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A nonprofit foundation called Mars One wants to build a human colony on Mars, and send people there on a one way mission. In order to facilitate the development of this colony, they have hosted a competition to find the best possible payload to fly to Mars. The winning design will be included in the scientific […]
An expedition that drilled 2,400m beneath the seabed off Japan – the deepest marine drilling ever – found life in cores brought back to the surface. The tiny, single celled organisms survived there without any oxygen or light, relying only on a harsh diet of hydrocarbons to make means. Because of the limited resources available to […]
Among evidence analyzed during a rape-related crime investigation, one of the best clues that might incriminate a suspect are pubic hair samples. But because these hairs most often than not are missing their roots, it’s very difficult if not impossible to make a conclusive DNA analysis. Silvana Tridico, a forensic biologist at Murdoch University in Perth […]
Space-based telescopes have been used to spot planets (even Earth-like planets) for years now, but this is the first time ever that a ground-based telescope has detected an Earth like planet. A telescope based on the ground in La Palma (one of the Canary Islands) called Nordic has found 55 Cancri e, an exoplanet two times bigger than […]
Widespread use of computers is said to make people dumber or more prone to forgetfulness. It’s true, while we’re less inclined to memorize things such as poems or mathematical formulas, this doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing. A study made by US psychologists found that when people save information on their computers or phones, […]
You see them at the dentist, at the vet, the hair salon – the old magazines on the table. Fashion magazines, car magazines, travel magazines, whatever… they all have one thing in common – they’re really old. Why don’t practitioners just put new magazines? A new study has now shown that they really do… but […]
Amazingly, 19 percent of all Australian households have solar panels or solar water heaters installed, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistic (ABS). The statistic is even more astonishing when you consider only three years ago five percent of the households had rooftop solar panels. A land of sunshine Of the 19 per cent, 14 […]
A new study conducted by Spanish researchers and published in the prestigious journal Pediatrics has revealed that late clamping of the umbilical cord leads to increased anti-oxidant capacity of mature newborns, and the moderation of inflammatory effects in the case of those born from induced labor. In other words, it leads to a better development in their first […]
It’s like Christmas before Christmas – the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has started sending back images it took of the red planet, and there’s just so many fantastic stuff it feels like Christmas has come earlier this year. Now, the MRO sent back images peculiar features along the slopes of dunes: long, sharply defined grooves (pictured) that seem […]
One of the most interesting projects in science today are the BRAIN Initiative in the US and the Human Brain Project in Europe, which aim to map all the synapse connections in the human brain, or connectome, and ultimately simulate it. It’s an ambitious project with numerous challenges, but the possible benefits are well worth […]
Have you ever wondered how an ink drop blasted by a laser looks like? Physicist Hanneke Gelderblom of the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands did! She and her team have won the American Physical Society’s 2014 Gallery of Fluid Motion competition for this technique which is not only super cool, but may one day lead to better […]
There isn’t a less dreaded sight in any respectable bar than a beer bottle gushing foam. It’s not the bartender’s fault though (not necessarily), since different assortments of beer have their signature foam – some make more, some make less. Breweries nowadays use all sorts of anti-foaming agents, and now food scientists in Belgium – the […]
We’ve previously told you how our ancestors’ adaptation to metabolizing alcohol which first happened some 10 million years ago may have been essential to their survival. There’s more to it though. The same enzyme that metabolizes alcohol, dehydrogenase (ADH4), may be eventually used to transform CO2 into alcohol, which could be later used as a […]
A patient who has been in a near-vegetative state for two years has been awaken after receiving a common anti-anxiety drug.The patient was in this state following a motorcycling accident he had, and after receiving the drug, he immediately became active, talking to his doctor, calling his aunt and congratulating his brother on graduating. Then, […]
This month, a silent drama unfolded in Peru’s capital, Lima: representatives of UN countries have debated for two weeks in an attempt to negotiate ways to stop climate change without harming the world economy, especially that of lesser developed countries. While all parties agreed that there needs to be a strong, quick and equitable framework […]
Moore’s law says that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years, hence doubling also the computing power. Since it was first predicted in 1965, this trend has hold true allowing computers to evolve at an exponential rate. To support the law, scientists tweak one or all of these three main […]
