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The fossils were discovered in the Parnaiba Basin of north-eastern Brazil, and are some 278 million years old, corresponding to the Permian period, when all the continents we know today were still fused together.
Using a newly-developed production method, the Institute of Industrial Science at Tokyo University succeeded in producing a type of glass that rivals steel in hardness. The new material opens huge developmental lanes for any glass and glass-related product, from tableware to bulletproof glass.
The NPR was recently investigating into records pertaining to secret experiments and found the names of nearly 4,000 individuals that were exposed to mustard gas. The names are joined by a further 1,700 individuals that the NPR could only find a "last known location" for.
A new study from the University of California looks at the link between the bonding hormone oxytocin and the effect of marijuana in social contexts that improve interpersonal bonding. Their findings offer insight into how the hormone could make social interactions more fulfilling and satisfying by enhancing our natural cannabinoid receptors.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, scientists from the universities of Michigan and Pennsylvania scanned the brains of 50 smokers while they viewed anti-smoking ads. They recorded their neural activity spikes as they watched the sample of 40 images one at a time, looking for increase activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, the area that handles decision making processes.
Ahh, the phallus. In most sexually-reproductive species, half of the individuals lack one, while the other half is constantly trying to share theirs as much as possible with the first group, with varying degrees of success -- bragging, fighting or impressing their way to the continuation of the species. Marvelous!
French scientist working on the Hall thrusters -- an advanced type of engine that harnesses a stream of plasma to generate forward momentum -- have recently figured out a way to optimize them, allowing them to run on (wait for it) a staggering 100 million times less fuel than conventional chemical rockets. The research has been published in Applied Physics Letters.
The next time you throw away an aluminium can, picture the can half full of gasoline. That's how much energy goes into making it, and how much energy will have to be spent to produce a new one rather than recycle.
A preliminary study from Switzerland, published this month in the Annals of Neurology, proved the effectiveness of a new method of non-invasive brain surgery: using a newly-developed operating device that relies on ultrasound, in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allowed neurosurgeons to precisely remove small pieces of brain tissue in nine patients suffering from chronic pain without removing skin or skull bone. Researchers now plan to test it on patients with other disorders, such as Parkinson's. Neal Kassell, neurosurgeon at the University of Virginia, not directly involved in the study.
Cristiano Menezes of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation has discovered farming behaviors in bees, adding them to the list of social insects that practice agriculture.
A recent study published Wednesday in the journal Nature shows that there is a strong functional relationship between a region's average recorded temperature and economic productivity -- further warning of the damage climate warming would inflict on our economy.
A recent U.S. study shows how the upward trend in economic damage from hurricanes correlates very closely to the influence global warming has on the number and intensity of hurricanes. Published in Nature Geoscience, it concludes that the commonly cited reasons for growing hurricane damage -- increases in vulnerability, value, and exposure of property -- don't stand up very well to scrutiny.
What exactly makes you thirsty? Dehydration, obviously, but how does your brain know that your body needs water? And how does that grey, squishy lump resting in your cool and comfortable cranium, know when your body needs to heat up or cool off? Scientists at the McGill University Health Centre Research Institute (RI-MUHC) and Duke University have asked themselves just that, and being scientists, went ahead to find out.
A research effort at Winship Cancer Institute recently identified a substance in orange lichen and rhubarb that has the potential to be used as a new anti-cancer drug. The substance, an orange pigment known as parietin or physcion, slows the growth and can even kill leukemia cells harvested from patients, without obvious toxic effects on human cells, the study authors report.
In an experiment proposal that sounds more like an evil genius' plan than a reputable science endeavour, CERN's LHC atom smasher in Geneva, Switzerland will be cranked up to the highest energy levels ever, as scientists hope to detect or create miniature black holes. If successful, scientists hope that the experiment will uncover extra dimensions hidden in our universe.
Researchers have discovered a new species of banana christened "nanensis", belonging to the Musa genus, sharing a place in the family Musaceae with more than 70 other species of bananas and plantains. It's scientific name honors the province of Nan where the type specimens were collected.
Prosthetics has come a long way from its humble beginnings – the crude wooden legs of yore are a far cry from the technological marvels we can create to replace our limbs today. However, there is one thing that, with all our know-how, we haven’t yet been able to incorporate in them: a sense of touch. A research team from Stanford University aims to fix this shortcoming, and has developed technology that can “feel” when force is exerted upon it, then transmit the sensory data to brain cells – in essence, they’ve created an artificial skin.
