gear Push settings
For more and more people, ageing and clumsiness seem to go hand in hand – difficulties when handling a plate, fumbling with keys or even dialing a phone – new research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that some of these day-to-day reaching-and-grasping difficulties may be be caused by changes in the mental frame […]
The first known case of a bone tumor has been discovered in a Neanderthal who lived about 120,000 years ago in what is now present-day Croatia. The bone samples come from the already famous cave/archaeological site Krapina, which now hosts a Neanderthal Museum. Bone tumors are exceptionally rare finds in fossils and archaeological records, with […]
Living fossils, fast adapters Sturgeons have been conserved as fossils ever since the early Cretaceous – some 130 million years ago; they are what we call ‘living fossils’. But a new study by University of Michigan researchers revealed that in some aspects, sturgeons are one of the fastest-evolving fish on the planet. “Sturgeon are thought […]
It’s not a well known problem by most, but those who work in the field are very aware of it – medical isotopes are a very valuable commodity. But now, a Canadian team may have very well found a way to end the shortage, developing and upgrade that allows hospital cyclotrons to make a much-needed […]
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is one mean, hard, disease. It’s an autoimmune disease – your body basically fails to identify itself, and starts attacking itself, and treatment is very difficult. In MS, the immune system attacks and destroys myelin, the insulating layer that forms around nerves in the spinal cord, brain and optic nerve. When the […]
It’s a staple of classic science fiction – controlling stuff with your mind. But researchers working at the University of Minnesota made it reality. From sci-fi to the lab In the lab of biomedical engineering professor Bin He, several people have already learned to use their thoughts to drive a flying robot around – making […]
If you’ve ever visited a cave, you probably know the golden rules: Watch you’re head, stay on the track, and keep your grase paws off the formations! Why the last one? Well, because the hands and dirt you have on your hands can impede their growth. But when you go inside a cave as a […]
Early galaxies were very different from those we see today – it was overgrown black holes, and not stars that lit them up, claims a new study; in it, it is suggested that these obese black holes were numerous and bright enough that we should be able to detect them now, billions of years […]
Stars have a pull on all planets, but they exhibit a special kind of attraction towards a class of planets called ‘Hot Jupiters‘. Hot Jupiters, also called roaster planets or pegadisds are a class of extrasolar planets very similar to Jupiter, but which have very high temperatures because they orbit very close to the Sun. […]
Towering thunderstorms are a bad sign, often announcing a strong tropical cyclone – and NASA’s satellites observed just that. The TRMM satellite spotted thunderstorms reaching heights of almost 9 miles high within Tropical Storm Andrea, while the Aqua satellite provided an infrared view that revealed very cold cloud top temperatures that coincided with the towering […]
What do Australian researchers do when they don’t want to do their homework? They make a study in which they prove homeworks aren’t useful. But jokes aside, Australian academics Richard Walker and Mike Horsley’s new book – Reforming Homework – claims homework for young primary school children is of little or no value when it […]
The case of birds missing out on a proper penis has been a longstanding mystery in evolutionary biology. Roughly 97% of avian species sport little or nothing like a real phallus, yet they still reproduce via internal fertilization. A new study, conducted by Martin Cohn, a developmental biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville […]
A new study suggests that U.S. businesses pay almost $6,000 per year extra for each employee who smokes, compared to an employee which doesn’t smoke. Researchers claim this is the first study to focus on the cost of employing smokers vs non-smokers. So why does this happen? By drawing data from previous researches, focusing on […]
Yoga supporters have long claimed the benefits of the practice, both on the mind and the soul, but many skeptics underlined the lack of scientific studies in the field. Now, a team from Illinois University have shown that even a singulary, 20 minute session of Hatha yoga significantly improved participants’ speed and accuracy on tests […]
Ah, Playa del Amor – the beach of love! Such a sweet, classic name for such a weird, hidden beach! Located several meters inland on one of the Marieta Islands, the Hidden Beach is one of those unique natural wonders you just don’t want to miss. But as our Facebook fans know, I asked you […]
Forget meadows. Forget grass. Forget sterile, monotone parks with no plant diversity. Seattle’s vision of an urban oasis is becoming more and more a reality: a seven-acre plot of land will be covered with hundreds of different kinds of edible plants: walnut and chestnut trees, blueberry and raspberry shrubs, apples, pears, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, […]
At 55 million years old, it represents the earliest known member of this broad group of animals that includes humans. It may be no bigger than a mouse, but it is a primate, and a very valuable one at that; paleontologists have named it Archicebus, which roughly translates as “ancient monkey”. The team which described […]
