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Way back before clocks were a thing, people had another natural way of waking up: the rooster’s crow. Now, a new study shows that they are so exact, that they don’t even need the light of a new day to know when it’s dawn – they just rely on their internal clocks. Nagoya University […]
For the first time in history, researchers have found microbes living deep inside Earth’s oceanic crust – the black basalts that make some 60% of our planet’s surface – potentially the largest habitat on our planet. Engineering and microbes Microbiologist Mark Lever is on board the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s research vessel JOIDES Resolution to […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Mariana trench is the deepest point on Earth; now, an international team of researchers found that the very bottom of the Mariana Trench, which lies almost 11 km beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, has high levels of microbial activity. No more than 30 years ago, we had a very different idea about […]
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 […]
A few months ago, we were telling you about the mind boggling properties the new material called graphene has, and how practical uses will not take long to follow. Apparently, things moved even faster than we expected them – Berkeley researchers have created the first ever graphene audio speaker: an earphone. Their quality, even in […]
The Chinese government is well on track in its plans of implement a modern and more secure internet infrastructure. The web is getting really, really old and creaky, and naturally attempts to modernize its infrastructure and protocols have been made. The west is lagging far behind in its efforts, while China is close to setting […]
Hotter than ever, basically.
The beginning of the month was a troublesome one for humanity’s Magellan on Mars – the Curiosity rover – and its team of engineers behind it after a major malfunction forced one of its computers to enter into safe mode. Luckily, the NASA engineers have thought of almost every possible glitch and also had this […]
A rather well rooted idea in evolutionary biology says that evolution itself is non-reversible. Simply put, once an organism has specialized certain traits, it can not return to its ancestral traits – this is commonly referred to as Dollo’s law. In a way, you could say that by looking at Dollo’s law, evolution isn’t ever […]
Researchers have demonstrated for the first time the existence of a naturally occurring topological insulator – an exotic class of materials that possesses the unique ability to conduct electricity and the surface, but not on the inside. Previously, topological insulators have been studied and created in labs only, however now a mineral has been found […]
A group of international researchers assessed 17 state-of-the-art climate model simulations and based on these have found that temperature seasonality shifts and green plants could move further north by as much as a whooping 20 degrees latitude by the turn of the century. So far, in the past 30 years alone, southern vegetation has moved […]
Just recently European scientists have released the first part of the Rapyuta program – a global world wide web for robots. Now, don’t get this wrong. This isn’t a place where robots can chat, surf websites or browse facebook. On Rapyuta, robots will have access to open data like a massive database, as well as additional […]
An international team of researchers set out on the daunting task of surveying the Central African elephant population. Their results offer a new harsh cold shower as to the critical situation wildlife our planet is currently in. Their findings suggest the African elephant population in the area has plummeted by a staggering 62% and their […]
3D printing is the stuff of the future – today. It’s one of the most stunning pieces of relatively accessible technology; most notably in medicine, the precision offered by 3-D printing can make tiny surface details on the replacement part that encourage the growth of cells and allow the bone to attach more easily. In […]
To be quite honest, there are moments when I feel that I don’t understand quantum mechanics at all – the phenomena involved in the field are so complex and counter intuitive one can only stop and wonder if God does in fact play dice with the Universe… but at any rate, the advancements produced by […]
New DNA analysis of an ancient dog tooth sample found in Siberia suggests that the modern dog might be as well as 33,000 years old. If indeed the sample comes from a domesticated dog, then it would push back the origin of today’s house pets more than 18,000 years. This significant discovery was made after […]
For more than two centuries physicians have been using general anesthetics to perform surgeries, however even now in the 21st century scientists know very little about what happens to the brain when the patient moves to and fro a state of consciousness. This becomes even more important when you consider the very rare but frightening […]
We’ve showed you some incredible brain-computer interface scientific advances in the past few weeks alone, be it the merged rat brain organic computer or flexible electronic “tattoo” that might enable functioning telepathy, and the field is only growing. We couldn’t be more happy, you can imagine, since the potential medical uses alone for this kind […]
