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New theory claims Neanderthals went extinct due to larger eyes

Apparently, every month brings forth a new theory on the demise of the Neanderthals – the cookies one being that bunnies were the main culprit. This month’s theory claims that the Neanderthal skull has larger eye sockets than the human one, therefore it had bigger eyes, therefore the brain spent more of its processing power […]

Astonishing news from NASA: evidence of hospitable environment for ancient Martian life found

I just finished watching NASA‘s latest and definitely most important Curiosity briefing to date. There the Curiosity team announced findings nothing short of spectacular: a slew of chemical elements, minerals and other chemicals have been found in the rover’s first drilled rock sample on Mars,  hinting that, at least in the vicinity of the sample […]

Creating virtually indestructible, self healing circuits

Imagine if the chip in your phone of laptop could not only defend, but also repair itself on the fly, recovering from simple scratches or battery issues to total transistor failure. It may sound like science fiction, but it is exactly what a team from CalTech has done. The team working at the High-Speed Integrated […]

Seas of molten and solidified rock on the Moon can be mistaken for pristine rocks

A new analysis of data from NASA’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) shows that molten rock created by lunar impacts has been around for much longer than previously believed. During its earliest days, the Moon was covered in an ocean of molten rock, pretty much like every planet out there. As that lunar magma ocean […]

Mummies revealed that clogged arteries plagued the ancient world

You’d be tempted to think that clogged arteries are a problem of the modern world, with all the lack of exercise and unhealthy eating; but as ancient mummies revealed, even when we were hunter-gatherers, people still had arterial issues. “There’s a belief that if we go back in time, everything’s going to be OK,” says […]

Reversible evolution demonstrated for the first time after dust mite genetic study

A rather well rooted idea in evolutionary biology says that evolution itself is non-reversible. Simply put, once an organism has specialized certain traits, it can not return to its ancestral traits – this is commonly referred to as Dollo’s law. In a way, you could say that by looking at Dollo’s law, evolution isn’t ever […]

Laying a roadmap for future artificial leafs

MIT researchers have published a detailed analysis of all the factors that could limit the efficiency of such a system, basically laying a roadmap for a research program to improve the efficiency of so-called artificial leafs. An artificial leaf has to produce a storable fuel, such as hydrogen, instead of electricity for immediate use; the […]

How the brain concentrates at one speaker at time in noisy crowds

It’s remarkable how adaptable the human brain is especially in these extremely busy, crowded and most of all noise times. Focus is key, of course, and recently researchers have shown for instance how the brain hones in at one speaker at a time when subjected to multiple external stimuli, like other people jabbering around at […]

Germ antibiotic resistance 'as big a risk as terrorism'

With the continuous advancements in medicine, it’s easy to forget that not only are we adapting to new species of germs, but they are adapting to our medicine as well – sometimes even much faster than us. The danger posed by growing resistance to antibiotics should be ranked along with terrorism, the government’s chief medical […]

Topological insulator super-material found in nature too

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time the existence of a naturally occurring topological insulator – an exotic class of materials that possesses the unique ability to conduct electricity and the surface, but not on the inside. Previously, topological insulators have been studied and created in labs only, however now a mineral has been found […]

Creating glasses that don't fog up

Creating glasses that don’t fog or freeze up could not only bring a world of comfort to millions of people, but it could also have a myriad of applications in cameras, microscopes, mirrors and refrigerated displays – to name just a few. While there have been many advancements in this field, so far, the main problem […]

Russian scientist admits no new life forms in Vostok lake

Just a few days ago, we were telling you about the exciting new findings in lake Vostok – a new bacteria unlike anything else found so far retrieved from the lake sealed beneath 2 kilometers of ice for 1 million years. Now, the head of genetics laboratory at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics […]

Red wine's link to health gains support

About a decade ago, researchers started paying closer attention to the much hailed healthy properties of red wine. Particularly, a compound found in red wine (resveratrol – also found in the “anti-cancer beer”) was shown by some to provide a healthier and longer life. However, while the claim was supported with evidence by several teams, it […]

Internet for robots comes online

Just recently European scientists have released the first part of the  Rapyuta program – a global world wide web for robots. Now, don’t get this wrong. This isn’t a place where robots can chat, surf websites or browse facebook. On Rapyuta, robots will have access to open data like a massive database, as well as additional […]

Stonehenge may have been burial site for stone age elite

The mystery surrounding Stonehenge is still actual, puzzling archaeologists for decades; how was it built, why there, and most interesting, what purpose does it serve? Now, after dating some bone fragments of men, women and children, a team of researchers believe they have the answer. Centuries before the imposing monument was raised, the site started […]

A new Dinosaur species and the Crocodilian Connection

Paleontologists spend a majority of their working years studying fossils with only one objective – to unearth a discovery that will further benefit mankind’s understanding of dinosaurs. One such recent discovery established the presence of a hitherto unknown herbivore dinosaur. This discovery was made possible thanks to efforts by Clint Boyd of the South Dakota […]

