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Not even the quickest pistol drawer from the wild west could have ever stand a chance against the Janken robotic hand at rock-paper-scissors, the favorite game for settling who needs to get out and buy beer. Developed by Ishikawa Oku Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, the Janken robot, which is the name of the game […]
That’s right. Scientists have found that one of our early ancestors, the Australopithecus sediba, South African species from two million years ago, used to have an unique diet of forest fruits and other woodland plants. Basically, all the other hominids, we currently know of, focused more on grasses and sedges. This makes A. sediba a truly […]
You’re not the only that doesn’t like math, it seems. A new study from scientists at Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences found that biologists pay less attention to theories that are dense with mathematical detail. The scientists involved in the study compared citation data with the number of equations per page in more than 600 evolutionary biology papers […]
A talented team of students from the University of Maryland’s Clark School of Engineering has set a new record for the longest flight time for a human-powered helicopter. The helicopter in question, called “Gamera II”, after the flying monster turtle of Japanese films and the university’s terrapin mascot, was devised and built by the students themselves. First thing that […]
In an extraordinary feat of science, Japanese scientists have used induced stem cells to grow into a liver-like tissue in a dish. The researchers have a long way ahead of them before they can grow livers safe for human transplants, which is the main goal, however even at its current stage, the tissue grown by the […]
Scientists at MIT, Brown University, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center may have come across an incredible discovery, after data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a spacecraft which orbits the Moon from pole to pole, suggests water ice might be present inside a massive crater, called the Shackleton crater. The researchers used the spacecraft’s laser altimeter to illuminate the crater’s interior with […]
The Higgs boson or the God particle, as it’s also been commonly referred to, is a hypothetical particle that endows other elementary particles with mass. Confirming its existence is of crucial importance to physicists at the moment, otherwise scientists would be forced to rethink another method of imputing mass to particles. Last year, scientists at CERN registered a hint; […]
Today, only 10% of the currently published scientific papers are open access; freely available to the public online in their entirety. A recently published report commissioned by the UK’s Minister of Science encourages scientists to publish their works in open access journal and claims the benefits of an open access system outweigh the downsides. The […]
The Standard Model of Physics is currently the accepted model which describes how sub-atomic particles behave and interact in the Universe. A recent analysis of data gathered by a decade-long experiment at the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, shows a certain particle decay happening at a pace far exceeding that predicted by […]
Hand stencils, red dots and animal figures currently represent the oldest examples yet found so far in cave art in Europe; using a new, improved technique, researchers have dated the walls at 11 Spanish locations, including the World Heritage sites of Altamira, El Castillo and Tito Bustillo, and found that one motif, a faint red […]
As it turns out, no one single factor was powerful enough to wipe out the woolly mammoth – instead, a sum of factors acted towards their demise, much like many animals are threatened today. Woolly mammoths roamed the globe for 250.000 years, wandering from North America to Europe to Asia, until they were driven extinct […]
Be it a bacteria or a fully complex being, say a human, all living, biological organisms undergo lighting fast protein structure reassembly in response to environmnetal stimuli. For instance, receptor proteins in the sinus are stimulated by various odor molecules, basically telling the organism that there’s food nearby or it’s in the vicinity of danger (sulphur, methane, […]
Hidden for more than 100 years for being too ‘graphic’, a set of images depicting ‘hooligan behaviors, including sexual coercion’, sodomy and necrophilia by Adelie penguins observed during captain Scott’s 1910 expedition were revealed, analyzed and interpreted. George Levick, a surgeon and the medical officer on Scott’s famous 1910-1913 expedition to the South Pole, called […]
This time last year, the whole scientific community was faced with one of the most controversial findings in recent history – namely, that neutrinos could travel at a speed greater than the speed of light, fact which would directly contravene with Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity and, in consequence, force scientists to rethink the fundamental laws that […]
Remember about the auctioned Tyrannosaurus Bataar, taken out of Mongolia? Even though a court from Texas declared the auction illegal, the sale proceeded in New York, and unofficial, national court order has not been issued yet. However, that may change following the analysis of an international paleontologists team. “We have pulled a lot of them […]
NASA announced a truly unexpected phenomena, observed under the shrinking Arctic ice: a massive algae bloom under the ice. Not long ago, the life of this crucial plant seemed to suffer greatly, a worrying phenomena, as algae produces much of the world’s oxygen. The same year that NASA researchers launched the Icescape expedition to the […]
