gear Push settings
Despite all the related problems which contribute to obesity such as stress , the main cause is… eating too much. Recent studies have shown that people tend to overeat when they are stressed out – often creating a negative cycle of eating more, gaining weight and then getting stressed out about gaining weight – especially […]
Seahorses are some of the most awful swimmers, but they’re still very efficient hunters. 90% of their hunt attempts are successful, compared to the lion’s 25% and the shark’s 50%. Their snouts are shaped to minimize water disturbances, allowing them to creep up on their prey. Seahorses may appear cute and slow, but […]
Researchers have developed a camera that can capture translucent objects in 3D The camera is very cheap, at only $500 The camera could be used in medical imaging and collision-avoidance detectors, among others A $500 “nano-camera” that can operate at the speed of light and take 3D pictures has been developed by researchers in the […]
Trees planted along a city street could screen residents from sun and noise – but more importantly, they can also protect them from the polluted air. A new study has shown that tree leaves can capture more than 50% of the polluting particulate matter – the main source of urban pollution and a trigger for […]
By now, hopefully, most people understand the huge problems caused by global warming – but most people probably don’t understand just how bad things are. Even if all emissions would somehow magically stop right now, the Earth would continue to warm for hundreds of years, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate […]
Researchers have found that a very small portion of your brain plays a key role in decision making. A University of British Columbia study published in Nature Neuroscience says that we need to rethink what we know about the lateral habenula, a region of the brain previously linked to depression and avoidance behaviours; they claim […]
When herbivorous dinosaurs went to sleep, they had bad dreams about Tyrannosaurs. But what where Tyrannosaurs afraid of? If you’re thinking “Nothing”, then you’re really wrong. A new species of carnivorous dinosaur (one of the three largest ever discovered in North America) competed with them 98 million years ago – the newly discovered species, Siats […]
As much as we here at ZME Science love promoting science, we really hate it when the media misinterprets research and spreads false information. This time, everybody seems to be picking up the idea that 16% of the Finnish population is genetically HIV resistant. Here, we’re gonna discuss that study and why this isn’t really […]
Chesapeake Bay is one of the few oceanic impact craters on Earth When the huge impact took place ~35 million years ago, it sealed the ancient oceanic water The water has remained virtually unchanged since then A new study published in Nature provides chemical, isotopic and physical evidence that groundwater found at about 1.5 […]
Researchers have found obsidian spearheads dated 85.000 years ago before the development of Homo Sapiens (280.000 years ago). This is a very complicated process, requiring numerous steps and lots of concentration and skill This has 2 possible explanations: either humans evolved much earlier than previously believed, either another species had advanced craftsmanship skills […]
Among the many laudable initiatives for which Bill Gates is donating a lot of money (including HIV and malaria vaccine research and artificial clouds to fight greenhouse gases), there’s also a prize for developing better condoms. Because current latex varieties can dull sensation, Gates encouraged entrepreneurs to create a condom that “significantly preserves or enhances […]
An iceberg the size of Singapore has separated from Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier This kind of detachment is not uncommon, but rarely on this magnitude Singapore is an island-city-state, about the size of Budapest or Dubai Between November 9–11, 2013, a large iceberg finally separated from the calving front of Antarctica’s Pine Island […]
A team from Columbia Engineering researchers, led by Mechanical Engineering Professor James Hone and Electrical Engineering Professor Kenneth Shepard has managed to take advantage of graphene’s unique properties (it’s strength and electric conduction) to create a nano-mechanical system that can create FM signals – in other words, the world’s smallest radio. “This work is significant […]
Men have noses 10 cm longer than women (on average), even with the same body size This happens because men have more muscle tissue, which needs an extra oxygen intake This change starts happening during puberty Human noses come in all shapes and sizes, but despite that, generally speaking, men noses are significantly larger than […]
Most fossils are very fragile, difficult to handle and transport Researchers conducted CT scans on fossils still trapped in sedimentary material, creating 3D models The models were then 3D printed – an accurate, non invasive method to replicate fossils for schools, museums and other researchers Doctors and dinosaurs Being a paleontologist and working […]
The climate crisis we are facing right now (which for one reason or another many people choose to ignore) has largely been caused by only 90 companies – which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the industrial revolution, new research suggests. The study was found that almost all these […]