Recent fossils unearthed in the Chinese province of Daoxian come to unravel the story of humanity’s spread as we know it today. The find consists of 47 teeth, belonging to modern humans, but what’s really important is their age – they have been dated to 80,000 years ago. This number doesn’t fit with the “Out of Africa” migration theory, holding that humans originate and have spread from the horn of the continent all around the world. The theory as we know it can’t explain human presence in the area for another 20,000 years.
It's easy to assume that with economic gain comes happiness -- we live in capitalism, after all. But science comes to prove us all wrong yet again, and shows that the link between economics and happiness is much more complicated that we thought. Money can't buy happiness, it seems.
Chinese researchers discovered a chemical compound that works just as well as morphine -- without any of the negative side effects. The substance is derived from the venom of a centipede native to China. The discovery has huge medical applications, and could potentially reduce the country's military reliance on morphine for battlefield use.
Bad news for us -- and fish.
Researchers stumbled upon a new tool to fight cancer in a rather unexpected place; while searching for a vaccine against malaria in pregnant women, a team of Danish scientists found that, simply put, armed malaria proteins are remarkably good at killing cancer cells. They hope to have a working prototype ready for human trials within four years' time. Their discovery has been published in the scientific journal Cancer Cell.
The Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraq uncovered 20 new lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the nearly 3000 years old Mesopotamian poem, considered to be one of the world's first great works of literature. They belong to a passage in which Gilgamesh enters a cedar forest and slays a demigod named Humbaba, with the setting and the demigod himself described differently and in more detail, writes Ted Mills for Open Culture.
With the variety of games available today varying from those designed to enhance mental fitness, solve real world problems all the way to ones meant for pure entertainment, they have diverse and profound effects on our brains. A new article published in the October 1st issue of Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences argues that the specific content, dynamics, and mechanics of individual games determine their effects on the brain and that the long-criticized action video games might have particularly positive benefits.
Among all the species with which we share the animal kingdom, pigs are the ones whose organs are best suited for transplant in human bodies -- they are approximately the same size as our organs and have similar structures, making reconnecting blood vessels much easier. Pigs tend to have large litters and reproduce quickly, making them a very large, very accessible source of "spare parts."
It's estimated that humanity will have to produce around 50% more food than we currently do to keep up with growing global demand....by 2050. It's an enormous challenge, especially as more and more countries face the effects of climate change, such as drought or toxic salinity levels. One of our best hopes is to rely more on crops that can flourish despite the vicissitudes of the environment, and plant cell biologists at the University of Oxford hope that their new breakthrough in climate-resilient agriculture will allow us to do just that.
The brain forms new thoughts using two adjacent brain regions that are the cornerstone of the process.
For most people listening to music or playing an instrument is a great way to relax, unwind, have fun, and express themselves. But not everybody is able to perceive, appreciate or memorize music, to sing or to dance. Monica is one such person, and to her, any kind of music is just a bunch of noise that makes her head ache and feel stressed.
This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is split into three parts, being divided between William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura -- who jointly share a half "for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites" -- and Youyou Tu "for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria."
Material scientists at Oxford University, collaborating with experts from Karlsruhe, Munster and Exeter, have developed the world's first light-based memory banks that can store data permanently. The device is build from simple materials, in use in CDs and DVDs today, and promises to dramatically improve the speed of modern computing.
Two drugs, currently prescribed to organ transplant patients to suppress their immune system after the procedure, show great promise as birth-control medicine for men, according to a study published in the journal Science.
When it comes to human waste products and pollutants, plastic claims the crown. There are very few things our planet can throw at it to get rid of the polymer. It becomes bendy and rippy and shredy but it just won't go away. When you compound the resilience of this headstrong material with the sheer quantities of it that we dump into the oceans, it looks like a pretty one-sided battle that nature can't win, despite all our desperate efforts to increase recycling and take it out of landfills. But now it seems that mother nature still had a trick up her sleeve, and the non-biodegradable reign of plastic is about to come to an end, undermined by the heroic appetite of the mealworm.
North Carolina State University researchers have succeeded in proving that the crystalline structure of a material can be formed by disorder at an atomic level and not chemical bonds, by creating the world's first entropy-stabilized alloy incorporating oxides.
Our ability to inhibit impulsive behaviors, to exercise willpower, is considered a core feature of the brain's executive functions. This, along with others such as reasoning, working memory and attention regulate our thoughts and guide our behavior, allowing us to adapt them to the changing demands of our environment. But the effort our brain puts into refraining from impulses is so great that it can actually diminish its ability to form memories of the experience.