Species on Earth are disappearing at a never-before seen rate in human history. The stark threat hangs over all species – mammals, reptiles, birds, insects – and researchers are still trying to figure out the extent of this potential mass extinction. Now, a new analysis conducted by Nature found that 41% of all amphibians on the planet now […]
A very simple, yet effective optical technique was demonstrated that can transform video inputs, such as the motion of a piece of paper, into audio. To achieve this, the researchers involved exploited a simple principle that describes how sound waves causes objects in their path to vibrate. If you reverse engineer the vibrations, you can […]
The wave of outrage against CIA’s interrogation techniques (which often involved torture) has been strong and sharp. But aside for being highly unethical (up to the point of inhumanity), a new study has shown that torture is also pretty ineffective. The report shows that confessions are four times more likely when interrogators adopt a respectful […]
All our modern electronics are based on a class of wonder materials called semiconductors. What makes these so valuable is their ability to free electrons when subjected to an electrical current or when hit by light, becoming mobile and eventually routed and switch through a transistor. It’s the very basis of our digital age, be […]
A mind blowing international project performed a mass genome sequence to build the entire avian tree and reveal how birds evolved, particularly after the fall of the dinosaurs some 65 million years. A fallen dinosaur kingdom was replaced by a bird republic, as the direct descendants of the dinosaurs began to fill all the now […]
For the first time, scientists may have found signals of dark matter. After analyzing reams of X-ray data, scientists in EPFL’s Laboratory of Particle Physics and Cosmology (LPPC) and Leiden University believe they could have identified the signal of a particle of dark matter. The substance, which was never observed, exists only as a theoretical cause […]
We’ve all experienced it – waking up early in the morning can be really hard, and even if you do wake up, you’re just not productive; and then, in the night, you just can’t go to sleep – you stay up too late, it gets even harder to wake up the next day and the […]
The introduction of mobile phones coupled with internet made for a huge leap in communication, making people connect with each other easier than ever. Under a mist of noise and over-stimulation of our, let’s face it, limited attention span, technology has also taken its toll. We’ve all noticed it, but let’s not be hypocritical about […]
A study conducted on 11,000 Americans found that the vast majority of vegetarians relapse totally or partially after only one year. A third of them relapse after only three months. Vegetarianism is the practice of intentional abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood and the flesh of any other animal), as well as […]
Transferring knowledge from one individual to the other forms the basis of all human cultures, whether we’re talking about learning how to chop wood, how the Earth actually revolves in a counter-intuitive manner around the sun and no the other way around, or how the Earth is a planet in the first place and everything […]
The warm, humid Amazonian forests hold a stunning biodiversity; somewhere, deep in that magnificent area, a pretty normal looking gray bird makes its way to a nest made from dried leaves, to feed its offspring. It would seem that the nest has been devastated by a giant, toxic, bright orange caterpillar… but something magical happens – […]
Arguably the most efficient predator in the world today is the dragonfly, which boats a 95% success rate. Obviously, there’s more to the dragonfly than meets the eye or more than you would expect from some random insect, at least. One of the reasons it’s so successful may be due to how the dragonfly moves […]
As you might remember, a few days ago we were telling you about the fantastic success of the Rosetta mission – a spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency which orbited a comet and sent landed a probe on it. Now, we already have the first result: Earth’s water probably didn’t come from comets. Did […]
For a long time, scientists have believed there’s a sort of net trade-off between the number of seeds and the size of the seed a plant yields. Namely, if a plant yields more seeds, these will be smaller or, oppositely, if a the size of the seed is greater, there will be fewer seeds. Now, […]
We’ve come a long way since the first mammal, a sheep named Dolly, was cloned. Now, a lab in South Korea will clone your dog for around $100,000; so far, they’ve cloned 400 pets since 2006. Cloning is still tabu in many parts of the world, but it’s a process which is no longer reserved for […]
Really bad experiences, like going through a particularly stressful or frighting situation, are a lot easier to remember than the things we do a day to day basis, or even those special pleasant experiences. That’s because we’re sort of evolutionary geared to remember those particularly nasty experiences so that we might avoid these in the future. […]
We all know that our oceans are polluted, and one of the biggest problems is plastic pollution. But few people really realize just how much plastic is in the waters – a new study estimates that there are at least 5.25 trillion pieces which weigh an estimated 269,000 tonnes. The real number however may be even […]
A study wrote by Maggie Simpson, Edna Krabappel (two imaginary characters from The Simpsons) and Kim Jong Fun (which I can only imagine is yet another imaginary character) has been approved and published by two journals – a clever hoax which shows once again that some journals will publish anything – for a fee. Titled “Fuzzy […]