There’s quite a common belief that if you provide welfare and lots of financial support to the jobless, they will lose motivation to find work and will become lazy and unproductive; that idea is wrong. High unemployment benefits do not lead to people becoming lazy and satisfied with their jobless status, a Europe-wide study suggests. […]
The new drug is the most promising since morphine was introduced – it is 100 times more potent than existing pain medications, but it works at very low doses, without inducing the risk of addiction. Predator snails and painkillers Snail venom in a pill could offer powerful relief for people suffering from severe (acute or […]
A new genome analysis study suggests that interbreeding between modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and a mysterious archaic population was way more common than previously believed. A Lord of the Rings world Several decades ago, many anthropologists believed that humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans didn’t interbreed at all; as time passed, some evidence of this started popping […]
Global warming is real, it’s affecting us all, and it’s gonna get worse – and we have nobody to blame but ourselves. The IPPC report The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body with the purpose of providing ‘comprehensive scientific assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the […]
An international team of researchers led by Ralf Tappert, from the University of Innsbruck, reconstructed the composition of Earth’s atmosphere of the last 220 million years by analyzing modern and fossil plant resins. Their results indicate that atmospheric oxygen was considerably lower in Earth’s geological past than previously assumed – providing valuable information about current […]
Geologists have now found the most compelling evidence of granites on Mars – something which prompts more complex theories about the geology and tectonic activity on the Red Planet. Granites and basalts Granites are igneous rocks, pretty common on the surface of Earth. It is often called a ‘felsic’ (white rock) – because it is […]
In quite an interesting discovery, Wildlife Conservation Society biologists have discovered cave paintings made by hunter-gatherers between 10,000 to 4,000 years ago while studying wild animals in the Taboco region. An unexpected find To add more mystery to the situation, the discovery was made in 2009, but it has been kept a secret until now […]
To say that finding evidence of how life on Earth was 3.5 billion years ago is hard would be an understatement. Reconstructing the rise of life in its early stages is a monumental challenge – the evidence is only preserved in Earth’s oldest sedimentary rocks, and sedimentary rocks of that age are very hard to […]
Music isn’t only restricted to humans – music skills evolved at least 30 million years ago in the common ancestor of humans and monkeys, claims a new study that tries to explain why for example chimps drum on tree roots and monkey calls sound like singing. It’s one of the big puzzles in biology and […]
As part of a great campaign to make the people from Moscow healthier, riders who buy the ticket at Vystavochnaya station in western Moscow now have the option to pay in squats. Get ready to drop down and give me 30 – if you want to ride the subway for free, that is. In an […]
This is a part of an opalized tree, and the rings you see are actually tree rings; or at least they were. This is an very rare sample: opal can be fairly common in petrified wood, but this is a fire opal, which makes it so much more valuable. Fire opals are transparent to translucent […]
A strange evolutionary alliance between trees and the ants that guard them has a sinister explanation, a new study suggests, after studying ants hooked on nectar. Bodyguard ants and addiction In Central America, ants act as bodyguards for acacia trees, defending them not only from weeds, but also from animals, in exchange for accomodation and […]
The past 12 months have been 0.22 degrees Celsius warmer than any other equivalent period prior to 2013, and Australia is steadily on track for the warmest year ever. Warmer and warmer A new Climate Council study, titled Off the Charts, says that the country has just had its warmest ever 12-month period, from 1 […]
Dogs are slaughtered and skinned in public during an ancient festival in the streets of Qianxi township. However, China has now banned the dog-eating festival that dates back more than 600 years after a Chinese internet uproar. The festival initially marked a victory of the Ming dynasty, in which dogs in Qianxi were killed so […]
A study published earlier this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy correlated 93 small earthquakes in Texas (near a city called Snyder) with underground injection of large volumes of gas, primarily carbon dioxide, in a technique called CO2 flooding. Not fracking, but flooding CO2 flooding is a technique that doesn’t refer to extraction, […]
You know what sucks about riding a bike? Except for, you know, all the traffic and all the reckless car drivers, and rain, and sometimes being really tired? Bike helmets. Of course, they do provide the advantage of keeping your brain from getting splattered if you crash, but they’re not really comfortable, and they take […]
Everybody was expecting it to be bad, but it’s just so incredibly bad: of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, as huge waves struck down poor villages and a developed city alike, destroying 70-80 percent of all buildings in […]
