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A Sri Lanka researcher has discovered a new tarantula species, and it’s literally a big deal. Spanning across eight inches, this tarantula is big enough to cover your entire face and boasts a unique coloring. Ranil Nanayakkara, a local researcher, along with his team found the tiger stripped arachnid while on a typical arachnid expedition […]
A $1.6 billion cosmic ray experiment on the International Space Station has come across evidence of antimatter in space, a remarkable finding that was recently presented during a seminar at CERN and which might help probe the mysteries of dark matter – one of the major components that make up the Universe. The find was made using […]
In the past few years a relatively new field of science has surfaced into mainstream discussions, especially those concerning biodiversity and nature conservation – synthetic biology. Some are simply ecstatic of its progress and findings, while others are simply terrified by some of its potential consequences. In an attempt to address the issue, albeit from […]
One of the biggest problem in psychiatry today, though the doctors practicing it regularly hand out medication and treatment, is the lack of clear biological markers. Basically, most of the diagnosis is made based on reported and evaluated symptoms that might not hint towards the real mental affliction the said person is suffering from. Brains […]
When you think of robots, the first thing you might think of are anthropological-looking tin cans that beep around and perform various tasks (you have SciFi shows to thank for that) or familiar modern day industrial robots that toil away day and night producing goods. As such, a puck-sized robot that doesn’t look like much might […]
In an unexpected discovery, astronomers have surprised a supermassive black hole that had been dormant for the past decades “waking up” and feasting upon an unsuspecting planet that had drifted too close to its event horizon. The mass of the planet hints towards a giant Jupiter or a small brown dwarf. Also, a similar event […]
The gecko is a phenomenal reptile which has always amazed observers, and especially scientists, thanks to its remarkable ability to cling to surfaces. Though they’ve been studied for a while now, it’s only recently that researchers have learned how geckos scale across wet surfaces, like leaves and trees found in its natural tropical environment. The […]
In a society that attempts to pass from an opulent attitude towards consumption to a much more temperate, health-centered one, biases can easily make their way through and distort reality. It’s quite easy too, considering the amount of confusion that seems to be floating in the air. A good example for this is the “health […]
There are a number of daily chores, activities and trifles that require a distinct amount of care and attention when in space that are inversely proportional to the care the same activities require back on Earth. In a recently released video Chris Hadfield, the commander of the Expedition 35 crew now living aboard the International Space Station […]
After scientists have devised materials that rend objects optically invisible, researchers in Spain have developed a method that allowed them to cloak 3-D objects from sound waves for the first time. While sound cloaking has been demonstrated before, this was the first time that a full 3-D object was concealed. The findings might help engineers […]
A new survey conducted by researchers at University of Southern University, Harvard University and Peking University have found that lifestyle choices during adulthood influence how much we will shrink in height as we age. Other studies had analyzed how health and height are linked both in childhood and adulthood, however the present study is the first […]
A new study stresses the overlooked hazards that dumped pharmaceuticals found in wastewater pose to the world’s freshwater streams. So far, the impacts and consequences on water quality and aquatic life are unknown or under researched, and the authors hope their findings might warrant more work in this direction. Dr. Emma Rosi-Marshall, lead author of […]
At the advent of the transistor during the middle of the last century, computers simply boomed as a new era of technology was ushered in. Though it may not have the same humongous impact the traditional transistor had during its introduction, the all biological transistor recently unveiled by scientists at Stanford University will surely change […]
Since Curiosity landed, it has more than made its money worth, especially considering the mission’s most recent official public briefing when NASA JPL lead scientists announced they found evidence Mars was once capable of supporting life. It’s not only about science though, it’s also about beauty, rugged adventure and seeing things for the first time that […]
A while ago, we wrote about the ongoing efforts to pinpoint the cause that gives rise to the thousands of so called “fairy circles” scattered around hundreds of square miles from the edge of the Namib Desert in Angola to South Africa. These great rings of grass that cover whole patches of arid desert have […]
This afternoon a Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts (two Russian and one American) is set for launch out of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, destined for the International Space Station, at 4:43 p.m. The flight is set to be a historical one, as it will set a new milestone in space launches. Typically, all manned flights up […]
