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The same genes that are responsible for height have been linked to heart disease as well, according to British researchers who found shorter people are at a greater risk. For every 2.5 inch difference in height, the chance of contracting a heart disease increases by 13.5 percent. In other words, a 5-foot-tall person has an average 32 percent higher risk of heart disease than a person who's 5-foot 6-inches tall, according to the researchers.
Renewable energy and electric vehicles not only need high density storage mediums to become successful, but ones that can be replenished fast as well. A new battery, very similar to the popular lithium-ion variety used to power your smartphone, charges in under a minute and still works perfectly after 7000 cycles. Moreover, the battery is based on aluminium making it both easier and cheaper to manufacture.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge in England claim to have unraveled one of the great mysteries of electromagnetism, and believe their work in ultra-small antennas could not only revolutionize global communications, but also explain some of the tricky areas where electromagnetism and quantum physics overlap.
Hallucinogenic tea brewed from South American plants might treat depression, according to a new study - but don't start your homebrewing just yet; it's a small study, and there are still unclear aspects about it.
When it comes to alien life, we’ve had our hopes crushed time and time again. As the Moon was being observed with telescopes in medieval times, many thought it might be inhabited, but then we learned there’s not atmosphere and no water on it. Then Venus, our sister planet turned out to be completely unsuitable for life, […]
Arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, is one of the most common phobias humans have. But out of all the spiders that live today, really very few are dangerous - so why is it that we fear them so much then? Researchers from Columbia University believe they might have found the answer to that - and it's strictly related to human evolution.
It’s the favorite hash tag we’ve had since #OverlyHonestMethods: scientists are flooding Twitter with their own revelations and reasons why they feel they’re scientists. It’s awesome because it highlights how special and unique being a scientist really is. #IAmAScientistBecause I want to explain to people how much we all NEED nature. http://t.co/LaX9G8jAkx pic.twitter.com/5AVVPBwD6f — Mark Spalding […]
Dr. Milton Wainwright is trying to convince the world that the found alien life floating some 25 miles in our planet’s atmosphere – but while tabloids gobbled up his story like no tomorrow, the scientific community is much more reluctant to accept his results. Is there any truth to these claims? Let’s have a look. If […]
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, if one galaxy is located directly behind another, then the front one would bend the light of the more distant one, in such a way that you'd only see the behind one as a ring. Less than 100 years ago, many researchers thought we'd never see one, but astronomers have managed to take several pictures that confirm it - as is the example you see below.
What happens when NASA and IBM sponsor a hackathon and offer their infrastructure to 10,000 researchers, coders, entrepreneurs end educators? Well, I'm not really sure... but it's definitely gonna be something awesome.
You've heard all about controlling robotic arms or prosthesis with thoughts, but what about genes? In a deceptively simple experiment, bioengineers in Switzerland combined a classical brain-computer interface with a biological implant, which effectively allowed a genetic switch to be operated by brain activity. Imagine wearing a "funny" cap fitted with electrodes and a tiny implant, then controlling your mood by thinking the perfect "pure" thoughts that would cause a cascade of feel good chemicals. The same could be made for painkillers, so you can deliver just the right amount. Really, there's a lot of potential floating around this thing.
There aren't blood vessels you're seeing, but itsy bitsy strands of artificial spider silk. For some years, researchers have been investigating synthesizing spider silk for a variety of very good reasons. Spider silk is the toughest known natural material, and has been explored in its synthetic variety for use as bulletproof vests, synthetic skin, biodegradable water bottles and even computer electronics. These strands presented above, however, serve a different purpose: as a bandaid meant to help regenerate skin and heal wounds.
By the time you've finished reading this sentence, thousands of lightning bolts had already discharged enormous amounts of energy onto Earth's surface. Now, a map compiled by NASA using two decades worth of measurements shows which places are hit most often. For instance, land is hit more frequently than the ocean, as is the equatorial region compared to other regions of the globe.
Just like Pluto, the iconic dinosaur genus was demoted decades ago and classified under another sauropod genus. But a more sophisticated taxonomy recently published by researchers in the UK and Portugal warrants a revisit of the shelved, but never forgotten Brontosaurus.
"Lose weight NOW", "You'll never believe how [this person] got slim", "An easy way to lose extra pounds" - big claims, with little to back them up. Diets and weight loss programs are popping everywhere nowadays, and they've done so for years and years, but does the science actually back them up? Kimberly Gudzune, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins found that many diet plans have zero or very little rigorous scientific evidence backing them up.
The human brain is one of the biggest and most intriguing mysteries scientists are tackling. It's an incredibly active, bustling place that keeps us going and effectively makes us the people we are. There are about 100 billion neurons processing and transmitting information through electrical and chemical signals and to make things even more complicated, each of these neurons has about 10,000 different connections to neighboring brain cells.
A 1,000 year old Anglo-Saxon ‘eye salve’ made from onion, garlic, wine and part of a cow’s stomach wipes out 90 percent of antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) - much better than modern antibiotics. It also does a great job at treating styes, small abscesses on the eyelid.
