstone“. These glowing, fabled stones used to guide the northsmen by revealing the position of the sun even when it was obscured by cloud […]
As it turns out, zombies are not really only science fiction. Just a while ago I was telling you about a species of fungus that can turn ants into zombies, and how life on Earth may have actually originated from some ‘zombie aliens‘. Recently, researchers from the Natural History Museum in London have found evidence […]
The gecko is one of the most fascinating lizards, because of its feet’s unique ability of dry adherence to solid surfaces allowing it to surmount any geometry and making it an excellent climber in the process. Unlike other animals which employ a liquid or some kind of suction to climb walls, the gecko uses inter-molecular attraction forces known as […]
Trekkies might rejoice at the news that NASA has recently decided to fund a research group employed to study how tractor beam technology might become applicable in space exploration missions. The agency has awarded a $100,000 initial grant to a team of reserachers who will study three experimental techniques involving capturing small-particle samples with lasers. […]
Developing safe, reliable, compact, and cost-effective hydrogen storage technologies is one of the most technically challenging barriers to the widespread use of hydrogen as a form of energy. Hydrogen is a great fuel, and if used in perfect conditions it can power numerous applications. However, with today’s tech a hydrogen powered car can’t even travel […]
A biblical-like creature has sprung out into the world recently, when a two-headed albino milk snake was born – an event of extreme rarity. This comes right on the heels of the three-eyed fish found next to a nuclear power plant in Argentina. In this case, nature alone and its experimentation seems to be responsible. The snake hatched […]
I’m pretty sure some of you went out costumed as robots this Halloween weekend, be it as Star Wars’ C3PO (there’s always one at every party, and it never gets lame) or you simply strapped on a drawn out cardboard box. Well, I hope you all had your fair share of laughs and scares, but […]
In the aftermath of September’s highly controversial announcement, that a particle with a speed larger than that of the light was recorded, CERN has announced that it has been re-running the experiment, in order to test the validity of the first. Now of course, when you claim you have a neutrino going faster than the […]
I’m a bit of a stand-up comedy fan, and no too long ago I used to gobble up anything Comedy Central cracked up, however somewhere along the line something terribly wrong happened – it stopped being funny anymore. Racial jokes? Died off for me after the first tastes like chicken line. Impressions? Whoo, I bet […]
The art of science is most evident when one manages to accurately assert truths about a given fact with little information provided. A great scientists knows how to properly churn information, turn it over a million sides and correlate it with other related facts to form a clear picture. It’s incredible for instance how astronomers […]
Hypnosis has been considered for the past 250 years by the scientific community as being nothing more than a cute trick, with little consideration put in for in-depth research into this highly controversial state. Some psychologists believe that a hypnotized person is unconscious, resembling a sleep walker, while modern research suggests that the case is […]
The sonic hedgehog gene got its name after researchers did some testing on fruit flies embryos, and found that the specimens which were modified to lack the gene developed spine-like projections. The gene itself is crucial to body development; to put it in layman terms, the sonic hedgehog gene makes sure that all your limbs […]
Floods are a major hazard to crops worldwide. This year alone, billions of dollars worth of crops came to waste after catastrophic floods raided Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Australia, Thailand, the UK and America, and famines have hit millions of people worldwide as a result of ruined agriculture. What if you could, however, engineer crops that could […]
The northern hemisphere is accustomed enough to the dazzling Aurora Borealis phenomena, an event which occurs when charged particles collide with atoms from the extreme latitude atmosphere. However, yesterday almost the whole North American continent was bewildered by an incredible spectacle of lights, as Aurora Borealis apparitions were reported as far south as Kansas, Arkansas […]
In the new mobile information age where smartphones have become an ever common part of our lives, there seems to be a dominant trend which tends to incorporate interactive touch screen capabilities to more and more consumer electronics. It’s pretty clear that our electronics are getting smarter day by day – I, for one, am […]
A team of Swedish scientists paired with a USC researcher to crack the Copiale Cipher, thus revealing secret rituals and beliefs of a secret German society that had a fascination for ophtalmology. Thousands of old and obscure symbols filled over 100 pages of text which was found in Berlin towards the end of the Cold […]