A team of researchers at Princeton University have devised an experimental set-up that closely mimics the flow of bacteria through working medical devices. Their findings show that bacteria clog medical devices extremely fast – much faster than previously thought – and warrant new strategies and designs in order to counter machine failure. The researchers used […]
A group of researchers at University of Rochester and the University of Ottawa have found a way to bypass Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle, and measure key quantum properties directly for the first time like the polarization states of light. The technique might provide valuable in encoding qubits, the building blocks of quantum information theory. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle […]
A group of French researchers have published a paper in which they reveal how King Richard I, also known as Richard the Lionheart, had its heart mummified after he succumbed from gangrene in 1199. Apparently the great monarch’s heart was preserved in mercury, mint and frankincense, among other sweet-smelling plants. As it was customary at the time, Richard’s […]
Researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine came across a particular strain of bacteriophage – a virus that infects and replicates within bacteria – that had stolen the functional immune system of the cholera bacteria. The virus used the bacteria’s immune system against it to replicate and eventually kill the bacteria. The findings hint to the prospect of developing new […]
While brighter expectations of the future might help most of us battle the harsh realities of life, a recent study conducted by German researchers has found that pessimists, who tend to have lower expectations about the future, live on average longer and are less inclined to develop disease or disabilities than optimists. Data collected between 1993 to 2003 by the […]
Most animals have eyes in the vicinity of their brains, typically inside the head, since these are very sensible organs that require a very sophisticated neural link. Recently, biologists at Tufts University have shown that they could implant working eyes in other locations as well, after they granted blind tadpoles vision after they implanted eyes in […]
In 1899 the famous Russian paleontologist Alexander Petrovich Karpinsky published a paper in which he described a peculiar fossil resembling what can only be called today as a “buzz saw”, but whose barer escaped scientists. Many speculations have been made since then, but most recently, using advanced SCAN scans, scientists at Idaho State University have asserted that […]
I have nothing but the deepest admiration and respect for fighters – always faithful in the face of peril and always ready to put their necks on the line in order to save people from the hellish depths. As one can imagine, firefighting tech has evolved a great deal from simple fireproof clothing and a […]
For some time now, researchers have been experimenting with the idea of an aircraft that operates with flapping wings, just like insects or birds do, instead of conventional flat and long wings. The idea is that flapping wings allow a much greater degree of control and stability, allowing the aircraft to perform maneuvers otherwise impossible. […]
In just a couple of years, electronics will cross a new frontier of practicability and aesthetics as consumer goods will transition to flexible electronics. We’ve told you all about fantastic electronics that can stretch multiple times their own size all while housing delicate circuitry, hinting to prospects where they could be easily embedded into clothing […]
Cockroaches are maybe the most amazing insects in the animal kingdom – they’re simply made to survive. These little buggers can survive in sub-zero temperatures, can withstand a lethal dose of radiation up to 15 times of that for humans, can live without food for a whole month and … they can live with a […]
One of the miracles of modern day medicine science, stem cells, are regarded by scientists as the basic building blocks for devising treatments, cures or transplants for some of today’s yet incurable diseases like Alzheimer or diabetes. The biggest hurdle researchers face is differentiating stem cells so that they may grow into a specific type […]
Though hundreds of potentially life harboring exoplanets have been discovered thus far, until the James Webb Space Telescope becomes operational, sometime around 2018, scientists today lack the resources to peer into the guts of these planet and determine a realistic chance of hosting life. Even when the JWT goes live, however, it will take hundreds […]
We’ve never shun away from praising the almost miraculous properties of graphene, the wonder material set to become even more paradigm shifting than plastic. Graphene has found been found to have the potential to revolutionize a myriad of scientific fields, from genetics, to electronics, to nanotech, to security, to just about anything you could think of. The energy […]
Princeton University political scientists have found as part of a recent study looking to assess the performance of state supreme court justices that appointed justices generally bring a higher quality of information to the decision-making process, are less biased and are generally less prone to error as elected justices. For their study, Matias Iaryczower, an assistant […]
