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Only 2% of the human genome is comprised of genes, while the vast majority of genetic material is known as noncoding DNA – that is to say DNA that doesn’t code proteins. A complex plant, the carnivorous bladderwort plant, known as Utricularia gibba, recently became the center of attention for evolutionary biologists after a recently published paper by […]
The nucleus of an atom is closely shaped like a sphere or rugby ball, signifying that mass is evenly distributed inside it. What happens when you encounter an atom whose nucleus stays away from this conventional shape? Well, this would be a good hint to start finding alternative theories, and wouldn’t you know it scientists […]
The human genome has been sequenced a mere few years ago, and since then a great deal of advancements have been made in the field. This is extremely important since in the future, personalized medicine needs each individual’s genetic markup such that treatment may get the most effective punch or diseases and afflictions might be […]
Some of you will definitely rejoice over this news piece. Apparently, scientists in Europe have developed a treatment that has been proven to reverse the massive oxidative stress developed in hair follicles or gray hair. Moreover, the same compound has been found to be effective in battling vitiligo, a skin condition that causes de-pigmentation of sections of […]
In an extraordinary feat of ingenuity, a team of Swedish researchers have converted an all too common commercial DVD drive into a fully working laser scanner microscope capable of performing blood sample analysis and cellular imaging. They achieved this simply by replacing a few hardware pieces in the drive and developing a software that perform the analysis tasks. […]
The ever resourceful Kepler mission has recently unveiled several new possible Earth-like planet candidates, two of whom are favored by scientists with the best odds yet of supporting alien life. The pair actually orbits around the same star, called Kepler 62, after NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which is smaller and dimmer than our own star. Kepler 62 […]
Researchers Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the University of Toronto have demonstrated for the first time that is possible to confirm or independently assess clinical diagnoses of autism in children simply by analyzing their brain activity. Reliable and efficient, their method might be employed at a massive scale as a means of […]
How do you check a multi-billion dollar particle accelerator for defects or malfunctions? Sure, you could use various, equally expensive and sophisticated tools, but in some instances low tech comes in the aid of high tech, say a ping-pong ball. Wait, what ?! Yup, today researchers sent a carefully sterilized, slightly-smaller-than-regulation ping-pong ball through a 2-mile […]
Despite it makes up more than 85% of all matter in the Universe, dark matter, staying true to its name, has eluded scientists for decades ever since they’ve been trying to identify it with high power particle accelerators and detectors. Recent efforts seem to be paying off as various underground labs, as well as those […]
A topic of great interest in neurology and psychology is memory. While a lot of efforts have been made towards identifying what mechanisms and processes govern memory formation and retrieval, very few things are understood with respect to its storage. This is because our memories aren’t static, they always shift position and become either more […]
Paleontologists have discovered an ancient nesting site in China where the oldest fossilized dinosaur embryos to date have been found. The find is extremely exciting from multiple perspectives. For one, many embryos in various development stages have been found which will certainly help scientists better their understanding of how dinosaurs grew (how fast, what bones […]
While dinosaur walking and locomotion is a subject of great interest and study for paleontologists, whether some could swim too is a controversial matter. Recent evidence found by an US graduate student sheds new light on the subject and suggests some dinosaurs could paddle for long distances through water with coordinated leg movement. Scott Persons, […]
This might strike some of you as a surprise, but turbulence, a phenomenon we all encounter on a daily basis – be it while mixing coffee, starting your car (fuel and air mixture) or of course while flying – and which has been first scientifically described some 600 years ago, remains today one of the […]
What’s the difference between a solid and liquid? You might find this question trivial – naturally, liquids flow and solids… well, they don’t. From a physical point of view, however, things aren’t that simple. Intrigued by some ever so often encountered exceptions in the current accepted theory that describes the differences between the states of […]
Unborn lizards can erupt from their eggs days before they should if they recept vibrations that hint at a predator coming. The premature hatchlings literally begin their life by running as fast as they can. Talk about having an escape plan! The fact that lizards can have such spectacular survival reflexes even before they are […]
Since it was first described sometime in the 1960s, the ionic thruster has remained confined to hobbyists basements, shadowed by the century old jet engine. Recent research at MIT, however, shows that in some respects the ionic thruster overwhelms the jet engine in terms of efficiency, suggesting that it definitely worth of more attention. “Ionic wind” […]
An often overlooked aspect of climate change is the migration of the traditionally-viewed climate line that separates the Northern and the Southern hemispheres, as the Northern is becoming warmer than the South. The consequences are deeply rooted, yet poorly studied. A recent study by climatologists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington, […]
Driven by technological demand to breach the gigahertz (10^9 hertz) switching speed limit of today’s magnetic memory and logic devices, a team of researchers have devised a novel technique of switching magnetism that is at least 1000 times faster than that currently employed opening up the terahertz age (10^12 hertz). Hard drives, magnetic random access memory (RAM) and other computing […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The misinformation going on in some fields of science is just staggering. For example, I woke up today to see my email, Facebook and even phone filled with messages about this new discovery that can use the CO2 in the atmosphere and transform it into biofuel. My first take on that was “Cool, a plant”. […]
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 […]
It may be a little off to talk about invisibility when we’re not even in the visible spectrum, but ‘invisibility cloak‘ sounds just to awesome not to use it. Using a new kind of cloak that uses a very thin multilayer dielectric coating made of natural material (as opposed to metamaterials which are often used), […]
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 […]
For decades, there’s been significant discussions on how professional fighting affects the brain, but not much scientific progress has been made on the matter. Now, a new (not yet peer reviewed) MRI study has shown that important regions and connections of the brain have decreased in volume in both amateur and professional fighters with the […]
Since Einstein first postulated his theories of general relativity, physicists have constructed models describing the Universe that mainly revolve around the idea that the speed of light is constant through vacuum. Two new studies, yet to have been published in peer-reviewed journals, suggest that light through vacuum actually fluctuates, albeit the deviations are infinitesimal. Still, if […]
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 […]
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 […]
Rapidly expanding road networks are causing massive direct and indirect damage to forests but proper infrastructure planning and implementation could actually turn them into a net positive for the environment, argue researchers writing in the journal Science. William Laurance and Andrew Balmford have studied the severe negative environmental issues caused by expanding road networks in […]
Jeff Bezos is an extraordinary individual whom I admire very much, not because of its almost ubiquitous success in every attempt he has endeavored, but rather because Bezos, much like SpaceX‘s Elon Musk, is a man of vision – a man that recognizes value both in man and nature, and strives for progress. The Amazon founder, […]
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 […]
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 […]
If you still don’t know what graphene is, you’d better learn pretty soon – because it’s the stuff of the future. Graphene is a substance composed of pure carbon, with atoms arranged in a regular hexagonal pattern similar to graphite, but in a one-atom thick sheet. Ok, so what’s so special about it? Well, due […]
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 […]
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 […]
