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Just in time for Halloween, scientists have developed the blackest material - a material so dark that it absorbs almost all the light that hits its surface.
If you’ve ever wanted to plan a hiking trip on the Moon, now you have the perfect opportunity: a gorgeous pair of new lunar maps – the Image Mosaic and Topographic Maps of the Moon – is now available online for everyone to see and download. To me, it’s mind blowing that we have so high quality maps […]
Armed with almost 1 million diary entries, an Oxford-based laboratory is trying to figure out why modern life seems so hectic.
Paleontologists have unearthed two spectacular cave lion cubs, preserved by the permafrost in the Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia. The last glacial period, popularly known as the Ice Age, was the most recent glacial period within the Quaternary glaciation occurring from 100,000 to 12,000 years ago. At the end of this ice age, several species couldn’t […]
If you still think wind and solar energy can't possibly work because they're too expensive, you're trapped in time. As the technology improves and manufacturing of scale comes into full force we're seeing prices per unit of energy dwindling. Elsewhere, regulations like price on carbon is making fossil fuel energy more expensive. According to the Bloomberg New Energy finance, on-shore wind energy has once again dropped in price and is competitive with conventional coal or gas fired energy. In some parts of the world, like Germany or UK, on-shore wind is up to 30% cheaper than fossil fuel energy. Apparently, we're running out of reasons not to ditch fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy.
In what could become a monumental decision, the World Health Organization has decided to roll out pilot tests for a malaria vaccine.
An eagerly awaited report from the World Health Organization (WHO) states that processed meats such as bacon and sausages cause cancer, and red meat likely does so too.
A team of students in Canada invented a cheap, portable cooling device that doesn't need any electricity.
True to its name, comet Lovejoy is having a stellar party, releasing large amounts of ethanol, the same type of alcohol found in terrestrial alcoholic beverages.
Nobody wants to know how a hot dog is made, because you always know there's some crazy stuff inside. If you're one of those persons, stop reading now. Alright, time for a reality check. According to the "The Hot Dog Report" released by Clear Food, a company on a mission to demystify the black box that's the US food industry, many consumer brands add more ingredients in their sausages than you'd wished for, i.e. labeled. The company sequenced the genetic material from 345 samples of hot dogs across 75 brands and found around 15% were problematic. This means a deceiving label, whether exaggerating the protein content or finding pork in your chicken sausage. About 67% of the veggie samples had hygiene issues. Perhaps most disturbing is that 1 in 10 so-called veggie hot dogs had meat in them, and 2% of all samples had human DNA inside.
A 7.5 earthquake has struck near the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan and Tajikistan.
A preliminary study from Switzerland, published this month in the Annals of Neurology, proved the effectiveness of a new method of non-invasive brain surgery: using a newly-developed operating device that relies on ultrasound, in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allowed neurosurgeons to precisely remove small pieces of brain tissue in nine patients suffering from chronic pain without removing skin or skull bone. Researchers now plan to test it on patients with other disorders, such as Parkinson's. Neal Kassell, neurosurgeon at the University of Virginia, not directly involved in the study.
Martin Shkreli, chief executive officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals, became over night one of the most despised figures in the pharmaceutical industry when just as suddenly he raised the price of the only treatment of a rare parasitic infection by 5,000 percent. The drug, Daraprim, was initially developed in 1953 and used to cost $1 a pill only a couple years ago. I have no idea what Shkreli thought would happen after he'd raise the price 500-fold in one go, but he got some serious backlash. "I think that it makes sense to lower the price in response to the anger that was felt by people," he said while under the spotlight, but this promise made a month ago is still unfulfilled shattering whatever credibility Shkreli had left.
Cristiano Menezes of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation has discovered farming behaviors in bees, adding them to the list of social insects that practice agriculture.
A new, extremely worrying study found that a third of meta-analyses related to antidepressant studies are written by pharma industry employees.
"Please enter a strong password", is now an ubiquitous greeting whenever we try to register online. Security experts advise we use long passwords at least 12 characters in length, which should include numbers, symbols, capital letters, and lower-case letters. Most websites nowadays force you to enter a password under some or all of these conditions. Moreover, the password shouldn't contain dictionary words and combinations of dictionary words. Common substitution like "h0use" instead of "house" are also not recommended - these naive attempts will fool no automated hacking algorithm. So, what we end up at the end is a very strong password, like the website kindly asked (or forced) us to do. At the same time, it's damn difficult if not impossible to remember. People end up endlessly hitting "recover password" or, far worse, write down their passwords in email or other notes on their computer which can easily be recovered by any novice hacker.