A new massive research from SMU’s Geothermal Laboratory, funded by a grant from Google.org has documented significant geothermal resources across the US (especially in the West), a resource that has the potential, with today’s technology, to produce over three million megawatts of green power – that’s 10 times more than coal plants currently produce. Sophisticated […]
This Friday morning NASA will upgrade its climate and weather observatory capabilities, when it’s set to launch a new, high-end satellite via a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket, which promises to significantally improve weather forecast and offer a significant leap forward to authorities in the face of calamities. The project, lengthy dubbed the National Polar-Orbiting […]
The little carnivorous animal has suffered one of the steepest population declines ever to be documented. In just 15 years, it went from being a common animal to the brink of extinction; and the cause is an unusual one: an infectious tumor. “Devil facial tumor disease has been a devastating, ongoing problem,” said Menna Jones […]
Scientists who observed an underwater eruption in 2009 concluded they observed a tear in the planetary crust that mimicks the birth of a subduction zone. Subduction takes place at convergent tectonic plate boundaries; basically, one plate slides below the other – an extremely complicated and complex process that drives along a series of other processes, […]
Deep in the Mariana Trench, about seven miles below the surface, researchers found huge single celled amoebas, making them not only completely surprisng and amazing, but also the creatures living at the biggest depth found so far. The team from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego studied and catalogued these xenophyophores, single-celled animals […]
Another powerful seismic event has taken place, this time in Turkey; the 7.2 earthquake in case struck eastern Turkey on Sunday, killing at least 60 people and turning most buildings into big chunks of concrete and metal. However, Turkish scientists grimly predict that the victim count could easily go above 1000, as housing conditions are […]
They didn’t actually use other mastodons as killer pets, instead it’s been found that early hunters used mastodon bones for making deadly sharp spear heads. One interesting consequence to this is that Mastodon game season seems to have opened 800 years earlier than previously thought, offering a possible explanation for the blitzkrieg mass extinction of […]
Water is everywhere on Earth – that’s easy to see for anybody. But why and how it got here, that’s a dilemma that until now, hasn’t been fully answered. A new comet study has shown how a ring of cold water vapor can encircle a young planet, while another related one explains a hailstorm of […]
Satellite deployments make up most of the space launches in any given year, however it’s also a highly risky operation. Every satellite launch costs around $10,000 per pound, and basically it’s fairly common for the total cost of a satellite to jump in the tens of millions of dollars range. Currently, in the geosynchronous orbit there […]
At the nano scale, even the slightest of motions can be harnessed and transformed into useful work. Material science researchers at the University of Wisconsin, for instance, have developed a very thin plastic belt capable of vibrating from low velocity fluid flow, such as one’s breath. Made out of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), the microbelt not only […]
Scientists at London’s Imperial College have successfully managed to create biological logic gates, indispensible for the production of electronical devices, simply our of bacteria and DNA. Though the research detailed in a recently published study in the journal Nature Communications was anything but simple, it provides an incredible advancement in the field of biotechnology. “Logic […]
Another one from the realm of James Cameron’s movies – a robot that can build other robots. While the technology is still not exactly Skynet material, University of Pennsylvania’s Modlab foambot is an extremely interesting working concept capable of deploying itself with modular robot components, and practically assemble a new bot on the spot depending on the […]
While the Earth is steadily being depleted of its natural resources, it might become imperative to look to the sky for alternatives. Studies so far alone has shown that the moon has twenty times more titanium and platinum than anywhere on Earth, along with helium 3, a rare isotope of helium, which is nonexistent on our planet, […]
Archaeologists have uncovered fully intact Viking boat burial site in the United Kingdom, in the west Highlands. Artefacts buried along the viking suggest he was a high ranking warrior, revered and respected. According to Dr. Hannah Cobb, the “artefacts and preservation make this one of the most important Norse graves ever excavated in Britain”. The […]
What you just saw in the video above is a perfect demonstration of the quantum levitation effect, through a fairly simple set-up made by Tel Aviv University scientists, comprised of a track and a semiconductor. The quantum levitation is actually a perfect demonstration of the Meissner effect, which describes the expulsion of a magnetic field […]