Brain-computer interfaces have helped prosthetics go a long, long way. ZME Science showed you a couple of such examples, like the case of a mechanical arm remotely controlled by a man using only using thoughts or the mind-blowing high-tech prosthetic by DARPA that empowered a veteran who had lost him limb to perform all sorts of […]
Two specially adapted pseudoscorpions have been reported in a cave on the northern side of the Grand Canyon. The creatures, which are not really scorpions, have adapted to their lightless environment by losing their eyes. Unlike true scorpions, pseudoscorpions don’t have a tail with a venomous stinger and are harmless to humans; as a matter […]
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a material which is light like aluminum, but as strong as titanium alloys. This material has the highgest strength-to-weight ratio known to mankind. The research team combined lithium, magnesium, titanium, aluminum and scandium to make a nanocrystalline high-entropy alloy with a low density. At a first glance, […]
Shells and bullets have evolved significantly in the past couple hundred years since they were first used, but in principle they’ve remained the same – discharge an explosive to propel a projectile. The 21st century might finally make way to a new class of widespread weaponry based on lasers. These are powerful, much more accurate than […]
The more data doctors have of their patients’ health, the better the treatments they can prescribe. Ideally, you’d want patients to be constantly monitored for key life signs like heart rhythm, glucose levels or even brain activity. Typically, this is only possible in a hospital setting, but what if you want to follow how a […]
Talk about taking things literally, but it really seems like laughing gas or nitrous oxide, as it’s known by its chemical formula, can relieve chronic depression symptoms even in those cases where no other treatment seemed to render results. This is the first time that laughing gas was used as a potential treatment for depression. […]
When it comes to human prosthetics, there are usually many options available – from simple frames or tools, to advanced, electronic prosthetics. But life isn’t as easy for turtles; such was the case of Blade, a German tortoise with a growth disorder that left his legs so weak that he couldn’t hold himself up. Now, thanks […]
The world isn’t just fight or flight, there’s also a third option: hide. The reef-dwelling fish (Oxymonacanthus longirostris), also known as the harlequin filefish, is a true master of disguise that not only blends with its environment to avert itself from the gaze of a hungry predator, it also dissimulates its odor. In other words, the fish not […]
Peru announced that it will seek criminal charges against Greenpeace, after activists from the organization damaged the Nazca lines – some of the most spectacular pieces of historical heritage in the world. Greenpeace set up a banner right next to the Nazca lines, and when they took it out, they left significant damage behind. “It’s a […]
A rare 520-million-year-old fossil shaped like a ‘squashed bird’s nest’ has been discovered by a Chinese team of paleontologists. The team believes that the fossil, which is in excellent shape, will help us better understand how the Earth’s seas were like during the Cambrian.The fossil probably belongs to the ‘chancelloriid’, a group of bizarre, balloon-shaped creatures […]
Last year, President Obama delivered a speech to promote Computer Science Education Week in which he emphasized the important of learning how to code. During this year’s event, Obama put his money where his mouth is and actually sat down to write a simple javascript program. Even though he didn’t actually wrote lines of codes, but […]
Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have taken what they describe as “the first step toward a pill that can replace the treadmill” for the control of obesity – they have developed a pill which can turn white (bad) fat into brown (good) fat. Personally, I’m not a believer in a magic cure for qetting […]
With the help of the most powerful laser in the world, scientists have achieved the highest energies yet in a compact particle accelerator. The tabletop-sized device accelerates electrons to high speeds by firing high power laser pulses in a controlled manner through a plasma tube only 9 centimeters in size. The accelerator ring at the Large […]
Scientists have made a significant step towards developing fully artificial life – for the first time, they demonstrated evolution in a simple chemistry set without DNA. In a way, the researchers showed that the principle of natural selection doesn’t only apply to the biological world. Using a simple a robotic ‘aid’, a team from the University of […]
New experimental research found that Saturn’s largest Moon, Titan, has much stronger winds than previously believed. These rogue winds actually shape the hydrocarbon dunes observed on its surface. Titan is, along with Earth, one of the few places in the solar system known to have fields of wind-blown dunes on its surface. The only other ones […]
Vikings are often depicted as brutes – raiding, pillaging, killing the men and raping the women. But according to a new study, coloniozing may have actually been a family affair. Maternal DNA from ancient Norsemen suggests that more often than not, women also traveled alongside the men. Vikings were excellent seafarers – this was the key […]