Couple of weeks ago, Volkswagen admitted it had cheated US tests to make its diesel cars seem more green than they actually were. Later, ZME Science reported companies like Renault, Nissan, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat or Volvo were also cheating. Then, independent lab tests showed some Samsung TVs were rigged to use less energy during official testing conditions than they do during real-world use. Now, famous British inventor James Dyson is accusing German companies Bosch and Siemens of doing the same thing, gaming energy ratings for their vacuum cleaners.
About 160,000 light-years away, two stars are overlapping in what could be poetically described as an explosive catastrophic kiss.
The Yuanmeng (which means “dream”) isn't a work in progress - it's actually flying, taking off for the first time from Xilinhot in Inner Mongolia.
It's something no human has ever seen before: as a star reaches its terminal phase, it blows up the system around it.
A recent study published Wednesday in the journal Nature shows that there is a strong functional relationship between a region's average recorded temperature and economic productivity -- further warning of the damage climate warming would inflict on our economy.
"No amount of alcohol should be considered safe to drink during any trimester of pregnancy," wrote the the American Academy of Pediatrics in a report which identified ingesting alcohol during pregnancy as the leading cause of preventable birth defects.
Where are all the Earth-like planets? Well, they haven't formed yet!
The European Union, generally considered the world's 3rd biggest emitter after China and the US, reported that its emissions fell by 4 percent last year.
Covering your body up with sunscreen may protect you against the Sun, but it’s also threatening the world’s coral reefs, a new study found. University of Central Florida professor and diving enthusiast John Fauth and his team found that oxybenzone, a common UV-filtering compound, is in high concentrations in the waters around Hawaii and the Caribbean, two […]
The current procedure for Ebola survivors is wait 42 consecutive days for the tests to come back negative, then the patients can be discharged from quarantine. More and more evidence is surfacing, however, showing that the virus can still linger on through various nooks and crannies in the human body, undetected from standard testing. For instance, one man was treated for Ebola, but the virus was still present in his eyes. It wasn't dormant either, since the inflammation caused his normally blue eyes to turn into green. Other evidence suggests Ebola can linger in the testes and be transmitted through sexual contact, but also in the uterus and joints. Only the case where Ebola was present in semen led to a transmission of the disease, so survivors aren't necessary contagious. These serious findings do suggest more quarantine measures are required, though.
Do you know what day today is? It's Back to the Future day!
In 2006, the US court found the tobacco industry guilty of a decades-long racketeering enterprise in which it conspired to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking. The tobacco companies were ordered to buy newspaper ads detailing smoking's health effects and to stop using such descriptions as "low tar," "light," ultra light," "mild" or "natural" that might imply that they are less dangerous than other cigarettes. They were also ordered to pay $10 billion in fines. Speaking for ThinkProgress, Sharon Y. Eubanks - the leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted the landmark lawsuit against big tobacco - says the Department of Justice should investigate Exxon and possibly other fossil fuel industry players (Koch *cough) for a similar claim, only much worse. The conspiracy isn't only against smokers' health, it's against all life on Earth.
A recent U.S. study shows how the upward trend in economic damage from hurricanes correlates very closely to the influence global warming has on the number and intensity of hurricanes. Published in Nature Geoscience, it concludes that the commonly cited reasons for growing hurricane damage -- increases in vulnerability, value, and exposure of property -- don't stand up very well to scrutiny.
Defecating outside comes at a great toll to the numerous, and often crowded Indian people. Lack of basic hygiene means hundreds of millions are exposed to bacterial pathogens and children are at the mercy of diarrhea. Economically speaking, this translated to $53.8 billion or 6.4 percent from India’s gross domestic product in 2006, says the World Bank.
What exactly makes you thirsty? Dehydration, obviously, but how does your brain know that your body needs water? And how does that grey, squishy lump resting in your cool and comfortable cranium, know when your body needs to heat up or cool off? Scientists at the McGill University Health Centre Research Institute (RI-MUHC) and Duke University have asked themselves just that, and being scientists, went ahead to find out.
Scientists have in the past toyed with the idea of using a disease to fight cancer. Now, after identifying a malaria protein that binds to cancer cells and kills 95% of tumor types, human trials are expected to start within four years. I doesn’t seem like it’s happening fast, but it is, in medical terms. Clinical […]
A research effort at Winship Cancer Institute recently identified a substance in orange lichen and rhubarb that has the potential to be used as a new anti-cancer drug. The substance, an orange pigment known as parietin or physcion, slows the growth and can even kill leukemia cells harvested from patients, without obvious toxic effects on human cells, the study authors report.
It probably took a bit of convincing for man to turn wolves into dogs through domestication. At least this is not settled for debate: dogs branched from Eurasian grey wolves some 15,000 years ago. What's less clear is where did this first happen. After embarking on a huge study which led them to analyze the genetic markup of hundreds of dog breeds, Adam Boyko at Cornell University thinks he's finally got an answer: dogs were first domesticated in Central Asia, or in modern day Nepal and Mongolia.
