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A recent study published by Berkeley UC concluded that an hour nap boosts the brain’s learning capacity and restores power, just like an email box. When it’s full, it needs a cleaning session – which is just what the nap does. So of course, what every student had to learn the hard way, when you […]
Well we all know the effect a curvaceous woman can have on men, but according to a new research published by researchers from Georgia Gwinnett College, the effect they have is similar to that of alcohol and drugs, at least in some ways. Evolutionary speaking, for women, curvy figures are associated with fertility and an […]
Nobody wants to grow old, but at least at this point in our evolution, it’s unavoidable. Growing old however, is relative; it depends on your lifestyle, genes, etc. Recently, researchers from McMaster University claimed they have figured out a cocktail of ingredients that has a significant effect in delaying the aging process. Their findings were […]
For years and years (good) doctors have warned about the dangers of taking antibiotics too lightly, which generally causes ‘bugs’ to be more resistant. More recently, a study conducted by researchers from Boston University showed that microbes are a lot like us: what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger, and this could have extreme consequences. […]
Pluto is so upset that it’s no longer a planet, that it’s turning all red with anger ! No, seriously. There’s been a whole lot of “Pluto-related news” these days including the 2006 chalking off of the planet list, and naming it a “dwarf planet”, and the news just gets better and better. Recently, astronomers […]
The sun begins to ooze off outside of Birmingham, England. It’s tea time. A woman stands alone in her house, making herself a nice warm cup. After the tea is done, she stirs a half spoon cannabis in her tea, in an attempt to seek relief from pain and spasms caused by her multiple sclerosis. […]
The G-Spot debate is probably never gonna end; and who can carry it out better than the English and the French? They’d fight over absolutely anything: football (as in soccer), rugby, wine vs beer, you name. Now, the most recent topic is the G-Spot (am I supposed to write this with capital letters? Absolutely no […]
Well you’ve probably all seen the Myth Busters. I’ve watched some episodes and loved most of them, so I’m hoping I can give them a hand. I haven’t watched all the episodes so if they (or anybody else) already took care of these myths well… oh well. The duck’s quack doesn’t echo This is one […]
A new research published in Nature Physics showed that there may be oceans of diamonds (literally) on both Uranus and Neptune. The first ever study conducted on the melting point of diamond concluded that at that certain point, it behaves just like water, with the solid form floating in the liquid form (just imagine icebergs, […]
I was surprised to talk to a bunch of people today and find out they didn’t know about this, so I figured this is definitely something worth knowing. Here’s the deal. There’s a whole lot of garbage floating around; a whole lot ! Some are above the surface, some are below. What happens is they […]
There are weird lawsuits you can understand, and then there are just weird lawsuits. If you find this sort of things interesting, you gotta listen to this: a man from Santa Fe filed a half a million dollars trial against his neighbor for using and iPhone and other wireless devices that trigger his ‘electrocmegnetic allergies’. […]
The Planet Researchers have long been interested in finding other planets that have approximately the same size as our mother earth, because it’s estimated that they have the biggest odds of hosting life in a significant diversity. However, out of the over 400 planets that have been discovered so far, the vast majority resembles Jupiter […]
Well despite what many people might think, Hollywood isn’t and never was the center of the world (hopefully, it won’t be in the future either). But on this map (and probably, not only there) China is depicted as the center of the world, while the Americas are also sketched, Florida being represented as the “Land […]
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) published some quite awesome pictures showing that Antarctica isn’t the lifeless frozen wasteland most people believe it to be; ice fish, octopus, sea pigs, giant sea spiders, rare rays and gorgeous basket stars all thrive in the extreme temperatures in Antarctica’s waters. Well, thrive is perhaps a too strong word, […]
Where do birds go in the winter? That’s a question many of us asked, as kids. Well puffins are currently suffering from an increase in winter mortality, which is probably caused by the worsening of conditions in the North Sea. Using geolocation technology, this study tracked puffins and found that the population decreased by 30% […]
I was writing a while ago that major biofuel production is not really that far away and the good news is things seem to be moving in that direction. The importance of biofuels has been underlined as a possible solution to fight the crisis, but the big problem was that creating such alternative fuels required […]
Researchers from Yale University succeeded in what seemed to be an impossible task: they’ve created a transistor from a single molecule. In case you don’t know, a transistor is a “semiconductor device commonly used to amplify or switch electronic signals” (via wikipedia). The team showed that using a single benzene molecule attached to gold contacts […]
