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Christmas came early for physicists as the CERN facility in Switzerland report the discovery of two new baryonic particles from their LHCb experiment. “Today the collaboration for the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of two new particles in the baryon family. The particles, known as the Xi_b’- and Xi_b*-, were […]
The Mediterranean diet has long been known to provide a myriad of health benefits, reducing the risk of heart disease and cancer among others; but until now, no study has shown that it also protects telomeres, one of the biomarkers of aging. As the name gives it away, the Mediterranean diet follows the nutritional patterns of […]
The University of Texas at Austin is missing about 100 brains, about one half of the entire collection from the University… and no one seems to know what happened to the brains. University staff are scratching their heads trying to figure out what happened to the brains; it may be an act of vandalism or […]
Ants often get a lot of bad rep for being “pests” in the city, but a new study has shown that ant populations are actually very helpful in urban environments. Scientists researching the behavior of ants have found that they dispose of garbage with remarkable efficiency, keeping rats and other garbage-dependent pests at bay. “Urban green […]
Many thousands of miles above our planet’s surface, electrons whiz through close to the speed of light. These electrons can streak past Earth in under five minutes, but can also become dangerous and have been known to destroy satellites and even injure astronauts in extreme cases. Most of the time, however, our gear and astronauts can rest […]
You often hear people complaining that kids don’t play outside anymore – instead just hanging in the house all day long, playing on the computer (tablet/xbox/whatever). This is a pretty big problem, because there is a myriad of advantages to playing outside; this study has added yet another advantage to that list: playing outside reduces […]
The remains of King Richard III have been confirmed with pin-point accuracy by the latest round of sequencing; exclusive details on how the late tyrant king might have looked like are also now available. A few years back, a most surprising find was made under a car park in Leicester: none other than King Richard […]
It’s very small and incredibly old – scientists have found the egg of a 240 million year old parasite – a pinworm, to be more precise. It’s the oldest pinworm ever found, and one of the oldest evidences of parasitism ever found. The pinworm, also known as threadworm, is a parasitic intestinal worm, pretty common […]
The past couple of months have been really tense for the people who are often times labeled as coming from ‘uncontacted’ tribes. The truth of is most of these tribes are often times intruded upon by neighboring communities and, worse and most dangerous of all, illegal loggers and drug traffickers. As such, tribesmen have come out […]
Yoga, coffee and even chocolate can do wonders for your mood – it’s already a known fact. But what if technology stepped in – would you take a few electrical shots to substitute your urge for caffeine? If the answer is yes, or if you want to have more control on your mood, then good […]
Have you ever wondered why you crave for a drink from time to time or why you can drink alcohol in the first place, for that matter? Our ability to ingest and metabolize ethanol can be traced back to a common primate ancestor who lived some 10 million years ago, according to US researchers who […]
Charle’s Darwin’s original notes during which he first scribbled down the ideas which led to evolution have been digitized and published online by Cambridge University. Over 12,000 high-res images have been published online – including the ones with the pages where he actually coins the term ‘natural selection’. “One may say there is a force […]
Nature, one of the biggest academic journal groups has announced that they will make all their articles free to view. While the articles will be available for anyone to read, they cannot be copied, printed or downloaded, the journal’s publisher Macmillan announced on 2 December. “Subscribers to 49 journals on nature.com will be able to share a […]
Oh, boy. This week’s freaky science story comes from the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York where researchers grafted mouse pups with human glial cells. Within one year, half the brain cells of the by now adult mice were human. A study made last year by the same team suggests that mice whose […]
An Israeli company has developed a battery that can charge a smartphone in just 30 seconds; to make things even more interesting, the technology could be scaled and power up electric cars in a matter of minutes. Demonstrated at the 2014 Microsoft Think Next Conference in Tel Aviv earlier this year, StoreDot‘s prototype battery fully charged […]
There is currently no Lyme borreliosis vaccine available for humans available for purchase, but a new research has shown how such a vaccine could be made. Lyme disease (Lyme borreliosis) is an infectious disease caused by at least three species of bacteria belonging to the genus Borrelia. Each year, approximately 30,000 cases of Lyme disease are […]
Music is almost ubiquitous in our lives – we hear it in commercials, in the car, on the radio, at the movies, when you go out, when you stay in… we’re quite a musical society nowadays. But we still don’t understand many things about how music affects our bodies and our brains; now, a new […]
