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A simple yet efficient solution could not only make life easier for millions of refugees worldwide, but also reduce CO2 emissions by 6.85 million tons every year and save a lot of money in the long run: installing solar panels in camps. A consortium of think tanks and NGOs has released a report highlighting that […]
If you ever wanted to become a firefighter in an exotic location, now you have the perfect extra motivation: jetpacks. As if Dubai didn’t have enough hi-tech with all the awesome cars and helicopters and all, firefighters will receive jetpacks as part of the new year’s city budget – this is considered a “practical” solution […]
After five years long of pondering, the FDA finally gave the green light for a genetically modified Atlantic salmon variety. This is the first food animal that was genetically modified that the FDA approved for human consumption and farming. The salmon has genes from another salmon species, as well as an eel-like fish, which allows it to grow to market size in half the time it would usually take. This means it saves twice as much time and resources as conventional salmon, with no nutritional or health drawbacks, the FDA says.
With robots taking up all the factory jobs and CEO's outsourcing each and any position they can to China, it's harder and harder for the common bloke to find a job these days. And it's only about to get worse as pigeons are now poised to take over the health industry positions for the price of bread crumbs.
Some 400 million years ago, during what's called the late Devonian period, the planet went through a dramatic shift in climate. Over just a few million years, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere dropped 15-fold. Partially or mostly responsible for this phenomenal climate change event were the very first forests which evolved and started claiming the Earth. Until then, plants were less specialized and smaller. We know little of these troublesome times, but we're learning along the way. The discovery of an ancient 380 million years forest in Norway will definitely help in this endeavor.
Biologists have recently identified a new species of harvestman (daddy longlegs spider) near the town of Monjolos in Minas Gerais, southern Brazil, and gave the precious new discovery an accurate but tongue in cheek name: Iandumoema smeagol
The cordon-bleus are unique animals that both sing and tap-dance to attract mates.
A study of 986 Bolivian women found that on average, a lifetime infection with a type of roundworm named Ascarius lumbricoides led to an extra two children in the family. Their paper, published in the journal Science, suggests that the worm is altering the host's immune system, making it easier to become pregnant -- in effect, the parasite increases female fertility. The researchers hope this discovery will lead to "novel fertility enhancing drugs."
Every once in a while, someone creates something so incredible that it probably wouldn't even pass the Hollywood standard, being deemed to unrealistic.
Archaeological diggings at the First Nations in Canada unearthed, among others, a small, 800 year old pot - and inside it, squash seeds!
Start-up company Deepfield Robotics has developed a field vehicle that can distinguish weeds from useful crops and eliminate them.
The problem is still unsolved.
The small Central American nation got rid of its armed forced 65 years ago, and the Ticos are a happier people for it. Now, Costa Rica - home to four and a half million people - is setting the world a new example in human values: for 255 days it has managed its resident's energy needs with little fossil fuel use.
A University of Nevada team, led by anthropologist Peter Gray, tested several hypotheses about pets and contemporary courtship or dating rituals. Their study will appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Anthrozoös.
This may be the first known case of simplification from a macro to a microorganism, a cheap trick which evolution likely used more than once though.
Weeding out bad science is an extremely complicated and delicate process, and short of peer review there's little left to do; even peer review is flawed, or at the very least imperfect.
We all know that men like to impress the fairer members of our species, and this permeates into almost everything we do: we want to drive the shiniest car on the block, crack the funniest jokes 24/7 and write for ZMEScience so we can impress the ladies at parties. In essence, no matter how unlikely it is to actually impress, if a man has a choice between doing something and doing that something over the top so he can show off to women, you can bet your right arm he's gonna do the latter.
About 20 million people in the United States suffer from temporary or permanent voice impairment. Life can sound like a nightmare, even though we don't hear our own voice - but we do feel the attention. Then, those are those rare cases which basically render people mute. While there are various medical interventions that can improve one's voice, it's still far from the real deal. What these people need is not a patch here and there, but a whole new set of vocal cords, and a group of researchers has set out to grow it in the lab. Starting from a couple of human cells, they've grown a critical tissue involved in vocalizing. It's basically indistinguishable from the real deal (it's still biological tissue after all) and biocompatible.