Researchers from the Scripps Research Institute have determined for the first time that prions, which are just bits of infectious protein without any DNA or RNA that can cause fatal degenerative diseases are capable of Darwinian evolution. This study shows that prions do develop significant large numbers of mutations at a protein level as a […]
Scientists have for the first time determined the actual permeability of the asthenosphere in Earth’s upper mantle, which is basically responsible for how fast the melt rises towards the surface of the earth, and the results were surprising to say the least. Researchers found that it actually moves 25 times faster than previously assumed, which […]
It’s been a busy year indeed, especially with the LHC doing it’s thing again, Hubble was repaired and there was a lot of medical research being done, even with more money being invested in advertising than research. However, last year was also remarkable for the… not so remarkable studies, to say the least. In that […]
The previous 5 mass extinctions wiped out more than three quarters of the world’s animals, and if things continue to move in the same way, the same thing will happen in North America, according to a University of California, Berkeley, and Pennsylvania State University analysis. Numerous scientists have warned that the direction things are moving […]
As I was writing in a previous post, Titan is quite unique, in that aside from our planet it’s the only place in our solar system where significant quantities of liquid are to be found (though most are liquid ethane and methane). That doesn’t seem to make much of a difference considering the chemistry of […]
Since the Large Hadron Collider went back in business, all sort of rumors have been circling the scientific circles (and not only). However, until these rumors are proven wrong or right, the first official paper on proton collisions from the Large Hadron Collider has been published in this week’s edition of Springer’s European Physical Journal […]
Blue whales are not only the biggest living creatures in the world right now, but the biggest ever to have ‘walked’ the face of the earth; they’re also the loudest for that matter. After recovering from near extinction in the beginning of the 20th century, blue whales are finally getting a part of the respect […]
Facebook has already caused a major revolution in the way people regard social interaction, but really not much has been said about what your Facebook profile can say about you. It would seem obvious that people make their profiles to portray an idealized version of themselves, augmenting the parts they want augmented and eliminating the […]
Ants are most amazing creatures, and there’s so much we could learn from them I wouldn’t even know where to start. As it is, we’ve just started to scratch the surface of what we know about ants, and strangely enouch, researchers are discovering more and more things human and ant societies have in common. Leaf […]
The Siberian tiger is the biggest feline to walk the face of the Earth at the time, but if today’s trends continue, that will change in the not so distant future; and not because other species will grow bigger, but because the Siberian tiger can become extinct. There were around 300 tigers living in Eastern […]
The researchers from the Census of Marine Wildlife have accomplished a truly amazing task; they have inventoried a fantastic abundance of marine species, more specifically deep sea species that live below the point where sunlight can penetrate the water, creatures that live more than 5 km below sea level, in a cold and dark environment. […]
Physicists from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) have demonstrated what they claim to be the first universal programmable quantum information processor that will be able to run any program allowed by quantum mechanics (the set of principles that describe the atomic and subatomic matter). They managed to accomplish this using two quantum bits […]
A study conducted by professor Joseph Forgas at the University of New South Wales showed that bad moods can actually turn out good for you, as it makes people less gullible by increasing their ability to judge and also is a big memory boost. The study proved that people who were experiencing bad moods were […]
Imagine an average day in your life; the odds are, it’ll include either logging onto facebook, tweeting, browsing some pics on flickr and videos on youtube, or some of these combined. The blazing speed at which social media is developing is catching many off guard and forcing numerous persons and firms (even corporations) to adapt. […]
It may seem hard to believe, but even smoking a single cigarette has really bad effects on you, especially if you’re a young adult, according to a study conducted by Dr. Stella Daskalopoulou. Her study found that smoking one cigarette increases the stiffness of the arteries by 25 percent in adults of ages from 18 […]
It’s quite obvious that genetics is the most important step in our evolution that we have to take and although the molecular structure of DNA has been discovered more than half a century ago, its three dimensional structure remained a mystery. However, recently a team led by researchers from Harvard University, the Broad Institute of […]
