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Cloning the woolly mammoth is a life long dream for many geneticists and biologists, but the challenges are numerous. Now, we've come a step closer after researchers replaced snips of elephant DNA with those from the woolly mammoth. The changes they've made so far are stable, and even though there's still much work ahead, little by little scientists are building the mammoth's genome one piece at a time. Next stop: actually cloning the mammoth, effectively resurrecting the species back from the dead.
In December 1994, three explorers made a surprising discovery in southern France - a rumble of stones blocking the entrance to a spectacular cave, over 400 meters long and covered with archaeological and palaeontological remains, including the skulls and bones of cave bears, which hibernated there, along with the skulls of an ibex and two wolves. But it was the human traces that were most interesting...
Paris authorities have put in place 24-hour emergency measures to limit the number of cars in traffic as part of their efforts to fight the smog shrouding the city. Today (Monday, March 23) all cars with number plates that end with an even number will be banned from circulating in the Paris region, unless they're carrying 3 or more passengers. Clean cars will also be allowed.
At a recent meeting of the of the American Chemical Society, researchers proposed a novel source of valuable metals: waste water. They proposed a method that could be used to extract valuable metals like gold, silver or titanium which end up in waste water plants via the city's sewage.
Biologists at Tufts Universityand University of Minnesota showed for the first time that bioelectricity signaling between cells guides embryonic brain development in tadpoles. When bioelectricity signaling was hampered, the frog embryos developed abnormal brains. By using drugs that target specific ion channels, the researchers could restore normal patterns to ensure healthy brain growth. This means that careful manipulation of electricity inside the tissue can repair abnormalities caused by genetic defects. It can also be used to grow all sorts of wacky stuff.
Even as a geologist, I can’t help myself from looking at lava with an almost childish fascination — it’s something from the depths of the Earth (literally), with the potential to destroy anything in its path, and also to create new landscapes, drastically changing the surface of the Earth. In the short film above, Lance Page managed […]
Everything is made of stardust - but some things are made of more stardust than others. A new study has found that a single supernova is capable of producing large enough quantities of dust to create thousands of planets like Earth.
Spring officially began in the northern hemisphere Friday on 22:45 GMT, around 30 seconds later than last year. As it so happens, every year spring gets shorter by 30 seconds to a minute, losing the time to summer which gets longer by the same amount. Whose to blame for the later bloom? Why, that wretched tilted axis of course.
While in South American during his 1830 expedition with the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin came across the fossils of two peculiar hoofed species which he was unable to classify properly. One was Macrauchenia, which looked like a camel with the head of an ant eater, and the other was Toxodon which had the body of rhino, the head of a hippo and the teeth of a rodent. So, was the Macrauchenia related to the camel or the ant eater? Who was Toxodon's closet cousin, the hippo or the rhino? Darwin was puzzled and to no avail concluded these were “perhaps one of the strangest animals ever discovered”. But Darwin didn't have the tools we have today. Now, using a ground breaking technique researchers have sequenced the collagen of a myriad of South American mammals, including Darwin's 'strangest animals' and finally found their real taxonomy.
Barton Bibler, a long time employee of Florida's environmental protection department, was forced by his boss to take a leave of absence after mentioning 'climate change' in a public hearing. He was told not to come back at the office until he had sought mental health examination. This was in response to a violation of an unwritten policy that came into effect after Governor Rick Scott came to office, a notorious climate change denier and controversial figure, which bans employees from using 'climate change', 'global warming', 'rising sea level' and such from public communication. If you find this hilarious, you can stop laughing now. This not the Onion. This is Scott's Florida - the land of ignorance and denial, or so he would like us to believe.
Long before T-rex claimed the top dog spot among terrestrial predators, a vicious crocodile ancestor that walked on its hind legs was at the top of the food chain during the Triassic. The fossils of the Carnufex carolinensis, also known as the the “Carolina Butcher,” were discovered decades ago in the Pekin Formation, a geological formation in North Carolina's Chatham County. It was only recently that researchers reanalyzed the fossils and concluded they were dealing with an all new predator that roamed the Earth several million years before dinosaurs were even around.
With spring starting to settle in, snow is likely the last thing on people's minds - but NASA is taking snow really seriously. They want to put satellites in orbit to understand how the frozen lands in the polar areas are developing and adapting to climate change.