A team of researchers from the US claim they have finally found tangible evidence that will once and for all end the controversy surrounding the Geobacter sulfurreducens, a bacteria that conducts electricity along thin protein filaments, just like a metal. In the scientists’ paper, it’s reported that aromatic amino-acids are central to both the electrical and respiratory functions […]
For some years now, scientists have been exploring the use of quantum dots as the basis for a novel type of solar cell. The advantages over conventional solar photovoltaic cells are numerous, minus one aspect: efficiency, which is actually the most important one. A new technique developed at MIT labs that uses quantum dots in […]
It’s rather difficult to imagine a video game for the blind, seeing they can’t actually see, but what people should loose sight of is that the other four senses are still there, and they’re quite sharper. A group of researchers at the Department of Ophthalmology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Harvard Medical School have […]
The Peruvian capital of Lima, along with its outskirts, is plagued by a vicious drought, which coupled with pollution and unsanitary water extraction methods, has made the water there stagnant, dirty and dangerous. Doing what they know best – fix problems – engineers at Peru’s University for Engineering and Technology have devised an resourceful system that […]
Supernovae are highly energetic events caused by the explosion of stars that are at times so bright they can outshine whole galaxies. These are thought to occur in two varieties, but a recently published paper has a described a third type of supernova, one that’s fainter than the other two and distinguishes itself by the […]
For more than 50 years since its discovery, the single-celled organism Tetrahymena thermophila has stirred curiosity around its seven sexes. UC Santa Barbara biologists have now found how the creature picks its gender from the slew, and apparently it’s not a matter of choice since the Tetrahymena gender distribution is as random as a game of roulette. The team […]
An international team of physicists have used one of the world’s most powerful lasers to create an unusual kind of plasma made out of hollow atoms, by using a breakthrough technique which involved emptying atoms of electrons from the inside out, instead of working from the outer shells inwards. This bizarre physics experiment shows once again […]
We live in a society that’s increasingly isolating individuals, as age-long cultural and community habits die off. Prior to the massive urban developments that came in the XXth century, living alone was something virtually unheard of and was mostly reserved to the social pariahs, the outcasts, hermits that chose to live the solitary life. Today, in […]
The Iberian lynx is the only wild cat listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), numbering no more than 200 specimens, all of whom are entirely confined to southern Spain. Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin recently salvaged embryos and egg cells from a pair of captive […]
A new study sheds new light on the impact humans had on the local aviary fauna in the Pacific, after the authors conclude that human colonization of the Pacific Islands is the main driving factor that wiped out some 1,300 bird species in the area or roughly 10% of the entire bird population on the […]
When two fluid jets meet, they might coalescence or not depending on a number of factors. The 19th century born John William Strutt, 3rd, also known as Lord Baron Rayleigh made a number of significant contributions to physics during his lifetime, some of his most notable work being in the field of fluids dynamics. It was […]
What do you get when you cross a grizzly bear with a polar bear? Simple, a prizzly bear or golar bear, depending on the side you’re looking from. What about a narwhal with a beluga whale? A narluga! No, these aren’t childish word plays, nor elaborated photoshop attempts – these animals truly exist and come […]
One of the biggest hurdles the solar energy industry currently faces is efficiently transforming the incoming energy from the sun’s rays. Vast fields of solar panels are a common sight, but truth of the matter is their energy output is quite low, which puts them at a technical and economic disadvantage from other renewable solutions […]
The current leading theory that explains the mass extinction of the dinosaurs – once the dominant group of animals on Earth for millions of years – states that an asteroid impact some 65 million years ago brought their demise, wiping them out along with 70% of all life on the planet. A new study, however, […]
Some 200 million years ago half of all life on Earth went extinct, thus providing a window of opportunity for the dinosaurs to evolve in now unoccupied niches and dominate the planet for the next 135 million years. Curiously enough, after the dinosaurs were at their own term wiped out by a calamity – presumably at the […]
If you have really young kids, under three of four years old, you might have noticed just how tricky they can be in their actions – one thing they say, another thing they do. A recent study from University of Michigan puts these discrepancies into a psychological discussion. The researchers’ findings surprisingly show that children […]
Trekkies have a reason to rejoice one again after Japanese researchers have successfully devised the first working phaser – a laser that shoots sound particles instead of light. It will take a while though until you’ll be able to zap your neighbors around with a sound canon, as the scientists still need to work around […]