Antarctica in the past: warm and flat, before glaciers shaped it

We have a rather sound image in our heads of Antarctica: cold, barren and damn well inhospitable. Million of years ago before a big freeze turned the continent into a huge popsicle, Antarctica was flat, covered in vegetation and riddled with flowing rivers and life. University of Arizona researchers have sampled key sediments from the Lambert Graben […]

Buried Mars river tells of recent megaflood

Our understanding and appreciation of Mars has greatly shifted in the past decade alone. If previously scientists used to thought the planet had been dead and bared geologically-wise for billions of years, recent evidence shows that Mars has been marked by a series of geological events. Using radar technology, scientists have now found water-carved channels buried […]

Algae thrives on battery acid, borrows genes from its neighbors

Life finds a way – the red alga Galdieria sulphuraria gives a really good argument to support that statement. In the hot springs of Yellowstone Park, it uses photosynthesis to produce its necessary nutrients. But in dark, murky, toxic mineshafts in drainage that are about as acidic as battery acid, not only does it survives, […]

Long term climate study suggests record warming is ahead of us

By observing several indicators, a team of researchers from Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences concluded that in as few as 87 years from now, temperatures are expected to be bigger than anytime in the existence of the human species. Paleoclimatic research is providing a more detailed look on how the […]

Russian researchers find "new bacteria" in Vostok Lake

A while ago, we were telling you about the very exciting environment that is lake Vostok. The lake has been sealed under ice for more than a million years; researchers believed that it still harbored life, possibly bacterian life that evolved on a parallel evolution line. Now, Russian researchers believe they confirmed that hunch, finding […]

"Adam" figure of all men is 340.000 years old

You may understand that all people are different, but it takes a lot of genetics to understand just how different humans really are. Albert Perry for example has something spectacular in his genome: his Y chromosome is so distinct, so easily identifiable that it basically revealed new information about our species. Working their way around […]

Quantum mechanics saves the day: gravity is safe for Einstein again

To be quite honest, there are moments when I feel that I don’t understand quantum mechanics at all – the phenomena involved in the field are so complex and counter intuitive one can only stop and wonder if God does in fact play dice with the Universe… but at any rate, the advancements produced by […]

A scientific explanation for the "phantom limb"

Every once in a while, some people who have had a limb, organ or some other body part amputated or removed still experience it, feel its pain and experience the sensation that it’s still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts. This sensation is typically referred to as  phantom limb. Now, […]

Fossils of Crocodilian, Hippo-Like Species found in Panama

Paleontologists from the University of Florida have unearthed remarkably well-preserved fossils of two crocodilians and a mammal previously unknown to science during recent Panama excavations that began in 2009. The animals lived during the Miocene, a period that lasted from about 23.03 to 5.332 million years ago; the flora and fauna from the Miocene was […]

Tasting the surface of Europa

If you were to lick the surface of Jupiter‘s icy moon Europa, you would actually be sampling a bit of the ocean beneath – at least that’s what a new paper by Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and Kevin Hand from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory concludes. Their […]

Water vortex loop ties itself a knot [VIDEO]

Researchers at University of Chicago have managed the difficult task of tying water vortex loops into knots, a feat akin to tying a knot out of a smoke ring. The implications of their research might further our understanding of physics and how the universe works. Knotted vortices have been theorized for well over a century, […]

Cicada wing destroys bacteria solely through its physical structure

The veined wing of the clanger cicada kills bacteria is able to destroy bacteria by its structure alone – one of the first structures ever found that can do this. The clanger cicada is an insects that looks like something between a fly and a locust; its wings are covered with a vast hexagonal array […]

A tribute to the Apollo 14 [fantastic photos]

Apollo 14 was the eighth manned mission in the United States Apollo program and the third to land on the Moon. Here, we present a stunning photo album with the shuttle, the crew, and the Moon.  

New technique bypasses Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

A group of researchers at University of Rochester and the University of Ottawa have found a way to bypass Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle, and measure key quantum properties directly for the first time like the polarization states of light. The technique might provide valuable in encoding qubits, the building blocks of quantum information theory. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle […]

Volcans helped slow down global warming

Climate change deniers were ecstatic – our planet wasn’t warming as fast as models predicted it; ha! Everything crumbles down, global warming is a hoax and all is good in the world, right? Wrong. The main question in science is “Why?”, and researchers started asking the question. Are all the models wrong, is there something […]

Analysis of King Richard's mummified heart reveals preservation process

A group of French researchers have published a paper in which they reveal how King Richard I, also known as Richard the Lionheart, had its heart mummified after he succumbed from gangrene in 1199.  Apparently the great monarch’s heart was preserved in mercury, mint and frankincense, among other sweet-smelling plants. As it was customary at the time, Richard’s […]

Rats' brains connect to form an organic computer

In an incredible feat of neuroscience and communications, researchers at Duke University School of Medicine formed a link between pairs of rats by electronically linking their brains. As such, the rats could exchange motor and tactile information between each other. In one particular case, the experiment showed that a pair of linked rats – one rat […]

NASA releases global salinity map

NASA has, for the first time, released a global map of ocean salinity. The first thing that popped up for me was the pulse of freshwater gushing from the Amazon, but other major features are worth noticing. An invisible seam divides the salty Arabian Sea from the fresher waters of the Bay of Bengal and […]

