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Charging your cell phone may be as simple as a walk in the park – literally. Scientists have created a mechanism that harvests the mechanical energy from the knees while you are walking. To prove this fascinating concept, they used six volunteers which wore the device while walking on a treadmill and were able […]
Birds evolved from lizards, (nearly) all scientists agree about that, but strangely enough there is still a debate around when the first bird showed up in the Mesozoic scene. While paleontologists who have studied fossils think that birds evolved from dinosaurs about 60 million to 65 million years ago, right when the dinosaurs went extinct, […]
They say the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. You can simultaneously love and hate somebody (and something, for that matter) at the same time, but you can’t love them and feel nothing for them at the same time. So if we were to continue in that manner, hating somebody doesn’t neccesarily mean […]
MESSENGER is a spacecraft which recently made a flyby near Mercury and it gave scientists a whole new perspective over the planet. Researchers are amazed by the wealth of images and data which show a surprising diversity of geological processes which took and are still taking place and a very different magnetosphere from the one […]
Charging the cell phones is a drag; and the battery drops out just when you need it most. Having a battery that would last 10 times as long wouldn’t solve every problem of that type but it definetly would be very helpful. Also, an energy-efficient chip would be very helpful in other cases, and this […]
Nature has its own balance which is both sturdy and fragile at the same time; when that balance is broken (by man, what else?) it is very hard and sometimes almost impossible to set things right. That’s why we have to pay attention to the numerous fragile ecosystems because everything is connected. It goes […]
In case you don’t know, a tsunami is a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. Earthquakes, mass movements above or below water, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions, landslides, underwater earthquakes, large meteoroid or asteroid impacts and testing with nuclear weapons at sea all have […]
The Ulysses spacecraft today is making a very interesting and important rare flyby over the sun’s north pole. This spacecraft is different from anyother, being able to sample winds at the sun’s poles, which are difficult to study from Earth. However, this is not the first time it has been over the Sun’s poles; this […]
A volcano in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet erupted 2000 years ago (325BC) and remains active thus giving us the first evidence of an under-ice volcanic eruption. This volcano has a volcanic explosion index of about 3-4. The heat from the volcano melt-water that lubricates the base of the ice sheet and increases the flow […]
Butterflies have fascinated people for as long as we can remember; the beauty of their wings is known to just about everybody and well just about everybody loves them. But behind their naive beauty lies a mistery which has baffled scientists as they couldn’t understand how these colours are created. Marco Giraldo has been examining […]
The tree of life is a metaphor scientists use to describe all life on Earth in an evolutionary context. Charles Darwin talks about envisioning evolution and ecosystems as a “tangled bank” in The Origin of Species; however, the book’s sole illustration is of a branched diagram that is very tree-like. This “design” has been used […]
About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian, and event caused a mass extinction which killed over 90 percent of the life on Earth. Ecosystems were destroyed and organisms were left to recover; it was the closest life came to being wiped out ever. The full recovery of those ecosystems took at […]
Snowflakes have fascinated most of us since the beggining of time. They say that there are no two snowflakes alike and that isn’t very far away from the truth. No two snowflakes are truly alike, but they can be very similar to each other, said Janko Gravner, a mathematics professor at UC Davis. Now he […]
Not a Hollywood movie or something like that; not even a pun. The title is in the most literal fashion it could be. But how could this be? Worlds can’t collide, can’t they? Hard to say. Anyway astronomers have announced that a mystery object orbiting a star 170 light-years from Earth might have formed from […]
Whoa there! I mean sometimes just about everybody feels the need to be agressive but…. agression just as good as sex? That sounds a bit weird. But that’s just a way of thinking about things. The study is about the fact that the brain processes agression as a reward offering insights into our propensity to […]
Life as we know has certain ingredients which are necessary for life to evolve and even exist. Such ingredients are the molecules methanimine and hydrogen cyanide — two ingredients that build life-forming amino acids. Researchers found these molecules in a galaxy somewhere 250 million light years away; it’s not as a few more light years […]
Antimatter is a fascinating story; basically nobody knows for sure what it could do and scientists have been trying to understand it for years. The artificial production of atoms of antimatter (specifically antihydrogen) first became a reality in the early 1990s. For example an atom of antihydrogen is composed of a negatively-charged antiproton being orbited […]