After the successful docking of the first private space shuttle, China announced it is preparing its next step in the ambitious space flight project: the country’s first manned space docking. The Shenzhou 9 spacecraft will dock with the Tiangong 1 orbital module “sometime in mid-June,” according to official statements. However, the government didn’t announce how […]
Remember the late Mesozoic? Dinosaurs ruled the planet, there was no ice at the poles, plants were huge, and so were insects; and if we don’t see any giant insects on the planet – we have the early birds to thank. In the oxygen-rich atmosphere that prevailed at the moment, giant insects thrived in the […]
A team of international scientists from Britain and the United States have devised a new mathematical formula, considered more accurate than previous methods, which measures the body weight of dinosaurs – they found that dinosaurs weighed much less than previous estimates had considered. For instance, the giant Berlin Brachiosaur, which lived in the late Jurassic period (from about 200 […]
Atom = at·om, noun \ˈa-təm\, from the greek ἄτομος (atomos) meaning “indivisible”. Apparently the atom isn’t that indivisible after all. Scientists at the University of Bonn have managed to split an atom into two with a special laser, in special conditions, before merging it back together. Just like in the case of light, quantum mechanics allowed an atom to be split […]
A new study from anthropologists at University of Tennessee analyzed the skulls of caucasian American men and women from between the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Their findings showed that the average American’s skull today is larger and narrower than it used to be seven generations ago. In total, over 1,500 skulls have been analyzed, and though […]
Many efforts and funding have been put into countering vibrations, such as the ones produced by an internal combustion engine, to dampen shocks and reduce noise. Much progress has been made; you only need to compare two vehicles, one twenty years old, the other brand new, and you’ll instantly notice the differences. One, noisy and […]
Curious enough, one hundred years after renowned physicist Max von Lauefirst used X-ray diffraction to unravel the intricate atomic architecture of molecules, a team of international scientists have analyzed tiny protein crystals at an unprecedent scale of resolution, premiering in the process the world’s first hard X-ray free-electron laser. Called the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford, the X-ray […]
Effective quantum computers are still far away, but researchers are already showing more and more advantages these devices would bring to the table. A trio of theorists have shown one more talent of a quantum computer: it would be powerful enough to study the inner workings of the universe in ways that are far beyond […]
Located in the western region of South Asia, and spread over what are now Pakistan, northwest India, and eastern Afghanistan, was the once flourishing Indus Valley Civilization or the Harappan civilization as it’s also referred to, by the the city of Harappa, which was the first excavated city. The Harappan was one of the first attested […]
Scientists generally draw a distinction between consciousness and intelligence. Consciousness is defined as a state of self-awareness; whereas intelligence is seen as a measure of the quality of the awareness. I suggest that the distinction is one of level, not one of kind. Being sufficiently intelligent about cause and effect will include an awareness that […]
The 2012 London summer Olympic games are just a few weeks away, and as millions are set to flock to the city and other hundreds of millions will rejoice on the web and TV at the world’s grandest spectacle of athletic performance, it’s pretty clear this is one of the most anticipated events of the year. Every […]
A stash of 300 year-old jewelry was unearthed by archaeologists near the biblical, ancient city of Megiddo, where the New Testament predicts the final battle of Armageddon. Firstly, archaeologists unearthed a jug which didn’t seem to have anything special – but after they were able to clean it, and safely open it, they found pieces […]
Some 250 million years ago, life on Earth passed through its toughest time so far, as 96% of all marine species and over three quarters of land vertebrates went extinct. According to British researchers, the mass extinction was so severe that it took life 10 million years to recover. With less than 10 percent of […]
A new study conducted by NASA indicates that large molecules containing carbon came to Earth from Mars – molecules which are a key ingredient for life as we know it. Studying meteorites that landed on Earth and originated on Mars, the Carnegie Institution for Science alongside NASA researchers concluded that the reduced carbon – carbon […]
Analysis of crystal formed in the molten rocks of a volcano might predict volcanic eruptions with as much as a year in advance, researchers claim. Mixing Seismology and Petrology Drawing data from the volcanic activity of Mount Helens from 1980 through 1986, geologists found that iron- and magnesium-rich crystals grow before an eruption, and by […]
Well the title may be a little over the top, but Loyola University psychologist concluded that people with a taste for organics are more likely to be insufferable, and that a type of diet might make you more judgmental. The new study by Kendall Eskine claims that people who ate foods declared as organic tended […]
You too can get a genetic test kit for your samples! A new university-based project seeks to investigate cryptic species, such as yeti for example, in an attempt to show if these species can actually exist or not; and they want to do this through DNA research. Researchers from Oxford University and the Lausanne Museum […]