Fewer materials in nature rival the toughness and resilience of a tooth or a seashell, and it's all due to their unique structure; viewed under powerful enough microscope, they reveal layers upon layers of micro-plates, perfectly aligned and fused together. Material scientists have long sought to produce something that imitates these structures, with comparable properties and complexity, but apart from nacre (mother-of-pearl) they've had very little success. Until now.
The ancient Greek shipwreck that produced the awesome Antikythera mechanism, hailed as the world's first analog computer (being almost two millenia old), had archaeologists' collective pants full of ants and it seems that their enthusiasm was well placed. The shipwreck is slowly yielding new artifacts, offering a glimpse into the lifestyles of the ancient "1%" in the Hellenic peninsula.
Each memory relies on three critical elements, those being the "what," "where" and "when" building blocks. Neuroscientists from MIT have identified a brain circuit -- connecting the hippocampus and a region of the cortex known as entorhinal cortex -- that handles the "when" and "where" components.
A new paper published Thursday in Science looks at how climate change is (out of all things) making the tongue of some bumble bees shrink. Two species of alpine bumbles in the Rocky Mountains already show a decrease in tongue volume of nearly 25 percent in the last 40 years; and smaller tongues could spell big trouble for the flowers that rely on bumble bees for pollination.
Specialists from the University of Cambridge and the University of Colorado estimate that the effects of climate change are going to take a hefty toll on our economy -- $326 trillion in damage by the year 2200, roughly $201 million each hour, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
Take a candle, light it, turn it on its side -- we all know what will happen. The convection cell that forms around the flame keeps licking up towards the sky (or ceiling) regardless of the orientation of the fuel. But can the movement of air be overcome, can we make a fire burn horizontally? Well, the short answer is yes, yes we can -- we just have to use science.
A new species of plant-eating dinosaur was discovered in Alaska, a variety of hadrosaur -- duck-billed dinos that roamed in herds, said Pat Druckenmiller, earth sciences curator at the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks. Researchers named the creature Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis (oo-GROO'-nah-luk KOOK'-pik-en-sis), meaning "ancient grazer," chosen by scientists with assistance from speakers of Inupiaq, the language of Alaska Inupiat Eskimos.
Ian Lipkin, a virus hunter from Columbia University, along with fellow professors Thomas Briese and Amit Kapoor have designed a new system, known as VirCapSeq-VERT, that they claim can detect any known human virus in a blood sample.
Florida's farmlands are under attack by a highly destructive pest, the Oriental Fruit Fly, and authorities have quarantined some 85 square miles of land and the food grown there in an effort to contain the insect.
A video of an ape, breaking out of its cage and attacking; the victim -- a human scientist, that picks up a small red hammer and defends himself, battering the primate ran amok. It sounds like a pretty gruesome video, bound to have animal right's activists redouble their efforts to see the heartless jailers brought to justice. But hey, wait a minute... Apes don't wear sneakers.
The human inovation process is more of a slow, steady climb than a sum of great leaps, a new University of Reading study shows. Our minds tend to innovate by adding small improvements through trial and error report the scientists, who studied one of the most important cultural events in human history - the migration of the Bantu-speaking farmers in Africa some 5,000 years ago. Mark Pagel, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University, led the study.
A group of elderly-care nurses working at the Swedish Svartedalens elderly home participated in the first controlled trial of shorter work hours the country held for a decade now. In February, the they switched from an eight-hours to a six-hour working day for the same wage, in an effort to improve productivity and quality of life.
Ok ok it's not technically called that, but the California Costal Cleanup Day is definitely something you should check out this Saturday if you like finding cool stuff and wish your beach looked less....garbage-y. For 31 years now, thousands of volunteers all over the world come together, put on the strongest pair of gloves they can find, and go scour the coast, lakes, rivers and their surroundings, picking up what we throw out the rest of the year.
The humble bean is the first thing some of us reach for in the mornings, it's our companion during breaks and comes to warm us up on cold winter days. We've come to rely on coffee, due to the caffeine it contains, to wake us up when the night is short and full of terrors, and keep us going when the going gets rough. A new study from the University of New Mexico's researchers however shows how the people of the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico were drinking caffeinated beverages as early as 750 AD, over 1,200 years ago.
New research has found evidence of emotional burden sharing (also known as load sharing) between partners in a close relationship. The study, co-authored by Queen's University PhD candidate Jessica Lougheed, found that a strong personal relationship can help ease stress when placed in difficult situations.
NASA recently uploaded a strikingly beautiful photograph on their website showing a petrified sand dune on Mars. The image was actually pieced together from several shots taken using Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) on August 27th. From end to end, the panorama spans a full 135 degrees of other-worldly awesomeness, with east to the left and southwest to the right.