History is just teeming with examples of brilliant artists that acted in very peculiar ways – to put it lightly. They were absolutely brilliant, and they were absolutely mad; how can this be? Well, according to a new study published in Psychological Science the two traits often go hand in hand. In order to gather […]
AIDS is one of the most dangerous diseases nowadays, being a pandemic for many years now, and there’s been quite little development for a cure or a vaccine. However in the past few years researchers have been getting closer and closer to pinning down a solution. Yesterday, a team formed of Thai and US scientists […]
A significant part of Australia’s east coast, including country’s biggest city, Sydney, has been engulfed by a shroud of red dust blown mostly from the desert outback. Visibility was so bad that most if not all flights were delayed, and of course, there were the usual folks who started screaming that this is the […]
The (awesome) ability of geckos and other related reptiles to shed their tale when endangered by predators has been known for a long time, but scientists know little about the movement, and especially what controls the movement of the tail once it’s separated from the tail. Anthony Russell of the University of Calgary and Tim […]
We’ve all endured some kind of physical pain, more or less intense. When you hit your finger while hammering, for example, the pain is really intense, but passes away (at least mostly) in just a few moments. So scientists were trying to find out why is it that some intense pains pass so quickly and […]
Well, it seems all we’ve been writing about lately is sex and jelly fish (there’s a connection somewhere, I just can’t put my finger on it, so to speak). A recent controversial study conducted by Scottish psychologist Stuart Brody concluded that sex without condoms significantly boosts both men and women’s mental state, making them happier […]
Researchers from Arizona State University and Princeton University conducted a study that goes to show that our ‘multimodal, egg-headed, tool-using, bipedal, opposing-thumbed‘ selves come way behind ants when it comes to ration. That doesn’t actually mean that we are dumber than ants, but rather that we sometimes make irrational decisions, especially when faced with very […]
Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, or at least that’s what we used to hear as kids from our parents. Well, scientists say our parents were wrong; after creating a computer that recognizes attractivenes in women , now they managed to create the world’s first beauty machine. While this machine can’t (yet) make […]
The efficiency of the solar cells is the first thing needed to be improved in order to improve the quality of the solar panels, and it is the aim of more and more scientists as time passes. Still, very few manage to obtain a breakthrough, and that’s exactly what researchers at University of New South […]
It’s natural that when you are stressed out, you tend to search for an explanation for your current situation and to search for answers; too many people have felt this and this is a global issue even without the economy crisis that struck us. But in such times when you feel that your finances are […]
Chinese researchers confirmed the theory that they are building an “impossible” space drive, and at this stage they are building a demonstration version; if things go according to their plans, this could revolutionize space exploration and the economy of satellites, giving China a significant military and economical advantage over other countries. This year, “Emdrive” (short […]
It’s often believed that blondes have more fun, but now, we finally have proof for that; scientists claim that not only does bleaching hair does wonders for your look and self-confidence, but it also makes a women feel more attractive, more daring when it comes to asking someone out, and even more adventurous in […]
Most fish can’t even recognize the color red – let alone use it for some precise purpose. However, the exception here are some deep sea fish, yet Enneapterygius pusillus found a really interesting way of communicating. It literally glows in a deep red color, signaling different forms of intent. According to a study conducted in […]
It’s hard to believe that about half of the food produced on our planet is wasted, especially when about a quarter of Earth’s inhabitants are suffering from hunger; this, my friends is the wonderful world we live in. Not a world without resources, but a world in which we do not know how to use […]
It’s not as if this was a novelty, but now there’s the scientific background to prove it. Actually, this refers more to when children deny something has happened rather than just making things up. Adults to a little better at this one. This research has been made mostly to help in forensic searches, when dealing […]
The Yale School of Medicine researchers conducted a study in 13 countries which lead to the conclusion that there may be a connection between school bullying and children who resort to suicide. The lead author, Young-Shin Kim, part of the Yale research team, and her colleague, Bennett Leventhal, claim that the exact causality between the […]
Everybody pondered at least once in their lives the possibility of being immortal, and this idea sparkled in the immagination of many people throughout history. Now, Stuart Kim, a PhD at Stanford and professor of developmental biology and genetics conducted a study that led to results that shocked pretty much everybody involved, contradicting the […]