Used to make almost everything from skyscraper girders, automobiles, and appliances to thumb tacks and paper clips, steel is one of the world's most vital materials. While there's been a great amount of research invested into steel, most of it has concentrated on making various grades of steel, with little focus on the surface itself. Understanding that there's a great interest and need for steel surfaces that can stay clean and don't corrode under harsh biological conditions, a group of material scientists at Harvard have come up with a squeaky clean coating that does just that.
NASA's Cassini probe recently observed mysterious, huge amounts of plasma on the fringes of Saturn's magnetic field; surprisingly, they were shooting hundreds of thousands of kilometers inward.
In the fight with cancer, we need any piece of help we can get. With this in mind, a group of researchers set out to investigate the animals that don't get cancer (or rarely do) - especially elephants and naked mole rats.
The last time humans set foot on the moon was 1972. Feeling confident it had clearly showed its superiority over Russia, the US felt no more reason to prove itself and immediately shut down subsequent missions. Once with funding gone - and its budget has been thinning since - NASA had to settle for less ambitious goals, and it's not like we can blame them. Building on outpost on the moon, versus say the International Space Station, is not only a lot more expensive, but also impractical. Recent findings, however, suggest there's a lot to gain from having an outpost on the moon, of some sorts at least. That's because the interest has shifted from prestige, or at least not only, to the potentially bountiful economic activities. Minerals, helium-3 (fuel) or precious metals can all be mined from the moon, trillions worth. But before you can shuttle minerals back from the moon, you at least need a footing of some sort. Understanding this, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos banded together to send a robotic probe to an unexplored region of the moon. The ultimate goal, they say, is to prepare the ground for humans.
With today's propulsion tech, it takes at least 1.5 years for a manned crew to reach Mars, and at least as much to get back - provided there's a return mission. There's only so much that can fit in a spacecraft, and besides the supplies astronauts need for the long trip, there's precious cargo that's required to sustain the mission on site like construction materials, lab equipment, food and so on. Remember the last time you went camping? Well, this time we're headed to another planet and forgetting about toiler paper is the least of your worries. But when NASA handles logistics, you know things are tight to the last bolt. Sometimes, outside help and fresh minds are more than welcome, which is why the space agency held a very interesting competition called the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge Design Competition which awards the most innovative, but practical designs of habitats on Mars.
Researchers have discovered a new species of banana christened "nanensis", belonging to the Musa genus, sharing a place in the family Musaceae with more than 70 other species of bananas and plantains. It's scientific name honors the province of Nan where the type specimens were collected.
The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority recently unveiled a $470 million waste-to-energy system that converts solid sludge (we generally call that human poop) to clean energy.
The world's oceans are sadly full of pollution, but now, you can help make a difference - while also looking dashing at the beach. A team of US researchers developed a very 3D printed chic bikini that helps clean up pollution from the water, while posing no risk to yourself.
United States Astronaut Scott Kelly has just beaten the record for the most cumulative days in space, and this is significant for several reasons.
After the glorious Apollo missions that led humans to the Moon for the first time, it's time for a new Golden Age of space exploration - and NASA has a solid plan for that.
Is going cashless really a benefit though?
We’ve seen Pluto in all its splendor recently thanks to the New Horizons mission that flew by the former planet / currently planetoid, but just when you thought it can’t surprise you anymore… something like this comes along. This is Pluto. Recently, a paper was published based on the data that New Horizons sent back […]
Prosthetics has come a long way from its humble beginnings – the crude wooden legs of yore are a far cry from the technological marvels we can create to replace our limbs today. However, there is one thing that, with all our know-how, we haven’t yet been able to incorporate in them: a sense of touch. A research team from Stanford University aims to fix this shortcoming, and has developed technology that can “feel” when force is exerted upon it, then transmit the sensory data to brain cells – in essence, they’ve created an artificial skin.
Recent fossils unearthed in the Chinese province of Daoxian come to unravel the story of humanity’s spread as we know it today. The find consists of 47 teeth, belonging to modern humans, but what’s really important is their age – they have been dated to 80,000 years ago. This number doesn’t fit with the “Out of Africa” migration theory, holding that humans originate and have spread from the horn of the continent all around the world. The theory as we know it can’t explain human presence in the area for another 20,000 years.
By now, it's almost a statistical certainty: in January 2016, we will say that 2015 was the warmest year on record; for the moment, we can clearly say that this September was the hottest on record.
This Friday, the CEOs of the some of the biggest oil & gas companies in the world, including BP, Shell and Total, held a press conference asking for immediate action against climate change and urging world readers to reach an agreement in Paris, this December. The companies account for a fifth of the world's oil and gas production, the leading fossil fuels that are flooding the atmosphere with excess carbon and warming the planet, causing irreversible climate change. As such, if you find the statement dubious - not to mention hilarious - you're not alone.