Benjamin Wegener, a researcher at Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences and his team has shown that for squids, it’s really a dog eat dog out there: certain females consume male ejaculate and sperm as if they were foods, providing more energy for both themselves and future eggs. For females, it’s really a big win […]
As bad as earthquakes can be, and we’ve recently had our fair share of earthquakes around the world, the tsunamis they generate can be even worse. When an earthquake has a significant effect in a body of water, it displaces large quantities of water – and it is that displacement which causes the huge waves […]
The French didn’t invent wine, no more than Colombians invented coffee or the Italians discovered tomatoes. But… who did? What is the actual homeland of this wonderful drink? After analyzing some limestone residue, archaeologists working at University of Pennsylvania claims to have found the earliest evidence of European winemaking. The 2,400-year-old stone is apparently a […]
Hydrogen is the most common element in the Universe. It’s the first element in the periodic table, and it has but one proton and one electron. Understanding how it behaves at very large pressures is crucial to our understanding of matter and the nature of hydrogen-rich planets. Under typical conditions, Hydrogen is a diatomic molecule […]
Just yesterday we were telling you about a change in diet 3.5 million years ago, modifying the way our hominid ancestors evolved and, in turn, how we evolved. Now, we’re moving a little closer to the present day – researchers calculating the barium levels in fossil teeth claim that they’ve found a difference in the […]
In a quest to make concrete not only more durable but also more sustainable, a group of geologists and engineers have found inspiration in the ancient Romans – whose imposing buildings have passed the test of time, surviving two millennia. Geology and the Romans Using classic microscopy, as well as the Advanced Light Source at […]
A team of researchers from Cologne, Munich and Dresden have managed to create artificial magnetic monopoles, similar in many ways to a fundamental particle postulated by Paul Dirac in 1931. Monopoles and Dipoles Until now, a magnetic monopole, the magnetic analogue to an electric charge has never been observed – all we had until now […]
It’s not quite what scientists expected – the width of blood vessels in the eye, at the back of the retina, may indicate brain health risks, such as dementia and alzheimers years before they actually set in according to a new study published in Psychological Science. It is already well known that young people who […]
To fully understand the processes and mechanisms that work at a cellular level, biologists should study them in their native, watery environments. But how would you go on doing this? Well, leave it to engineers to solve everyone’s problems – they have now deviced a kind of atomic force microscopy that works on samples sitting […]
Eggs, drugs and human lives For the standards of the criminals who poach and smuggle animals in Central America, it was just another day. But for the rest of the world, the murder of conservationist Jairo Mora Sandoval is a tragedy – a tragedy highlighting the risks faced by biologists whose passion for nature puts […]
The reemergence of the critically endangered population of Huemul deer (Hippocamelus bisulcus) marks a fantastic achievement by local governments and conservationists worldwide. Brought back from the brink of extinction, when populations measured less than 1% of original numbers, the Huemul populations have not only stabilized – but have started increasing, according to a new study. […]
New analysis of fossil teeth from extinct fossils has shown that human ancestors greatly expanded their diets 3.5 million years ago, moving on to eat grasses and also other animals. Before this, the humanlike creatures (hominis) ate a forest based diet, pretty similar to what chimps and apes eat today. Researchers from the California Academy […]
Despite the fact that triceratops are some of the most well known dinosaurs, finding a complete skeletons is an extremely rare treat. It was one of the last non-avian dinosaur genera to appear before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event – the extinction which caused the end of dinosaurs and the Mesozoic. The scientists from the Black […]
The only two (significant) places in our solar system, that we know of, which can create opals are Central Australia and Mars, so by studying the geologic processes which led to the creation of these minerals in the first place, we can perhaps find out more about the Red Planet. As a geologist, I was […]
Soil is becoming endangered – this is the reality a meeting between experts in Reykjavik has reached. They explain that this has to receive public awareness if we want to feed 9 billion by 2050. Soil degradation is life degradation The main culprit is the one also responsible for global warming: Carbon. “Keeping and […]
Tho global meat giants with shady food and environmental safety records shook hands as they are planning to become the world’s biggest meat producer. Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the U.S., has been bought by China’s Shuanghui International Holdings Limited for $4.7 billion. The global meat industry, which is grasped firmly by a […]