Ever wondered how Google Maps can predict traffic jams?
It seems like evolution has fostered us humans all along for us to become the dominant species on planet Earth. We owe so many gifts to the tender processes that began millions of years ago and shaped us the way we are today. Gripping dexterous hands, remarkable social behavior and lets not forget about those big brains. It's not enough to have a big brain, though. What makes us humans particularly successful is our ability to adapt constantly to our environment. Humans fair well in luxurious plains, but they seem to survive in the desert as well. Then look at the times we're living in. Technology, networking, all our cultural heritage. It takes a lot to adapt to such changing times, and no other species seems to be this good at it. While we owe a great deal to genetics, it's brain plasticity - an inherent ability to mold our cerebral connections to fit our environment - that took us the extra mile.
Behind all the glitz and glamour, there's little substance to cosmetic products.
Florida Researchers have developed a new class of LEDs that may change the lighting and display industry of the future.
A paper published recently in Nature Communications details how a team lead by Dr. Ben Wilson and Professor Chris Petkov used a brain imaging technique to identify the neuronal evolutionary origins of language. Their findings help us understand how we learn to speak, and could allow new treatments for those who lose this ability from aphasia after a stroke or dementia.
Cardiff University public health experts have discovered a powerful link between a pupil's breakfast quality and their performance at school. The study – the largest to date looking at how nutrition influences school performance -- recorded the breakfast habits of 5000 pupils aged 9 through 11, and their results in the Key Stage 2 Teacher Assessments 6-18 months later.
The FDA, Department of Justice and other government agencies, today presented the results of a yearlong sweep of dietary supplements which are thought to contain unsafe compounds. Following a slew of illnesses and law suits as a results of dietary supplement intake, the combined government effort vowed to crack down on the industry - at least the part that mislabels its products and poses a significant hazard to the population. You'd think drugs - what a lot of supplements contain - would be regulated by the FDA, but dietary supplements are entirely unregulated. This has allowed a $40 billion industry of "snake oil" products to flourish. Not anymore, everyone hopes.
University of New South Wales devised a two-qubit system inside a silicon chip and ran a computer code adapted to the quantum world. Their code passed the notoriously intransigent 'Bell test', making it the strongest evidence yet that quantum computers can be instructed to handle operations.
Researchers may have found a much needed weapon against HIV in an unexpected place: alcoholism medication.
The bat is the only flying mammal and among the heaviest in the world. To top it over, it can land upside down a perplexing acrobatic feat which has left scientists scratching their heads for many years. After carefully and systematically studying bat upside landings in slow motion, a group of researchers thinks it has cracked the puzzle: bats employ a nifty trick where one wing stays flapping while the other is moved close to the body. This asymmetry corrects the moment of inertia and center of mass so the bats always land safely upside down.
For the first time, we are about to grow flowers above the atmosphere.
Today, US closed down the price for crude oil at $40.67/barrel, but a year and a half ago the price was over 2 times more, even going over $100 per barrel; for something that's traditionally went up in recent years, that's a huge, and surprising change.
Scientists have genetically engineered algae to kill up to 90% of cancer cells in the lab, while leaving the healthy ones unharmed.
NASA released a stunningly colorful new image of the dwarf planet Pluto, the latest in a series of images that steadily trickle down from the New Horizons probe since it left the solar system this July. And it's not only eye candy either; the features this picture reveals has left the smart guys at the agency scratching their heads.
A recent study from Iowa State University shows how a gene, found in a single plant species so far, can increase protein content when grafted into the DNA of staple crops. Their findings could help improve a huge variety of crops and improve nutrition in developing parts of the world, where available sources of protein are sometimes limited.
Today is World Prematurity Day - a global effort to raise awareness about the deaths and disabilities due to premature births. Each year around the world, 15 million babies are delivered ahead of term and 1 million children die before their fifth birthday from related complications. Some who make it past this dangerous threshold might get to live with serious disabilities.
Cooling things with lasers? I'm down!