A laudable, ambitious initiative is nearing fruition: the US$90-million Transportable Array, a moveable grid of seismometers that blankets America. Since 2004, the set of 400 seismometers, loaded on trucks, have gradually marched, from the Pacific coast across the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains and is finally reaching the eastern coastline. Whenever they arrive at […]
The world is spending half a trillion dollars on fossil fuel subsidies every year, according to a new report released by the Overseas Development Institude (ODI). Let me say that again: about $500.000.000.000 are spent each year with the aim of promoting the beneficial economic and social outcomes of the oil industry – that’s what […]
Black holes, the most massive objects in the Universe that we know of, which exert a gravitational force so big that even light can’t escape, come in one shape, but a variety of sizes; on the smaller end, you have stellar black holes, which take shape when a sufficiently large star collapses into itself, and […]
The fastest way to get from any point A to any point B is through a straight line – but when your point A is on a mountain, and your point B is on another mountain, that’s pretty hard to work out. According to architect Arturo Tedeschi (A>T), that’s also boring, so they came up with a […]
Why the US is against GM labeling is beyond me. In the European Union, all products must clearly state if they contain or not genetically modified organisms. However, in the United States, where over 60 percent of processed foods contain a genetically altered ingredient, GM labeling is not required, and consumers remain largely unconcerned about […]
Researchers have found that methane-decomposing bacteria from hot springs need rare earths to produce the energy they need to survive. Rare Earth Elemenets (REE), or rare earth metals as they are sometimes called are a group of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table, specifically the so-called lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium. They are among […]
Parents usually don’t encourage their kids to play computer games, even though by now, several studies have established significant benefits that come with the game. This most recent study from the Max Planck Institute showed that even playing a game as simple as Super Mario 64 results in increased size in brain regions responsible for […]
As we were telling you a while back, the Western Black Rhino is officially extinct. Poaching, the loss of habitat, war… it was too much for the rhino to handle, and now, the species is extinct. But things don’t look especially better for other rhino species, and if something drastic doesn’t happen soon, we’ll soon […]
Hybrid nuclear plants, working in conjunction with geothermal, shale oil, or hydrogen production could help slow climate change, and provide more cheap energy – when used . More than the sum of its parts Many efforts have tried to smooth the transition of renewable energy and fill in its gaps, and a rather viable, yet […]
In 2012, in the US, the fast food industry spent $4.6 billion to advertise (mostly unhealthy products) – with children and teens being the main target audiences. A new report released by the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity highlights some minor improvements such as healthier sides and beverages in most restaurants’ kids’ […]
A giant platypus fossil, measuring more than 1m long (3ft) was discovered in Queensland, Australia. The animal lived 5-15 million years ago, as paleontologists explain in the journal Vertebrate Paleontology. Until now, the oldest fossil was dated 100.000 years ago. As if the evolutionary status of the platypus wasn’t extraordinarily complicated as it is, this […]
A statistical analysis of observations based on the Kepler telescope indicates that 20 percent of all stars in the Milky Way host earth-sized planets, a significant part of which could potentially be habitable. Habitable planets in the Milky Way NASA’s Kepler telescope is crippled – it’s reached the end of its four year mission, but […]
According to a new research published in Psychological Science, the width of blood vessels in the retina may indicate your brain health. Previous studies have already shown that younger people who score relatively low on IQ tests tend to be poorer and have a shorter lifespan — however, it’s still a matter of debate if […]
It’s a big, bad, lava world – and according to what we know about astronomy, it simply shouldn’t exist. Kepler-78b circles its star every 8 and 1/2 hours, featuring one of the tightest known orbtits. According to currently accepted theories on planetary formation, it couldn’t have formed so close to its star, nor could it […]
The two drugs which are set for approval, simeprevir and sofosbuvir, work in conjunction with another drug called ribavirin, and eliminate hepatitis C in over 80% of all cases – and they do this without the use of interferon. Hepatitis, interferon and drug cocktails For decades, people with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) have had […]
Growing up wasn’t easy for 14 year old Jake Zeldin; his stutter was so bad that he sometimes finds it extremely hard to finish a word, let alone a sentence. But he didn’t let that get in his way, and he found a most unlikely ally – rap. From Jake Zeldin to Lil JaXe Even […]
Researchers from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Laser Zentrum Hannover have worked together to discover a natural compound which can be used in the 3D printing process of creating medical implants out of non-toxic polymers. The compound goes by the name riboflavin, but is better known as […]