Babies learn to babble before they can talk, usually starting with the “ba-ba”, or “ga-ga”, or in the really fortunate cases – with “ma-ma”. After that, they start stringing a few random syllables together, and only after that, they actually start talking. Songbirds exhibit the same type of behavior when they start singing, and the […]
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper went to unusually great lengths to prove that hydraulic fracking is safe and does no environmental damage. The politician told the press that he actually drank a glass of fracking fluid. “You can drink it. We did drink it around the table, almost rituallike, in a funny way,” he told the […]
In terms of materials, graphene is definitely the hot cherry at the moment; it is basically a one-atom thick layer of the mineral graphite (carbon), with more such layers stacked together forming crystalline graphene. It is very light, with a 1-square-meter sheet weighing only 0.77 milligrams, but also very durable and has a number of […]
As we’ve already posted today, NASA’s GRAIL mission did a great job of mapping out the gravitational features of the Moon. Just as a quick add to that, here’s two maps which I hope you’ll find interesting:
“Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die” – seems to be the motto at big oil companies. At Wednesday’s meeting for ExxonMobil shareholders in Dallas, CEO Rex Tillerson told participants that the economy is currently relying on oil, and that will not change anytime soon. He concluded that cutting down on carbon emissions […]
50 years ago, if you took a cod from European waters, you’d have to cut it to be able to cook it. Nowadays, cooks easily fit one fish in a frying pan, even with a few vegetables. As unimportant as this fact may seem,it is actually a good reflection of the huge drop in fish […]
Detailed analysis and review have confirmed the scientists’ initial opinion – the pebble containing slabs Curiosity stumbled upon last year were indeed part of an ancient streambed. When the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, it was expecting to find lots of things – but finding evidence of ancient water so close to the land site […]
NASA’s GRAIL mission had been studying the Moon’s gravitational field for 9 months, with great results – they have discovered the massive regions which cause irregularities in the Moon’s gravitational field, making it uneven. Planetary gravitational fields The Earth, the Moon, and pretty much all planets have irregular gravitational field – first of all because […]
Black holes are the single most interesting and puzzling objects in our Universe – that we know of. But as if they weren’t mysterious enough, researchers have found that if you apply a quantum theory of gravity to these bizarre objects, the all-crushing singularity at their core disappears, opening a whole new Universe of possibilities […]
Over the past decades, what we mean by glue has changed significantly; techniques have emerged, materials have been developed, and one of the most viable candidates for a superglue is gold. Researchers have found numerous applications for attaching molecules to gold; the approach uses chemicals called thiols to bind the materials together. But while this […]
Mosquitoes are not only extremely annoying, but they’re some of the most lethal creatures out there, with malaria infecting over 200 million people each year. But genetically modified mosquitoes that lack some of their sense of smell cannot tell humans from other animals and no longer avoid approaching people who are slathered in bug spray. […]
In a never-before seen feat, astronomers using NASA’s Swift X-ray Telescope have observed a spinning neutron star suddenly slowing down, something which can provide valuable clues to understanding these mysterious objects. Neutron stars Neutron stars are the cores of former high-mass stars, the remains of supernovae after the blow-up. As the core of the massive […]
The fossil, which still retains impressions of feathers, is 160 million years old, predating the oldest Archaeopterix fossil found by 10 million years. Scientits have named it Aurornis, which means “dawn bird”. Aurornis and Archaeopteryx Aurornis enables us not only to better understand the emergence of birds, but also to understand how powerful flight originated. […]
A study has shown that genetically modified salmon that breed with wild trout can produce a fast-growing, competitive fish that not only screws around with the local ecosystem, but because it also alters the fish genome in ways which cannot be anticipated. What do you get when you cross a genetically modified salmon and wild […]
It’s no surprise that Germany is just giving lessons in terms of managing renewable energy sources – year after year, the country features more and more cities and now, even villages, which harness most of their energy from renewable sources. Wildpoldsried, a municipality in the district of Oberallgäu in Bavaria has a population of only […]
It’s the outskirts of our solar system – spherical particles of rocks and ice, way beyond the familiar planets, and even the former planet Pluto, there lies the Oort Cloud – a spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that may lie roughly 50,000 AU from the Sun (AU = the distance from the Sun to […]
When you think about photosynthesis, the color green probably comes to mind – almost all plants are green, and they rely on photosynthesis, right? But purple bacteria have been around for a long time, and they are among the most efficient organisms at turning sunlight into usable chemical energy. Now, a key to their light-harvesting […]