Most children are able to imagine their future selves as astronauts, politicians or even superheroes and make up imaginary friends and things such as those; but as people grow up they find it difficult to recollect past events, let alone generate new ones. A new Harvard University study reveals that the ability of older adults […]
For a lot of time man kind or at least a big part of it has been absolutely fascinated with the diamond and its fantastic glimmer. The reasons which account for its stunning beauty could be uncovered by a mathematical analysis of its microscopic crystal structure. It turns out that this structure has some very […]
Researchers are searching everyday for options which could bring an ending to the energy issue or at least delay it for an undefinite time and bacteria researching has developed a lot so it would only seem sensible to bring those two together. The point would be well to obtain a bacteria which generates electricity. Researchers […]
The carbon dioxide problem has been give much less attention than alternative fuel or biomass-derived energy production yet it is very important as chemical production creates billions of tons of carbon dioxide each year. But fear not – an analysis has concluded that use of existing biotechnology in the production of so-called bulk chemicals could […]
Since there are still a big number of things we fail to understand about our brain it is somewhat understandable that such misbeliefs appear. They turn into myths and thanks to the oh so well documented media everybody ends up believing that they are true; and such a belief is hard to shatter even when […]
We have just began to understand our genome yet there are still numerous things we fail to understand; there is a very big number of genes of which we know very little about. Just how much of what we do and think is influenced by our genes remains a mystery, but genetics research is going […]
There is no need to recap the petroleum problem as just about everybody knows it and you are faced with it everyday. But scientists are trying to find other fuel alternatives and they seem to find more interesting things everyday. The latest is using concentrated solar energy to reverse combustion. This means that we could […]
In some ways Venus could be consider to be the twin sister of our planet but in other ways it is pretty much opposite. High temperatures and crushing air pressure make it resemble a place christians would rather not visit (or name) than a planet. But now scientists have received images which confirm the fact […]
Titan is in the spotlight again. The Cassini probe has provided once more valuable data that scientists are analysing; the data seems to confirm the fact that there are heavy negative ions in the upper regions of Titan’s atmosphere. These could be the organic building blocks for molecules and this discovery is unexpected because of […]
We have another piece of evidence which goes to show that we fail to understand numerous things about our universe. Astronomers have discovered white dwarf stars with pure carbon atmospheres. It is something that probably nobody would have believed. The exact way these stars evolved is still pretty much a mystery for astrophysicists. They believe […]
There’s a common misconception that the foods that are good for you are just spinach and broccoli, or something else which just taste really bad; numerous people would want to eat healthy foods but they find that these foods are just not tasty. For them there is a new generation of superfoods that promise to […]
Nature has a way of defending itself and even things which we fail to understand play their part. For example, the reef helps protect the shore from devastating waves and tsunamis – and the recent tragic events were in a way just a reflection of what we are doing to the planet. Massive man made […]
It may not rank among the top 10 causes of death, but decompression sickness could be deadly. Using a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Navy to develop the first optical non-invasive tool to test those most likely to suffer from decompression sickness, such as scuba divers a University of Houston professor is developing a laser-based […]
Heather Hallen is a Michigan State University plant biology research associate who has been looking for the poison in the wrong place for years. Alpha-amanitin is the poison of the death cap mushroom, Amanita phalloides. She was searching for a big gene that makes a big enzyme that produces alpha-amanitin. But she found out that […]
Nanotech could be applied in just about everything. With time scientists find out ways to apply it to various fields; building small, efficient electronics could be very useful in further use of nanotechnology. A University of Arkansas physicist and her colleagues have examined the response of the nanostructures polarization to electric fields which is known […]
Every day you hear about locations where the laws of physics appear not to apply or where anomalies take place every day; a big part of them are just hoaxes or are caused by misinterpretation of data but there are some which we have not been able to explain. According to an austrian physicist the […]