Geologists are close to cracking the mystery of one of the biggest earthquakes in American modern history – the 1872 North Cascades event. Now, over one century later, they believe they have finally found the origin of the earthquake. An ancient mysterey Current research points to a newly discovered fault near the town of Entiat in Chelan […]
Solar cell technology has improved dramatically over the past couple of year, yet it will be a long time before multi-junction cells – then kind that can reach efficiency well over 40% – will become affordable to small home owners or even large scale installation. New methods are always explored, however, each with its own angle […]
Dr Nick Longrich from Bath University was studying bones from two horned dinosaurs from the ceratopsian family (related to Triceratops), when he discovered that the two were actually previously unknown species. The findings highlight that dinosaurs in area were more diverse than previously thought, and they also show that sometimes, museum archives can yield surprising information. “We […]
It might not come as a surprise to hear that the world’s strongest material, graphene, was found to be a great impact absorber as well. After all, there always seems to be a study that adds to the growing list of graphene’s useful properties, be its lightness, flexibility, or electrical conductivity. It’s been labeled as […]
Genetic diversity is essential to our survival, but its exactly the huge variance in genetic information that makes all so sought for personalised treatment so difficult. And you don’t need to look at an entire population or even two different people to experience the power of diversity. It’s enough to look inside your own, personal […]
Look at this incredibly big rock. Take a moment, ponder its dimensions, and its weight. Oh, but if you’re looking at the one in the middle, that’s not it – look over to the right. The one to the right, not fully excavated yet, is the biggest ancient stone block, weighing an impressive 1,650 tons (that’s 3,300,000 […]
Being a teen can be difficult at times – but being a parent of a teen can be even more difficult. Sometimes, it’s like kids just close inside themselves and nothing from the outside can reach them. Well, according to a new study from Harvard, Pittsburgh and California Berkeley – that may actually be the […]
If you thought the bubonic plague is a thing of the past… then think again! The dreadful disease is making a resurgence in the island of Madagascar, off the eastern coast of Africa. There have already been 138 suspected cases of the disease, with a total of 47 victims. You may know the black plague as […]
For the first time, researchers in Germany have been able to create spinal cords in a Petri dish. To be more precise, they didn’t grow complete spinal cords, but neuroepithelial cysts, which are ellipsoid like and were about 60 μm in diameter. These cells express factors that are associated with spinal cord tissue and are in many […]
An experiment fortuitously called DARE (DNA atmospheric re-entry experiment) has come to a most unexpected conclusion: DNA can indeed survive full exposure to space flight and atmospheric re-entry. The findings were reported after DNA molecules placed onto the outer surface of a rocket were collected and analyzed upon its return. Moreover, even after bearing these extreme […]
Since ancient times, people living in hot climates learned if they paint their rooftops white, then their quarters would stay cooler during the scorching heat. In an attempt to curve energy consumed on air conditioning, which accounts for 15% of all electricity consumed in the US, scientists have devised a multi-layered surface that acts in […]
Today, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving – a special time of the year when families gather together and share what they’re most grateful for. And they eat turkey, of course. While they may be hundreds of miles above their families’ home, the three astronauts aboard the International Space Station upheld the tradition and had their own Thanksgiving meal, […]
Historically, NASA burns all its human generated waste in special containers upon atmospheric re-entry. Waste doesn’t need to stick to its name, however, so why not transform it into something more useful like fuel, oxygen or waster. Such a system was devised by researchers at University of Florida for a potential human colony on the […]
US researchers demonstrated an implantable device that can deliver a drug payload when triggered by a remote wireless signal. After the payload is delivered, the whole system, including electronics, dissolve within weeks without harming the body in any way. Doctors would leave behind the resorbable packaging and electronics post surgery for infection management by either thermal treatment or […]
When I first heard about 3-D printing, I was completely stoked. The whole concept blew me away and changed forever what I thought of ‘printing’. We now also know about machines that print metals, food and even human organs, why not light too? While not a 3D printer, Rohinni’s Lightpaper technology can be credited as […]
There’s no more faithful companion than a dog, nor more messier. If you thought dog’s make a mess when they drink water just because they don’t care, think again. Using high-speed cameras and fluid dynamics, researchers found that dogs use their tongues in a different way than cats, pets adorned for their neatness. Lick, lick […]
For a long while astronauts coming back home from the ISS would complain how bad the coffee is in Earth’s orbit. Of course, one might say there’s little room for frivolities when tasked with a mission of such importance as an ISS astronaut. Coffee can wait, so can pastas, sex or cats. The world’s space […]