Earlier today I wrote about some recent findings that suggest humans have evolved unique brain structures from other primates. Don’t be fooled however in thinking many of the activities we undertake every day are solely found in human culture. Dolphins communicate with each other much like humans do and besides tool use, chimps know that […]
A new climate model has predicted dramatic snow fall decline worldwide as a result of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide in the next 100 years. Many regions in the world depend on fresh water as a result of snow melt, which means if the study’s predictions hold that dire consequences to the biosphere and climate balance await. […]
Scientists and researchers at the University College of London (UCL) have built a self-healing computer that may end computer crashes forever, according to the New Scientist. Called a “systemic computer,” the machine — which is being developed by computer scientist, Dr. Peter Bentley, and UCL research engineer, Christos Sakellariou — is now operating, apparently crash-free, […]
It’s remarkable what state technology has reached today, and it’s only getting faster, more powerful and smaller. If merely a decade ago you were to tell someone that it would be possible for a human to control a robotic arm by the power of thought only, chances are you would have been labeled as mad. […]
In the culmination of 15 years worth of painstaking research work related to retina implants, scientists from Germany and Hungary have for the first time demonstrated that a light sensitive electronic chip, implanted under the retina, can restore useful vision in patients blind from hereditary retinal degeneration. As part of the research, nine persons previously completely […]
Pollination is the game, “summon bees” is the spell, and electricity is the mana – that’s how I’d try to explain it to a gamer. A little more on the serious side, flowers advertise presence of nectar to bees using electrical signals, basically indicating if they’ve been visited by another bee or not. Usually, plants […]
It’s a rather well-attested fact that men are significantly better than women at spatial navigation, something that holds across a wide variety of species, not just humans. General belief holds that evolution triggered this response since our ancestors needed to return home after traveling vast distances in search of food, while the females stayed home. […]
Researchers at Northwestern University claim they have uncovered the mechanisms that lead to difficulty in reading. Apparently, there is a direct correlation between one’s ability to encode speech sound in the brain and ease of reading. The scientists also devised an experiment and saw that children with reading impairment significantly improved after being fitted with […]
3D printing is like a piece of future in the present – the number and extent of applications are just staggering. Recently, researchers from Cornell University have reated an artificial ear using 3-D printing and injectable molds that works pretty much just like the real thing. In a study published in PLOS One, Cornell bioengineers […]
There are millions of species on Earth, and naturally understanding the mechanics of evolution is of great importance for understanding further on what sparks life. What sparks consciousness, well that’s a whole different ball-game. Currently, scientists are concentrating on how diversification occurs in order to better their knowledge of how so many species surfaced along […]
Computer scientists at University of Illinois at Chicago have created what can only be described as a real-life Star Trek holodeck. Now, it’s not nearly as impressive as its SciFi counterpart, after all futurist Tim Huckaby predicted it will take some ten years before a full blown version might be created, still virtual reality is […]
A new study led by an international team of biolgoists has shown just some brain chemicals allow seals to sleep with only half of the brain. “Seals do something biologically amazing — they sleep with half their brain at a time. The left side of their brain can sleep while the right side stays awake. […]
As Niels Bohr once pointed out, to fully understand how a living organism works, you’d have to take it apart in the smallest of parts; since this is not something you can actually do, organisms, which represent systems of very high complexity, are impossible to track and understand in all their details. The few and […]
Your smartphone amateur photos could be instantly converted into professional-looking pictures at the touch of a button, thanks to a chip developed by MIT researchers. The chip, built by a team at MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratory can perform a number of tasks, including creating a more realistic environment or enhanced lighting in a shot without […]
For most Parkinson’s patients, tremors associated with this devastating disease make living a normal life extremely difficult, if not impossible. Cooking, eating, even tying one’s shoelaces, basically anything that implies limb manipulation is very difficult to achieve by one’s self. A novel type of therapy developed by physicians at Oxford University, however, brings a glimmer […]