Using the incredible Planck cosmology probe astronomers at the European Space Agency have assembled a map of the “oldest light” in the sky – the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that was thrown into space in all directions just a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang and which is still picked up here on Earth today. […]
Miniaturization is a fad that’s increasingly popular in the field of medicine for obvious reasons, and scientists at EPFL have recently made a remarkable contribution – a tiny monitoring and diagnosis device implantable under the skin just a few cubic millimeters in volume that can instantly analyze key substances in the blood stream and transmit information to a […]
Millions of years ago, an ancient tectonic plate called the Farallon oceanic plate used to sit between the Pacific and North American plates. In time, the plate “disappeared” beneath the North American one, however geologists at Brown University have now found physical surface remnants of the plate under sections of central California and Mexico. The Farallon surface […]
There are millions of asteroids in our solar system. Be them the size of France or a small bus, these space rocks can be found through out the solar system, and have recently become the subject of entrepreneurial discussions, since even a single medium-sized asteroid is thought to carry trillions of dollars worth of rare […]
German scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have completed the first high-quality draft Neanderthal genome sequence, marking another leap forward in understanding our fellow hominids and how our species interacted, if there was such thing, with other hominid species. Moreover, the whole Neanderthal genome has been made freely available to the […]
Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, once home to the longest particle accelerator for nearly fifty years, have used the world’s most powerful X-ray laser to distinguish at an atomic level the mechanisms of reaction of a catalyst in action. This unprecedented view will help scientists develop cleaner and […]
Up until the mind XIXth century most homes and buildings were made out of wood, a readily available and cheap material. However, like we all know wood is easily flammable and caused a myriad of issues, especially in urban environments. How many times were whole cities at risk of being whipped out by flames? Rome? […]
This month the PAN-STARSS comet can be seen at its brightest, a truly rare event that can be witnessed in all its splendor in the skies around the world with simple magnifying tools such as binoculars. Some have reported they could see the comet with the naked eye, but if you plan on catching sight […]
An extremely worrisome climate model predicts, based on current global warming projections, that storm surges – the most damaging and dangerous part of a hurricane – are set to increase in frequency and magnitude by as much as ten times by the turn of the century due to climate change. The scientists involved in the […]
The Curiosity rover is in a bit of trouble and is currently facing it’s longest period of inactivity since its touchdown on Mars. At the beginning of March, the rover experience fatal memory errors in one of its two side computers, presumably due to radiation exposure, which forced scientists on Earth to put the rover into […]
A virus that most of us carry, yet which is remarkably obscure both to the immune system and the general public in terms of awareness, is responsible for a number of health hazards in the human body. In time, it tires the immune system which is forced to seek and fight it for a life […]
Paleontologists were stoked by the discovery of hundreds of fossilized dinosaur eggs, belonging to various species, in a region of Spain. The dinosaur fossil eggs were said to be about as big as a basketball, while others were smaller. Since eggs belonging to various species were found in the same are, the findings add further […]
A recent study that asked human participants with minimal experience with dogs to judge the latter’s facial expression showed that we have an inherent ability to empathize with canines. Humans and dogs have been evolving side-by-side for the past 100,000 years and the study suggests that we are capable of judging a dog’s emotions similarly if […]
All life as we know it is primarily based on two elements: carbon and oxygen. Scientists at North Carolina State University investigating the conditions required for the formation of these life essential ingredients found that the Universe lives little room for error. Carbon and oxygen are formed as combustion byproducts after helium burns inside a […]
In a great leap forward towards reviving extinct animal species, scientists at University of New South Wales, Australia have grown embryos that contain the genetic markup of a rather peculiar, yet unfortunately extinct frog species native to Australia. The frog died off in the 1980s due to parasites, loss of habitat, invasive weeds and fungus, and […]
Though we’ve accomplish our knowledge a great deal in the past decades of bird evolution there are still many loose ends and debate is far from being settled. A general consensus among paleontologists is that birds today are actually a sort of modern dinosaurs, now recent fossils findings from China suggest early birds some 150 million years ago were four-winged […]
The science of physics has entered a new era once with the discovery of the much sought-after Higgs boson in July 2012. The elementary particle thought to be responsible for granting matter its mass has been theorized for decades, but only with the deployment of the multi-billion Large Hadron Collider in Geneva could such a […]