I’ve studied geology for four years – and I still haven’t had the chance to see a T-Rex skeleton; this is just one of the reasons why I believe such valuable fossils belong in museums, where they could serve the higher purpose of education, and not in some personal collection, where they serve only the […]
Nothing short of extraordinary, two people paralyzed from the neck down controlled a robotic arm to perform actions of various complexity, like manipulating objects, simply by using their minds. One of the participants involved in the demonstration of the brain to robotic arm set-up actually controlled the arm to retrieve a coffee recipient and eventually drank from […]
Researchers from New Zealand working in remote Cambodian mountains are shedding new light on the lost history of an enigmatic unidentified tribe by studying their eerie burial rituals. The University of Otago scientists have been working since 2003 to geo-locate and survey 10 interment sites and to used radiocarbon dating on samples of coffin wood, […]
Last year, we reported on one of the most gruesome and horrific acts that goes on in nature; it seems so unreal, like if some sort of SciFi monstrous scenario transcended into the realm of reality, that one has a hard time wrapping his head around it. Yes, as some of you might have read previously, I’m […]
One of the most sophisticated parts of a robot is its navigation system, why requires precise sensing and processing of the information, if an anthropomorphic robot is to walk around a house safely or a rover trek through the rocky wastelands of Mars, for instance. Billions have been dedicated to this field, and naturally technological […]
An interesting conversation can instantly make a turn for the worst when bad breath hops into the scene. We’ve all had our share of bad experiences whether we were more or less forced to tolerate the repulsive stench of bad breath or we had a case of bad breath ourselves. Scientists at Nippon Dental University, […]
The Yellowstone super volcano, which basically outlines the whole Yellowstone National Park, is part of one of the most active volcanic regions in the world. A recent research conducted by a joint team of international scientists from Washington State University and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre is set to cast doubts on the frequency of eruptions and, most importantly, super eruptions […]
During the tumultuous Cretaceous and Jurassic periods if you could only choose one word to describe the world, it would’ve certainly be ‘big’. Big dinosaurs, big plants, big trees, big fish and big insects, of course. Chinese scientists have found almost perfectly preserved fossils of two previously unknown extinct flea species in Inner Mongolia, which are roughly […]
I recently came across a piece of paper which described how the city of Seattle will (probably) look like in 2012; the message was hidden in a time capsule which was buried 50 years ago, in 1962. The first tackled problems are mortgages and loans: Conventional bank loans—Up to 75% appraisal and up to 25 […]
Most digital devices today, like displays or blue-ray disks, use lasers which emit the colors red, green and blue, which when combined can render any color in the visible spectrum of light. However, current technology requires a separate laser for each color, since they produce monochromatic light. A team of researchers at Brown University has […]
Evolution, in very loose lines, is defined as the process which allows a species to survive by passing on the differentiating traits most likely to help offspring adapt to the world through means of natural and sexual selection. Considering the world around us has been shaped so much by human hand, a lot of people […]
After two decades of careful breeding and examining, scientists have declared a microscopic algae-eater to be one of the world’s oldest living organisms, and human’s most distant relative. The elusive creature evolved about a billion years ago and, as far as researchers can tell after twenty years of studying, it doesn’t belong to any of […]
Large wind farms might have a warming effect on the local climate, a research conducted in the US claims, casting a shadow on the long term sustainability of this type of renewable energy. Wind farms and warming Wind farms have quite an unusual way of heating the surrounding environment: by drawing the hotter air from […]
“Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue?” asks Boaz Keysar, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, who recently published a study that discusses this highly interesting question. The scientists involved in the study found that, indeed, counter to popular belief thinking in a foreign […]
In another sci-fi accomplishment, Swiss scientists have demonstrated how a partially paralyzed person can control a robot using only thought power, a step which promises to one day allow immobile people to interact with their surroundings through so-called avatars. Similar projects have already taken place in the US or Germany, but they involved either able-bodied […]
There’s gold in the asteroids – and there’s also platinum, cobalt, iridium, and many, many other precious or industrial metals; for this reason, they have been irresistible for a long time not only for scientists, but also for engineers, futurists, and more recently – tech billionaires. Who wants to mine the solar system’s asteroids People […]
Scientists have described and proven how many of the world’s phenomenae function, from the very fundamental laws of Newtonian mechanics, to the discrete behaviors of quantum physics, eventually peering through some of the Universe’s most well kept secrets. It’s remarkable then, how little we know about how heat is conducted through and between materials. A better […]