Blind rats learned to navigate mazes just as well as those that could see, after scientists strapped a simple geomagnetic compass - the kind that's found in your smartphone - fitted with electrodes directly onto their brains. Though they're not naturally equipped to sense magnetic fields, the rats' brains demonstrated tremendous plasticity and effectively incorporated a new sense! We can only presume this is possible in the case of humans as well, so the team from Japan which made the study believes blind people could incorporate a similar device - minus the brain hack. There are other alternatives after all, like say an iPhone app that acoustically alerts the blind person which way to turn or a sensor directly fitted into a walking cane.
Some areas of South America are so special and magical... that you might even find a dragon - or actually, three of them! Tiny dragons, that is, but still, it's something. Postdoc Omar Torres-Carvajal discovered three new species of dwarf dragons in the Andes of Peru and Ecuador.
The future is here - scientists at a Polish company have developed a liquid body armor. Technically speaking, it's a non-Newtonian shear-thickening fluid (STF) that is lighter than current body armor materials, and might resists the impact better than Kevlar.
In unanimous vote, the city of Vancouver, Canada, passed its Greenest City Action Plan – to become the world’s greenest city by 2020; one of their goals is to use only renewable energy in only 5 years. In light of that and other recent developments, it’s starting to feel like much of the world might actually go […]
If you ever dropped food on the pavement, don't feel too bad. It'll get scrapped bit by bit by the ever resourceful ants, so you're actually doing a favor to these swarms of critters. But have you ever wondered why ants can eat ice cream, hot dogs or just about every kind of junk food we unwittingly throw at them? Some researchers looked at this question and found that some particular ant species have seemingly adapted to consume junk food.
Settling a long debate, Princeton University researchers found that a class of materials called frustrated magnets - called so because they're not magnetic, though they should be - can exhibit the Hall effect. This happens only at very, very low temperatures close to absolute zero, when physics transcends familiar, classical behavior into the quantum domain. First observed in 1879 by E.H. Hall, the effect describes how current deflects to one side of the ribbon when an electrically charged conductor is subjected to a magnetic field. It has since been exploited for use in in sensors for devices such as computer printers and automobile anti-lock braking systems. The current study is particularly important since it may reveal more about how transmission of frictionless electricity works (superconductivity), while also offering hints and clues that may help researchers devise the oh-so heralded quantum computers of the future.
Tomorrow's bridges, tunnels and other engineering structures might be built with a different type of "smart" concrete: Belgian researchers at the University of Ghent have created a self-repairing type of concrete.
Higher education is facing a crisis, and professor Bowen offers some solutions.
This hybrid image combines low spatial components of a photo of Marilyn Monroe and high spatial frequency components of an image of Albert Einstein. At lower resolution (look at your computer screen from farther away), the low spatial component is more dominant, while at closer up the higher frequency should be more persistent. So, as the image gradually enlarges people with good eyesight should see Albert Einstein, while those with poor vision will pick up a blurry image, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who made the optical illusion.
Homes cleaned at least once a week with bleach might provide an environment that puts children at a higher risk of catching viral infections. The observational study suggests the modest, yet significant higher risk of infection may be due to a suppression of the immune system. Also, it might very well be due to the irritant properties of volatile or airborne compounds generated during the cleaning process that can damage the lining of lung cells, sparking inflammation and making it easier for infections to take hold.
Marine life is on the brink of experiencing its sixth mass extinction, a disruption that is expected to occur very rapidly once the gears are set in motion (cataclysmic chain events). Now, a new study suggests that it might take a full millennium for marine life to recover from a potential climate change-driven die off, not hundreds as previously suggested.
Exploiting plants' natural response to stress caused by drought, researchers have engineered crops that build tolerance and can withstand longer without water, while also extending the point of no return when no amount of water can save the withered plant. This "buy more" time method might hopefully help vulnerable crops fare better during long periods of drought - like the one currently in full swing in California, which is experiencing its worst drought in recorded history - and increase yields.
A new test analyzes the free DNA inside the blood of pregnant women to detect Down Syndrome in fetuses with a greater accuracy than standard tests. The test can be made by women between 10 and 14 weeks pregnant.
Most of the 100 children hospitalized with acute flaccid myelitis haven't recovered from paralysis and weak limbs. CC BY-NC 2.0
After carefully calculating the net nutritional gain polar bears have from land-based food like caribou, berries or bird eggs, researchers found this is far from enough to compensate their typical fat-rich diet based on marine mammals. In consequence, as ice retreats and spring hunting season shortens polar bear populations are expected to fall dramatically. According to the study, two-third of the world's polar bears will disappear by mid-century and by the end of the century the could follow, if the issue is not addressed.
Homo is the genus of hominids that includes modern humans, as well as other species closely related to them… I mean us. The genus is estimated to be about 2.3 to 2.4 million years old and it features several species (though it’s still not clear how many). Here are the modern (<0.6 million years) Homo species […]
Eight colonies of common ants were shipped to the International Space Station last December to study how microgravity might affect the creatures. So, how did the ants fare? Well, surprisingly good actually. The dexterous ants clung to the surface of the station and migrated freely (under supervision of course) despite weightlessness. Of course, their movements weren't as coordinated as on Earth and since they rely on a sort of hive mind to coordinate the colony, researchers believe studying their mishaps in microgravity might aid in building better robots.