It's widely agreed that modern Europeans trace their roots from three ancient tribes, or three important migration events, if you will. But after researchers sequenced the genomes of two hunter gatherers who lived roughly 13,000 years ago, there's evidence that suggests a fourth tribe lent our genes.
Unfortunately, stories of animals becoming endangered are way more common than the reverse, but perhaps this makes it even more important to celebrate the success we do have.
A team of researchers has analyzed a swarm of data and created the first map that tries to estimate how much water is located beneath the Earth.
Self-preservation and reproduction are the most powerful instincts, and life forms on Earth have devised all sorts of gimmicks and tactics to become successful (pass on those genes). Just look at the male ruff sneak tactics to grab girls. There are three distinct approaches: the cocky aggressive, the sneaky 'satellite, and the cross-dresser. You might think this isn't necessarily peculiar in itself. After all, human males employ similar approaches to seek women's attention. The peacock, the friend-zone dude, the jock, the joker etc. What's odd about ruff males is that this behavior is coded inside their genes - from the way they act, to how their plumage looks like. And they're all, ultimately, males of the same species.
If everything goes according to plan, we'll be going to Mars in the mid 2030s - using these suits.
When you're listening to music, it's not just your ears that are reacting to it, your eyes feel it too.
The collapse of two dams at a Brazilian mine spells an absolute catastrophe, with effects that could haunt Brazil for years to come.
Geological maps can be awesome here on Earth, but when we have geological maps of extraterrestrial bodies... that's when we get really excited.
The free market once again showed its limitations, or rather its power of abuse, after a Canadian pharmaceutical company priced gauged a drug critical for a rare form of epilepsy that affects infants. Questcor Pharmaceuticals hiked the price from $35.66 to $801.19 per vial. "Luckily", Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and the Ontario Drug Benefit (ODB) program negotiated the price down to $680 per vial, bringing the total cost of treatment to $14,280.
In recent years, we’re finding out more and more that our guts are actually an impressive ecosystem, influencing not only how we digest our food, but also how we think and behave. But now, researchers have taken it even one step further: we may need to define a whole new life form to describe these […]
Some 360 million years ago, the oceans were teeming with big fish, some as big as a school bus. Then something terrible happened, the causes of which still escape scientists today: the Hangenberg Event. This was the last peak in a streak of mass extinctions known as the Late Devonian extinction which exterminated 97% of all marine vertebrate species. In the aftermath, it paid to be small a new study suggests. The researchers at University of Pennsylvania found that small fish dominated the ecological niches for nearly 40 million years. This tremendous rebound time is relevant today when overfishing is threatening countless large fish species. Once these disappear, it might be a very long time before we get tuna-sized fish back on our plates.
In a leap of innovation, Samsung unveiled the largest storage unit ever: a 15.36TB flash drive which uses 256GB NAND flash as the basis for the storage. The hard drive is 60% bigger than its closest competitor and all that storage is packed inside a tiny 2.5-inch SSD case. And yes, I prefer to still call it a hard drive even though there aren't any motors, pivots or arms. Deal with it.
At the U.N. summit on climate change held in Paris soon, world leaders will join in an attempt to curb their emissions in order to avoid warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius past the industrial age. We're already 0.9 degrees warmer and by the looks of the pledges filed by member states ahead of the talks, a more realistic target seems like 3 degrees. In other words, the framework - which will not be legally binding - will only have moderate effects, when more ambitious action is required. One big part of the problem is fossil fuel subsidies, which last year amounted to $452 bn. in total for all G20 member states. Oppositely, renewable energy - a field which actually deserves to be subsidizes since its new tech and isn't mature yet - was subsidized by only $121 bn. or four times less.
Research at the Queen's University Belfast has produced a major (and mind-bending) breakthrough, in the form of the first synthesized porous liquid. The new material has the potential for a massive range of new technologies including carbon capture.
Ant colonies are incredibly complex systems -- the tightly knit, intensely cooperative colonies are closer to a single superorganism than to human societies. Researchers form the University of Bristol wanted to know how this single mind of the hive reacted to distress, and subjected colonies of migrating rock ants to differing forms of simulated predator attack to record their response.