Yellowstone is being visited by over 2 million tourists every year and it spans an area of 3,472 square miles (8,987 km²) which makes it North America’s largest volcanic field. The main interest was around the Old Faithful Geyser and the Yellowstone Lake which is the largest high-altitude lake in North America and is centered […]
The media seems to be repeating the idea that we use just 10% of our brains and taking it as a given. Scientists have tried for years to change this misconception and they have clearly stated that there is no scientific evidence to suggest that we use only 10% of our brains. In fact it […]
As sea levels rise coastal communities could lose up to 50 percent more of their fresh water supplies than previously thought, according to a new study from Ohio State University. This is not just bad news for them; it is a warning for everybody.Studies have shown how altwater will intrude into fresh water aquifers, given […]
This debate has been indecided for years and years and there are serious evidence which backs up both theories. Recently a vast number of scientist leaned towards the meteor theory; they claim that a meteor impact in the Gulf of Mexico made changes which the dinousaurs could not adapt to. But scientists found out how […]
A black hole is a weird and fascinating thing. There are few things we know about them. Astronomers are studying them round the clock and they job is made easier by the fact that they have unmasked hundreds of black holes hiding deep inside dusty galaxies billions of light-years away.They are massive and growing and […]
…and we refrain ourselves from doing anything. The reefs and marine creatures are dying slowly but certainly because of human activity – we are pretty well past the point of denying it. There are numerous ways to destroy it, be it through global warming, ocean acidification, overfishing, and so much more; many would say […]
Every once in a while, a disease grows and grows so much that it turns into an epidemic – in other words, an epidemic occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human populationsubstantially exceed what is expected. The epidemic is hard to control and treat. But it is better to prevent than […]
Life emerged and evolved initially in the water – every creature we see today stems from creatures who initially evolved underwater. But even after so much time, there there are many things don’t understand about marine ecosystems, and to be quite honest, the ecosystems we probably know least about are underwater. Researchers from Fisheries and […]
Fruits and vegetables are very important for your health and “Eat your fruits and vegetables” is one most used recommendations for a healthy diet – and for good reason. They help you ward off heart disease and stroke, control blood pressure and cholesterol, prevent some types of cancer, avoid a painful intestinal ailment called […]
Sleep is the state of natural rest observed in the mammals and birds, and in many reptiles, amphibians, and fish. It is very important and is generally characterized by a reduction in voluntary body movement, temporary blindness, decreased reaction to external stimuli, loss of consciousness, a reduction in audio receptivity, an increased rate of anabolism […]
There is still some debate around how life appeared here on Earth and it is hard to find undeniable proof. But the findings from NASA‘s Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that space dust — the same stuff that makes up living creatures and planets — was manufactured in large quantities in the winds of black […]
The number of people that our planet supports is growing fast [later edit: 7th billion baby comes with a warning], and for the diet that every man has there is a land surface which provides his food. Some types of diet require more land, some less; a low-fat vegetarian diet is very efficient and […]
This is Saturn’s Moon – the largest moon of Saturn, the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere and the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found – and these are just a few of the reasons which make studying it more […]
Subway trains produce airborne dust particles that could damage the lungs, a new study concludes. In the world today it is harder and harder to drive around town or to another town – itt is not cheap, and it takes time. So the subway is a good choice to more and more people. But […]
Pets do more than it may appear for their owners: they teach us a lot about unconditional love, responsibility, death and, of course, pooper scoopers. But aside from that they probably keep a child from developing allergies rather than causing it. This is not yet a scientific certainty, but the idea that pets might […]
It is largely believed that the sabre-toothed cat Smilodon is a fierce, strong and very dangerous predator. Along side the Tyrannosaurus rex it is regarded as a nearly flawless killing machine. The upper canines which are built like knives support that theory. But an Australian study, published recently in the US Proceedings of the […]
Basic paleoclimatology and one a little more There have been many climatic shifts throughout the geologic period of our time. The abrupt climate change events that occurred thousands of years ago are very important to us because they took place closer to this day and so there is a greater chance of repeatability. We […]