More than half a century in question, scientists now confirm that the tiny blackpoll warbler flies nonstop over the North Atlantic Ocean each autumn from New England to South America. The trip takes three days, during which the bird foregoes any rest, sleep or meal. It also absorbs its own intestines.
There's a fine line between being seen as a non-conformist (higher status) and sloppy dresser (lower status). But what sets apart people like Zuckerberg from regular people like you or me (apart from money, of course...)? Well, to get to the root of this silver line, the Harvard researchers studied the observers themselves to understand what are the boundary conditions and signals that make people confer higher status to nonconforming individuals over conforming ones.
Ironically enough, one male researcher from England used tampons to detect grey water contamination, or laundry system run off, that might be present in waterways. The tampons absorbed key signature chemicals that glow in the dark, making them easy to use and cheap. Moreover, it's more reliable than consecrated and expensive methods.
The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, and citizen scientists… do citizen science! In case you’re not familiar with the concept, citizen science are activities supported (or sponsored) by universities, organizations, institutes or governments through which everyone can provide meaningful scientific contributions. Activities can vary greatly (from counting birds to analyzing galaxy clusters), and […]
I know, the title sounds like one of those scams that promise you'll lose weight - but this is all science all the way. Researchers in Sri Lanka have found a simple way of cooking the rice that not only reduces calories by half, but also provides other health benefits. The key addition is coconut oil.
Mice that had gut bacteria transferred from other mice fed with a high fat diet changed their behavior in a negative way, exhibiting anxiety or impaired memory. The findings suggest that apart from heart disease and stroke, obesity might put people's mental health at risk as well.
In a most unexpected find, the same University of Manchester team that isolated graphene for the first time in 2003 found that water flattens into square crystals - a never encountered lattice configuration - when squeezed between two layers of graphene. The square ice qualifies as a new crystalline phase of ice, joining 17 others previously discovered. The finding could potentially improve filtration, distillation and desalination processes.
A group of biochemical engineers in the US have managed to give a volunteer complete night vision, allowing him to see for 50 meters in almost complete darkness for several hours. To make things even better, they did this without any injections or lenses - only eye drops.
A team at Stanford and MIT has devised a novel configuration that combines silicon - the leading solar cell semiconductor - and perovskite - a cheap mineral, only recently exploited for converting solar energy - to form two different layers of sunlight-absorbing material in order to harness energy across a wider spectrum. While performance at this stage is not impressive (it's equally as good or bad as conventional single-layer silicon cells), researchers believe they have methods at their disposal that could double efficiency. If that were to happen, than these could be the cheap, but efficient solar cells we've all been waiting for.
Stem cells were coaxed to grow into 3D dimensional mini lungs, or organoids, for the first time. These survived for more than 100 days. These pioneering efforts will serve to deepen our understanding of how lungs grow, as well as prove very useful for testing new drugs' responses to human tissue. Hopefully, once human tissue grown in the lab becomes closer and close to the real deal (cultured hearts, lungs, kidneys etc.), animal testing might become a thing of the past.
Scientists are working to gather more and more details about Icelandic DNA, in an attempt to design better drugs and understand how drugs react to genetic variation. So far, the DNA of over 1% of all Icelanders has been sequenced and more will likely follow. This operation is conducted by Amgen's DeCode Genetics. The team now claims that they can identify every woman at high-risk of breast cancer "at the touch of a button" and it would be "criminal" not to use the information.
For the first time, researchers have discovered a vertebrate able to change the texture of its skin from smooth to spiny. The new frog species was found in Ecuador in the plentiful moss surrounding the native forest.
It almost sounds too cheesy to be true: NASA wants to send a shuttle to an asteroid, pluck a piece of it, then make it return to the Moon and orbit it. Then, brave astronauts will go and retrieve the sample, bringing it back to Earth for study. But that's exactly what astronomers and engineers at the space agency want to do.
Most people tend to think of the Earth in terms of crust, mantle and core, and while those are indeed the largest "layers" (you can't properly call the mantle a layer though), each one of them is made from other, thinner layers. Now, researchers from the University of Utah have identified another one of these thinner layers, 930 miles beneath our feet.
What do fires and deep sounds have in common? Not much right now, but they might have a lot in the future.Two George Mason University students have designed a device that uses sound waves to put out fires, thus potentially eliminating the need for carrying around huge quantities of water and costly cleaning operations. Here's how it works:
Some 30 new bean varieties have been cross-bred by researchers in order to make these more resistant to rising temperatures. Often called the 'meat of the poor', more than 400 million people around the world depend on beans for their daily protein intake. Being particularly vulnerable to temperature means that bean farms, whether large or home subsistence gardens, could be obliterated by climate change this century. The new beans can withstand temperatures three to four degrees Celsius greater than those currently grown by farmers, enough, the researchers say, to keep yield losses to a minimum.