This is it - the pinnacle of technological development, the result of countless research hours; yes, it's a tree.
Fahrenheit may be the best way to measure temperature after all. Why? Because most of us only care about air temperature, not water temperature.
Scientists, in the lab at least, see marijuana differently from growers or users. Like other plants, once you dive into the microworld cannabis looks immensely different from the buds you see online. These amazing pictures which size up the planet’s crystals, trichomes or leafs were taken by Ford McCann and compiled in a book called Cannabis […]
Each year worldwide about one million people decide to take their own lives. Overriding your conservation instincts isn't easy, let's say, and this typically happens on the onset of mental illness. In a society where people lives get ever more confused with their occupation, stress at work can sometimes trigger a tragedy. The numbers don't lie. According to researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 1,700 people died by suicide on the job between 2003 to 2010.
Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, is no stranger to staggering photos. His most famous shot includes the first ever selfie in space. Now, while visiting Stonehenge, Aldrin posted on Twitter a photo of him sporting a t-shirt with a stylized Mars logo a la NASA, which read "Get your ass to Mars". A long time supporter of inter-planetary exploration, both publicly during his numerous TV appearances or press editorials and institutionally during his stints in front of Congress, this latest publicity shot aims to inspire the public and garner support for a manned mission to Mars.
See: Previous Week First samples collected from Antarctica’s blood falls Article Featured Researcher: Jill Mikucki Affiliation: University of Tennessee Knoxville Research Interests: Her main research interests are the interactions between microbes and their environment and how the impact of microbial metabolism is detectable on an ecosystem scale. Ultrasound treatment restores memory in Alzheimer’s plagued mice Article […]
The conservative Canadian government headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper has consistently moved the country away from sustainable practices and environmental accountability. In 2011, the government came under fire after it withdrew Canada from the Kyoto protocol, an international agreement which commits its parties by setting internationally binding emission reduction targets. It also disbanded the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy in 2012, a panel tasked with reporting to the government Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. While the government has also taken some measures aimed at curbing emissions, these have been largely insufficient. Disappointed, 71 Canadian scientists have authored their own climate policy recommendations for the nation.
Mudskippers are a strange type of fish - for starters, they're amphibious, which means that they spend a great of their time on land. They also have unique adaptations which allow them to manage in the intertidal environments in the Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic coast of Africa. Their unusual feeding behavior has now been captured in high-speed and X-ray video by biologist Krijn Michel and his colleagues at the University of Antwerp, shedding new light on how life moved from the oceans onto the land.
They're considered a hybrid between asteroids and comets, but still, they're called minor planets; they also bear the name of the fabled man-horse creatures in Greek mythology - centaurs. Now, scientists have found that a Centaur in our solar system, Chiron, might have rings just like those of Saturn.
Designer Thomas Heatherwick just completed construction on a cluster of 12 parsnip tornado-shaped towers for the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The building, called the Learning Hub, is part of a larger project to help redesign educational architecture and make the university a more attractive place. I have to say, it seems to be working – it’s one of […]
Some 17 million years ago, a beaked whale took a wrong turn up an African river, something which ultimately proved to be its demise. But now, geologists studying the whale's fossils believe the whale's unfortunate end might shed a new light on early human evolution.
A rather surprising study found that graphene's imperfections can actually be used to improve fuel cell efficiency. Researchers from Northwestern University worked together with scientists of five other institutes to show that defective graphene actually works as the world's thinnest proton channel—only one atom thick.
In a rather intriguing tweet, Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced that he will end 'range anxiety' by the end of the week for the entire S series. The electric Tesla Model S is already able to travel up to 265 miles before its battery runs out of power – one of the longest driving ranges of any electric car currently on the market. Now, it seems they are preparing to take things even further.
According to Danish and Australian researchers, there are billions of the stars in the Milky Way located in the "habitable zone", where liquid water might exist, and with it, life as we know it.
Half cockroach, half machine, these peculiar insects were hijacked by researchers at Texas A&M University for science. Electrodes implanted in their tiny brains send electrical signals that stir the roaches left, right or makes them halt. Effectively, the researchers are controlling their bodies. This may sound despicable - it actually is in many ways - but the benefits to humanity are far reaching. The cyborgs would be our eyes and ears in places otherwise inaccessible, like disasters sites in the wake of earthquakes or other environmental calamities. Picking the cockroach brain might also help us learn more about how our own brain works. This in turn could spur the development of brain-computer interfaces or a new generation of prostheses that faithfully mimic real limbs.
