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A new study that shifted through 81 e-cig related studies found that these are less harmful than conventional cigarettes. Policymakers, however, are inclined to introduce strict regulations for e-cigs, citing unsubstantial evidence that e-cigs do not pose health risks.
Wind is already the cheapest form of energy in Denmark, and prices will plummet in the near future, the country’s government declared – 2 years from now, in 2016, wind energy will be 2 times cheaper than fossil fuels energy. Wind and solar energy are already nearing parity with energy from fossil fuels in many […]
Some 40 activists are killed every year in Brazil alone. The government is weak and corrupt, rarely capable of providing protection and enforcing its environmental laws. The big companies and local militias are powerful and ruthless.
Colorado is averaging 2 oil spills per day, but oil companies aren't obliged to inform residents - even if the surface or ground water is polluted.
Air conditioning may make your home cooler, but it's making your city hotter - cities can be even 3 degrees hotter than the surrounding environment, and ACs play a big role in that, a new study shows.
Big oil companies invest big chunks of their profits (which are bigger than many countries’) into climate change denial. As I wrote a while ago, 9 out of 10 top climate change deniers are linked with Exxon Mobil, the biggest private oil company. Still, there are some brilliant scientists working for oil companies, and they […]
The UN released the Human Development Index for 2014, and it's bad news for the United States - which come in at the 28th place, with huge social and wealth inequality.
Curled lip, keen checkbone, take your pick! These all count and together shape a first impression of how we're perceived by strangers. A new research sheds light and tells which facial features are most important.
Ruscosmos, the Russian space agency, recently launched geckos in space to see how zero gravity affects mating. The findings have much broader implications that extend humanity's ultimate goal of reaching for the stars.
Ice melting means waves have more room to develop and grow, and scientists aren't really sure what the consequences will be.
A newly developed technique by researchers at University of Cambridge might revolutionize metamaterial manufacturing and help make a complete invisibility cloak.
There is very little evidence that anti-bacterial ingredients used in common soaps actually do anything in the long run to fight bacteria – compared to regular soaps. There is however, lots of evidence that they are breeding a new generation of “superbugs” – pathogens which develop resistance to drugs. Basically, reckless use of antibacterial substances […]
When the huge reconstruction work began at the World Trade Center following 2001’s tragedy, constructors uncovered something no one was expecting to find there – a wooden ship, right under where the twin towers used to stand. Measuring 22 feet (6.7 meters), the skeleton of the ship went unexplained for years. Now, scientists analyzing the […]
For the first time, geophysicist in New Zealand will place seismic sensors deep into a geological fault to record the build-up and occurrence of massive earthquakes, potentially giving crucial information about one of the biggest faults in the world. It’s hard to say anything after such an insightful and well explained video. The Alpine Fault […]
Reporting in PLOS Medicine, researchers found that for every 1000 children who received the vaccine, 800 malaria cases can be prevented. While this is not yet sufficient to eradicate the disease, it is the closest scientists have gotten to a malaria vaccine. Malaria affects millions of people every year throughout the world, claiming just under […]
Babies can learn what to fear from the first days of life simply by smelling their distressed mothers, a new study has shown. This doesn’t only work after the pregnancy, but also during it and even before – if a mother experiences something specific which makes her fearful. It’s the first direct observation of this […]
Promising results are reported by physicians who incorporate magnetic stimulation in their treatments for depression. Typically, this kind of treatment takes a long time until changes in mood are seen or, in some cases, causes unwanted side effects. McLean Hospital researchers report a new treatment that uses low field magnetic stimulation that immediately improves mood and […]
While scientists have been studying and incrementally increasing solar cell efficiency, we’ve yet to reach nature’s magnitude of solar energy conversion through photosynthesis. Artificial photosynthesis is a goal in alternative energy research, yet the process is extremely difficult to mimic since, in nature, the process involves numerous stages and transformation of matter and energy. Purdue University […]
British researchers from the University of Bradford have developed what can potentially become a universal blood test for cancer. The test will enable doctors to confirm or rule out cancer in patients who are presenting symptoms, and even those with no symptoms at all. The test proved successful, as the team tested it on 200 […]