Big food corporations work with corrupt government agencies to eliminate "small time" competition and take over the industry

As you sit in the morning and have your daily coffee or tea and enjoy your breakfast, take a moment to think where that food actually comes from. Odds are, it’s not coming from your local farm; nope, odds are, it comes from a handful of companies. Three companies now account for more than 40 […]

Stunning 500 million year fossil unearthed [GeoPicture of the week]

Just one of the many reasons why I love geology – paleontologists have unearthed extraordinarily preserved fossils of a 520-million-year-old sea creature, one of the oldest animal fossils ever found. The animal in case is an arthropod called a fuxhianhuiid – you may remember him from this post, in which I described a lovely book […]

Supermassive black hole spin measured for first time - nears the speed of light

Astronomers have made the first accurate measurement of a supermassive black hole’s spin, providing new insights that might help scientists probe the mysteries the surround them. Supermassive black holes have an incredibly huge gravitational pull that doesn’t let anything in its surroundings escape its hungry maw, be it dust, rock or even light. Some are […]

Tadpoles can see through eyes implanted in their tails

Most animals have eyes in the vicinity of their brains, typically inside the head, since these are very sensible organs that require a very sophisticated neural link. Recently, biologists at Tufts University have shown that they could implant working eyes in other locations as well, after they granted blind tadpoles vision after they implanted eyes in […]

Amazing buzz saw fish mystery finally solved

In 1899 the famous Russian paleontologist Alexander Petrovich Karpinsky published a paper in which he described a peculiar fossil resembling what can only be called today as a “buzz saw”, but whose barer escaped scientists. Many speculations have been made since then, but most recently, using advanced SCAN scans, scientists at Idaho State University have asserted that […]

Infrared holographic imaging allows firefighters to see through flames

I have nothing but the deepest admiration and respect for fighters – always faithful in the face of peril and always ready to put their necks on the line in order to save people from the hellish depths. As one can imagine, firefighting tech has evolved a great deal from simple fireproof clothing and a […]

Robotic bat wing teaches scientists new things about aerodynamics

For some time now, researchers have been experimenting with the idea of an aircraft that operates with flapping wings, just like insects or birds do, instead of conventional flat and long wings. The idea is that flapping wings allow a much greater degree of control and stability, allowing the aircraft to perform maneuvers otherwise impossible. […]

What cockroaches can teach us about balance

Cockroaches are maybe the most amazing insects in the animal kingdom – they’re simply made to survive. These little buggers can survive in sub-zero temperatures, can withstand a lethal dose of radiation up to 15 times of that for humans, can live without food for a whole month and … they can live with a […]

Potential gap in weather satellite coverage could lead to (even) worse weather forecasts

If you think weather forecasts are bad enough as it is, then I’ve got some bad news for you – according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the weather monitoring network is in a lot of trouble. The main concern is that U.S.-owned satellites are aging, and there are serious concerns […]

Baby's ability to interpret languages is innate, research shows

Despite having brains that are still “under construction”, babies are able, even three months before full term, to distinguish between different syllables. It was recently shown that full born babies, even just a few days after they are born, display remarkable linguistic sophistication: they can distinguish between two different languages [1], they can recognizes their […]

Ancient, long-lost continent found under the Indian Ocean

Evidence of drowned remnants of an ancient microcontinent have been found in sand grains from the beaches of a small Indian Ocean island, according to a new research. Zircons and volcanoes This evidence was found in Mauritius, a volcanic island 900 kilometres east of Madagascar which serves as an exotic destination for many tourists. Basaltic […]

Graphene can multiply light, demonstrating new immense energy potential

We’ve never shun away from praising the almost miraculous properties of graphene, the wonder material set to become even more paradigm shifting than plastic. Graphene has found been found to have the potential to revolutionize a myriad of scientific fields, from genetics, to electronics, to nanotech, to security, to just about anything you could think of. The energy […]

Appointed judges outperform elected ones

Princeton University political scientists have found as part of a recent study looking to assess the performance of state supreme court justices that appointed justices generally bring a higher quality of information to the decision-making process, are less biased and are generally less prone to error as elected justices. For their study,  Matias Iaryczower, an assistant […]

Chimps enjoy solving puzzles just for the thrill of it

Earlier today I wrote about some recent findings that suggest humans have evolved unique brain structures from other primates. Don’t be fooled however in thinking many of the activities we undertake every day are solely found in human culture. Dolphins communicate with each other much like humans do and besides tool use, chimps know that […]

Stealth nanoparticles sneak past immune system’s defences

Most of the time, when you’re sick, you want to deliver drugs and imaging agents to diseased cells or tumours where they’re needed most – that’s a problem researchers have solved quite a while ago, we can get particles pretty much wherever we want to. The thing is, most of the time, these agents are […]

How some dinosaurs got enormously long necks

The longest creatures to ever walk the Earth were the long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs known as the sauropods. But why did these huge vegetarians grow such huge necks, reaching up to 15 meters? That’s six times longer than that of the current world-record holder, the giraffe.   “They were really stupidly, absurdly oversized,” said researcher Michael […]