A new company called Carbon3D, founded by a team of physicists and chemists, were inspired by the iconic Terminator villein, the self-morphing T-1000, to build a machine that 3D prints objects from a puddle of raisin. Unlike conventional 3D printers which add material layer by layer, the latest innovation works fundamentally different. The models it prints are extremely sophisticated and detailed, making it a valuable tool for consumer products, not just prototyping as is the norm today.
About two dozen University of Texas students gathered on Saturday at the entrance to the SXSW tech and entertainment festival to voice their concerns about the risks artificial intelligence might pose to humanity. Though largely ignored by hipster pedestrians nearby, the protest does raise some legitimate concerns even though technology is still far off from any Skynet scenario. Thankfully, we might never cross this SciFi threshold.
A year ago, Oxford University professor of human genetics Bryan Sykes and his colleagues took some unusual hair samples found in the Himalayas and concluded that they actually belong to a now extinct polar bear which once inhabited Norway. Now, another team analyzed the results and concluded that while it's clearly no yeti, the remains might actually belong to a brown bear instead.
Researchers from NASA, Imperial College in London and Texas University have discovered two seafloor troughs that allow warm ocean water to infiltrate and accentuate the melting of Totten Glacier, East Antarctica's largest glacier. This could have massive implications not only for the Antarctica ice, but for global sea levels.
Some 480 million years ago the seven-foot-long Aegirocassis benmoulae swam in a shallow sea covering what is today the Sahara desert. This giant arthropod, much larger than arthropods existing today, was likely the biggest creature in the world at the time.
Researchers at Brown University have found a cheaper and easier way to create hybrid perovskites, enabling engineers to develop more affordable and efficient solar cells. Perovskite is a calcium titanium oxide mineral composed of calcium titanate (CaTiO3). The mineral has received much attention in recent years as artificial perovskite crystals have increasingly been used in solar cells. Perovskite films in solar cells are excellent light absorbers, but they until now, they were more expensive to fabric and only created small crystals.
There are still many things we have yet to discover about plants, a new study has highlighted. The research team showed that trees don’t just move water up and down like we previously thought - they can store it and move it horizontally if they need it. In a way, they save water for a not-so-rainy day.
University of Michigan researchers have devised what looks like the world's first fully transparent solar cell. Think of all of those tall glass buildings; wouldn't it be nice if all that incoming solar energy was harvested somehow? Likewise, why not let your smartphone charge up a bit while it's taking a tan. Of course this isn't a new idea, but previous attempts are rather unattractive because the compromise makes windows too shady or dark. After all, the purpose of a window is to let light in, not make energy. Ideally, you'd want them harness energy as well, complementary. The new system devised at UM is exciting because it offers exactly this: energy generation, with no compromise in visibility.
While he was only 22 years of age, Charles Darwin sailed on the ship H.M.S. Beagle to the Galapagos Island on a trip that would later inspire him to write the theory of evolution. Paramount to his evolutionary theories was his study of finches. He identified 13 different species differentiated by beak size, and correctly concluded that the different beaks were adaptations to different diets available among the islands. This was a powerful example of divergent evolution - varieties which diverge from some original species. For instance, domestic dogs from wolves. One powerful driver of divergent evolution is physical isolation. Each left to its own island, Darwin's finches evolved specialized traits. On California's Santa Cruz Island, however, a most peculiar finding was made. Katie Langin, a biologist at Colorado State University, discovered two varieties belonging to the same species (Aphelocoma californica or the Scrub Jay) which diverged despite the absence of a physical barrier. Isolation drives speciation, but not in this case. Granted, the two Scrub Jay populations are essentially the same species. And yet, this is still definitely very, very weird. And we're only beginning to understand what's happening.