If you’ve owned a smartphone or laptop for more than two years and use the gadgets frequently, then you’ve most likely noticed, to your exasperation, how short the battery life is compared to when the product was first shipped. Rechargeable batteries have been around for more than 100 years, but it’s only recently that scientists […]
The Ebola virus causes a highly infectious disease that can reach fatality rates of up to 90%. It causes a great deal of suffering, spreads really easily and if it’s not treated very early on can kill most people. It’s darn scary , but ever since it surfaced in 1976, when the first outbreaks in […]
HIV is maybe one of the most resilient and tenacious viral infections known to medical science. Unlike other infections, even if all traces of HIV are gone from the body – the virus itself – it can still resurface and infect the patient later on. That’s because HIV inserts itself permanently into the patient’s genome, […]
A group of Chinese physicists, working with international collaborators, have announced their plans of building a 52-kilometre underground particle accelerator that would smash together electrons and positrons to unravel the fundamental building blocks of life. The project would offer means of probing these sort of fundamental questions that are unavailable to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, an oval-shaped […]
A few months ago, I reported how Google is using its drones and Google Earth technology to monitor an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. Now, there’s convincing evidence that the same tribe has come in contact with non-indigenous locals, then with western researchers in the most unfortunate of circumstances. One, the contact was initiated by criminals operating illegal […]
Deepika Kurup, a 14 year-old girl who was awarded the $25,000 prize in The Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, is living proof of how nurturing talent can help young, bright people go very far. While still in the 8th grade, Kurup viable solution for the global water crisis and invented a water purification system that […]
In the 1980s, concerned that the state statute on prostitution was too broad and could potentially infringe on First Amendment freedoms, lawmakers in Rhode Island decided to make it more explicit by cutting some articles. They went a bit too far, though, and accidentally removed the section defining the act itself as a crime. It […]
A crystal known to science for more than a century has only in recent years become recognized for its use in harvesting solar power. Since the first successful usage of perovskite in solar cells in 2009, the advances in the field have grown exponentially over time, making it a potential candidate for revamping the solar […]
Rave parties go crazy when the bass drops, no doubt about it, but what makes people click so well with low frequencies? Canadian scientists at the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind investigated how our brains react to low-freq pitches and found our affinity has to do with how humans detect rhythm. Basically, the bass is […]
In 2006 , the BBC aired a fascinating documentary that featured that featured a family of five siblings from a remote corner of Turkey that remarkably solely moved about by walking on all fours. Many anthropologists of the time saw this behavior as evidence of reverse evolution and sought to extensively study the phenomenon in […]
“We women talk too much, nevertheless we only say half of what we know.” Nancy Witcher Astor, Viscountess There’s a deeply entrenched stereotype that portrays women as extremely talkative or, at least, much much chatty than men. Ask most people, both men and women, they will agree, but is this merely a subjective facet or […]
Whether studying late or partying until dawn, more and more people now turn to energy drinks to keep them up and running. The detrimental effects to health resulting from prolonged energy drink use have been well documented, yet this hasn’t stopped sales one bit. Moreover, researchers in Australia claim that adding energy drinks in alcohol cocktails […]
I’m not referring to the world’s billionaire elite, but to an exclusive group of researchers that have become so prolific they are now dominating the scientific community. To be more precise, fewer than 1% of researchers publish one or more papers a year. Moreover, this elite is responsible for publishing 41% of all papers, according to recent findings published […]
Some applications require such a degree of precision that everything needs to be in exact order at the atom-scale. In an awesome feat of atomic manipulation, physicists from the University of Basel, in cooperation with team from Japan and Finland, have placed 20 atoms atop an insulated surface in the shape of a Swiss cross. Such […]
At the turn of the 1990s, scholarly publishers were increasingly concerned about what had become known as the serials crisis. Journal subscriptions were rising at an average of 10% per year, which in turn meant each year libraries were struggling harder to keep up and in, consequence, many would cancel. To counter, publishers would further increase […]
Right now, I’m the happy caregiver of seven cats (five kittens. Yey!) which in most people’s books makes me socially challenged and insane. I do take special notice of my pets, and this means looking after them so they don’t get infected by parasites. Cats are typically clean animals, but when infested can spell trouble […]