Apart from both being shiny, it’s hard to see any connection between a Blu-ray disk and a solar panel. Northwestern University researchers thought outside the box, however, and used the disk’s tiny stamped grooves and pits to make molds for solar panels. Because of the resulting structure’s geometry, the solar cells were able to absorb […]
UK researchers highlight once more a depressing topic: income inequality and lack of social mobility. After they tracked families that sent their children to study at Oxford and Cambridge – the two most prestigious and elitist Universities in the world since 1096 – the researchers found that students were more likely to inherit their parent’s […]
Who would’ve thought only a decade ago that quantum computers would become real in the upcoming future? Those of us without such hindsight need to rely on what’s been reported by scientists, and recently all kinds of developments lend us to think that a quantum computing future isn’t that far off. Take the latest qubit […]
For the first time, researchers at the University of Basel used an ultracool atomic gas to cool a very thin membrane to less than one degree Kelvin. The new technique might enable novel investigations of quantum mechanics phenomena and precision measuring devices. Coldest matter in the world lends its freeze In the ultracold world, produced […]
It’s the main argument against renewable energy – sure, they’re environmentally friendly, they’re sustainable, they have very little emissions… but they’re expensive. But while that is already no longer true in many parts of the world, it may also not be true in America – where solar and wind energy are starting to overcome conventional fuels […]
Lake Powell is at historic lows, and while for kayakers it may be a great opportunity to explore channels, it raises a big alarm regarding the future of water in the area. Lake Powell is a reservoir on the Colorado River between the border of Utah and Arizona. It is the second largest man-made reservoir by maximum […]
Scientists have found that cocoa flavanols, substances found in chocolate, and to a lesser extent in blueberries, red wine, parsley and black tea have a positive impact on the memory of elders. Flavonoids are a class of plant secondary metabolites. Flavonoids were referred to as Vitamin P until 1950, but the term fell out of favor. Though there […]
What’s that – a starfighter? Ambitious as he may be with his SpaceX ventures, Elon Musk isn’t quite there yet. What he recently unveiled is a new rocket configuration called “X-wing” – like the epic Star Wars spacecraft – that is going to help the next, upgraded version of the Falcon 9 to land itself […]
The R&D and pre-marketing approval cost of a typical pharmaceutical drug sits at around $2.6 billion, according to a new study by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. The study used actual expense data provided by 10 pharmaceutical companies on 106 randomly selected drugs that were first tested in human subjects anywhere in […]
Inspired by Margaret Thatcher’s formidable political skills, researchers in the US sought to understand how a position of power changes a person’s voice, and how this in turn affects their relation with other people. Indeed, being in power alters the acoustic properties of the voice and those tuning in can pick up cues that tell […]
In 2012, the United States generated almost 14 million tons of plastics as containers and packaging, about 11 million tons as durable goods such as appliances, and almost 7 million tons as nondurable goods, such as plates and cups. Compared to the 1960s, when plastics were less than one percent of the waste stream, this ubiquitous […]
Some people, like history’s greatest artists or scientists, have a fantastic imagination that long transcends reality. Others have this line completely blurred and can’t make sense of what’s real or not. For most of us, however, fantasy and reality are clearly separated in our mental psyche. Now, a team of neuroscientists have explored the neural pathways […]
Watch out, Spiderman! Stanford engineers recently demonstrated a pair of gecko-inspired hand pads strong enough to pull the weight of an adult man and to allow him to climb a wall. Scaling walls like a gecko At the center of the gecko’s clinging ability are its specialized pads, located on the reptile’s toes, comprised of various satae (bristle- or […]
The Nanoflare technology uses a genetic-based approach to detect and image live cancer cells present in the blood stream, well before these had a chance to develop into a tumor. The gene-hunting particles developed at Northwestern University might help doctors develop personalized treatments for their patients and curb cancer spread, according to the paper published […]
NASA released a video that helps us visualize where the major CO2 emission hotspots are and how the greenhouse gas travels and swirls around the globe, guided by weather patterns. The CO2 emissions were mapped using data gathered during May 2005 to June 2007 with 64 times the resolution of a standard climate model, on a NASA supercomputer at […]
Since June, 2013 swarms of dying starfish have been riddling the North American western coast. The disease, called sea star wasting syndrome (SSWS), causes the star-shaped echinoderms to first curl from the tips, then swell and twist like a pretzel, followed by festering sores appearing on the flesh and ending in complete degeneration. A starfish […]