At his lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Martin Burke laid the foundation for what he simply calls "The Machine" - an automated small molecule synthesizer that's set to change the way chemists assemble chemicals forever. It's like a 3D printer, only for molecules. Starting with some basic chemicals, which Burke and colleagues separate into blocks, the machine assembles all sorts of molecules in a modular fashion, like pinning Lego bricks. Hours and hours of toiling in the lab might now be dedicated to more important business, and molecules yet to be synthesized can now be attempted. These small molecules hold tremendous potential in medicine, but technology is also sure to exploit the machine - anything from LEDs to solar cells.
Saul Luciano Lliuya is a farmer from Peru whose home in the floodpath of the Palcacocha lake which has been swelling with glacial melt-water for the past few decades. Because Lliuya feels “acutely threatened” by the lake, the farmer is now prepared to take one of Germany's biggest producers of brown coal energy to court and demand compensation. This would make it the first such legal claim in Europe where a company is summoned to pay for its historical role in driving emissions.
When the University of Amsterdam decided to close down several language studies, students reacted; but they didn't protest or used violence, they simply occupied one of the University's buildings, demanding a more democratic approach to education and more student participation.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Obama administration and California lawmakers have announced a doubling of the size of the Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones national marine sanctuaries off Northern California. “NOAA is expanding the boundaries of Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary (CBNMS) and Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (GFNMS) to […]
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded a project which promises to become the quickest two-legged robot in the world. Using technology inspired from pogo sticks, the robot could be useful for getting in and out of areas too dangerous for human rescuers.
The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has lost years of development progress following the devastating effects of Cyclone Pam. Widely regarded as the worst natural disaster in the history of Vanuatu, the cyclone's damage has not yet been thoroughly estimated.
The Moon's geologic past was much more interesting and active than previously thought, results from the Chinese lunar rover indicate. The Yutu moon rover found evidence of at least nine distinct rock layers deep beneath its wheels, something which seems to indicate a more complex setting.
NASA has announced its plans to implement smart glasses in their future missions. The space agency will work together with Osterhout Design Group (ODG) in order to develop the technology which will be used for virtual reality and augmented reality applications during human spaceflight, including repairs and other technical tasks.
It's awesome when engineers can take inspiration from nature and design something truly spectacular - now, a Berkeley team has managed to create a material that can shift colors as easy as a chameleon's skin when pulled or twisted. The material could be used for camouflage or for the next generation of display technologies.
For centuries, arsenic was the go-to poison in the high circles of Europe, either to knock out political foes or to simply eliminate people on the dastardly way to a high position; it was odourless, tasteless, and until 1830 - when chemist James Marsh developed a test - impossible to detect. Thankfully, we're dealing with much less intentional arsenic poisoning today, but unfortunately, we're dealing with much more accidental poisoning. Recently, scientists discovered a population that developed natural immunity to arsenic, high in the Andes.
Deep inside the Earth, in the gigantic Hang Son Doong cave in Vietnam, there lies a completely unique and mostly unknown ecosystem. Using a GoPro-carrying drone, Beijing-based traveler Ryan Deboodt provides a unique insight into this cave, showing a pristine, forgotten world. The cave was only discovered in 1991, but even then, scientists had to wait until 2009 […]
Historically, CO2 emissions linearly follow the world's economy, either dropping during recession or raising with growth. Today, we're expelling more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than ever; not coincidentally, we're also experiencing the greatest wealth ever. Not anymore, however. According to the International Energy Agency, for the first time in 40 years of monitoring, CO2 emissions flat lined relative to the previous year, while the economy grew. In effect, we're experiencing the first carbon decoupling from the economy, a sign that the world is shifting away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources.
Four years ago, a vocal anti vaccine activist and a biologist by training challenged not only established medical science, but common sense. The man in question, Stefan Lanka, offered $100,000 to anyone who could prove the measles virus exists. Yes, the virus that used to infect millions of children and young adults hilariously doesn't exist in Lanka's view. David Barden, a German doctor, took it upon himself to battle the windmills. He mailed Lanka the most up-to-date and comprehensive research on measles. Unsurprisingly, Lanka dismissed them, but the German court thought otherwise. To them, the existence of measles is obvious and ordered the man to pay up the $106,000 he had promised.
Watch the video all to the end – it starts off a bit slow, but it gets pretty rad towards the end. I’m not sure what I was expecting to happen… but it clearly wasn’t this: So what’s happening here? Well, it’s plain to see that a bunch of dark particles precipitate at the bottom […]