Despite the naysayers and constant thorns thrown about by oil lobbyists in the US, Elon Musk‘s Tesla is doing fine, thanks to fantastic leadership, innovative marketing (free charging, battery swapping, Tesla’s own supercharge west coast highway, etc.) and sound engineering. Still, Tesla is an inaccessible brand for most people because of its high-end pricing, but […]
An unlikely worm might help millions of people fighting alcohol addiction. No, you won’t find it in tequila, but in the labs of neuroscientists at University of Texas at Austin who have engineered Caenorhabditis elegans – one of the most popular animal models in science – to become insensitive to alcohol intoxication. The findings, if replicated on […]
We often cherish our closest friends as if they were family. Well, this isn’t actually too far from the truth, considering a new study from the University of California, San Diego, and Yale University found friends who aren’t biologically related resemble each other genetically. In fact, on average friends are as “related” as fourth cousins […]
A new painkiller chemical derived from human spit has proven to be up to six times more potent than morphine when tested on rats in a laboratory setting. While painkillers have been thoroughly researched for decades, the industry alone amounting to billions of dollars every year, it’s been rather difficult for scientists to find natural […]
Expect the price of sand to skyrocket! Researchers at University of California, Riverside have devised a coin-sized battery that uses silicone at its anode (negative side), instead of the over-used graphite, that lasts up to three times longer than conventional lithium-ion batteries. The key of the research is the silicon extraction method which uses quartz-rich […]
While marijuana use is becoming less of a tabu, in light of medical legalization in places like Colorado, California or Uruguay, the same can’t be said about marijuana research. A while ago, I mentioned how only 6% of marijuana research studies the benefits, which is completely biased and absurd to begin with, considering policymakers have […]
You might have thought black is too solemn or boring, but you may just change your mind. Through careful material science manipulation, involving thousands of tightly packed carbon nanotubes, British company Surrey NanoSystems made a super black coating that absorbs almost 99.96% of visual light – a world record. Practically only a tiny fraction of the visual […]
Since the 1990s, biologists have witnessed a sudden demise of amphibian species. So far, hundreds of species have become extinct after becoming plagued by a wretched fungus. From mountain lakes to meadow puddles, no matter the continent, frogs are dying everywhere – a demise that might spell an ecological meltdown. There may still be hope yet, according […]
Over the past six months, the Earth’s magnetic field – the bubble that protects our planet from incoming radiation and solar winds – has weakened by a factor of ten than what’s been registered in previous years. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), this discrepancy might indicate that the magnetic field is about to flip. […]
Greenpeace premiered a video yesterday that campaign’s against Shell’s plans of drilling in the Arctic, but primarily targets a proxy company, Lego. The ad wants to move the Danish toy company to cancel its deal with Shell that will put Lego toys in hundreds of gas stations. In the video, an oil-stricken Arctic depicted in […]
Researchers at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) have found a chemical switch that both regulates the generation of new neurons from neural stem cells and the survival of existing nerve cells in the brain. Postmortem examination of the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and stroke victims found the switch that shuts off the signals was […]
Giant whirlpools or mesoscale eddies, as described in scientific literature, can grow between 100 km and 500 km in diameter, forming around islands where ocean currents become disrupted. These whirlpools carry immense amounts of water and heat, but up until now they’ve been largely ignored in climate models. A novel research, however, found that energy dispersed […]
Scientists have identified the fossilized remains of what they believe to be the the largest flying bird. The species, now long extinct, had an estimated wingspan of 7-8 meters (20-24 feet) – twice as big as the royal albatross, today’s largest flying bird. Interestingly enough, the bird was initially unearthed in 1983 near Charleston, South […]
This year, Oklahoma already had over 230 earthquakes with a magnitude of over 3. In 2008, the average number was 1! It seems quite unlikely for such a dramatic change to happen naturally, especially without other geological indicators. Many geologists and seismologists suspected that this was connected with the recent oil explorations in the area, […]
The Earth contains a lot of iron, but it is not alone in the solar system in that aspect. Venus, Mars, the Moon and asteroids such as Vesta all have iron in their structure, but Mercury is the champion in that aspect: about 70 percent of its mass is iron! Now, researchers believe they have […]
