My fondest memories as a young child involve being outdoors running wild with my cousins. Doing cartwheels in the yard, swimming in the river, lake and ocean, or riding horses. But each summer night concluded with the same pre-bath ritual: tick check. Now that might sound crazy to people raised in a city. But when
We don’t actually have a lot to be afraid of when it comes to asteroids. Sure, they might come pretty close from time to time, but they tend to buzz harmlessly by – after all, Earth is a pretty tiny target in the vastness of space. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared, though –
If you ever find yourself staring directly into the jagged, gaping jaws of a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex, take a moment to observe its placid, composed tongue. Remarkably still, no? Despite what pop culture would have us believe about the wildly elongated, lashing tongues of these marvellous, extinct creatures, new research suggests the towering T. rex
This is what it looks like when a bear breaks into your home to steal M&M’s while you’re out. And we totally empathise with those candy cravings. Footage of the break-in was captured last week by security cameras set up in the home of Lane Sykes and Carole Scofield in South Lake Tahoe, California. The
The presence of illicit drugs and their metabolites in river water is a new and growing type of environmental hazard – and, according to new research, is putting at further risk an already critically endangered species of eel. The European eel spends its life living in waterways across Europe, migrating to the ocean to breed
A stunning new photo of the Milky Way came about because of a flea-market purchase, a late night on a Chilean mountain range, and a dash of inspiration. The photo, taken by astronomer Juan Carlos Muñoz-Mateos, shows our home galaxy projected backward and upside-down through a crystal ball. Muñoz-Mateos focused his camera’s lens on the
Shutterstock A new review and analysis of several studies has found that probiotics do not improve self-reported anxiety symptoms in humans, not even a little. The study reviewed 36 preclinical studies in total, 14 involving humans and 22 involving rats and mice. That’s a decent-sized sampling of the research covering a variety of probiotic strains, and it turned
Tweet This In this late Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2018, image made from dashcam video, a brightly lit object falls from the sky above a highway in the southern Michigan skyline. (Zack Lawler/WWMT via AP) WASHINGTON: NASA’s office of communications hosted a media teleconference today to announce the release of a new report from The White
C. Faucher-Giguère, A. Lidz, and L. Hernquist, Science 319, 5859 (47) The expanding Universe, full of galaxies and complex structure we see today, arose from a smaller, hotter, denser, more uniform state in the past. There must be some new form of energy driving the current phase of accelerated expansion, beyond the known matter and
Scientists have come up with a new way to figure out how much winter rainfall is going to occur in California – simply check out what was happening near New Zealand over the previous seasons. They’re calling it the New Zealand Index, and it’s more accurate than the previous method of predicting rainfall, which was
Almost all the large vertebrates on Earth suddenly went extinct 66 million years ago – including dinosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and pterosaurs. A city-size asteroid or comet is thought to be responsible for that mass extinction. The impact, called the Chicxulub event, triggered global cooling and volcanic eruptions that transformed Earth. In the 1980s, Richard Muller,
A group of physicists are questioning our understanding of how quarks – a type of elementary particle – arrange themselves under extreme conditions. And their quest is revealing that elements beyond the edge of the periodic table might be fair weirder than we thought. Deep in the depths of the periodic table there are monsters
The mystery of where manta rays keep their babies has started to unravel, with the lucky discovery of a rarely seen manta ray nursery. It’s off the coast of Texas, in the NOAA’s Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico, where marine scientists have observed unprecedented numbers of juvenile manta rays.
In this Sunday, June 10, 2018 photo from the U.S. Geological Survey, fissure 8 below Kilauea Volcano continues to erupt vigorously with lava streaming through a channel that reaches the ocean at Kapoho Bay on the island of Hawaii . The width of the active part of the lava channel varies along its length, but
Addario Lung Cancer Foundation Stage IV lung cancer survivors Emily Bennett Taylor and Sandy Jauregui were featured as part of The Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation’s #BeatLungCancer billboard campaign to address the stigma surrounding lung cancer patients. David Brooks, the highly-regarded columnist for The New York Times, recently wrote about Americans having a tremendous
The central section of the San Andreas Fault in California is moving in an unexpected way, scientists say, creating a series of ‘slow earthquakes’ that increase the likelihood of a major quake striking in the future. It was previously thought that slow and steady movements in this area were safely releasing pent-up energy along the faultline,
NASA, ESA, H. Teplitz and M. Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), and Z. Levay (STScI) Various long-exposure campaigns, like the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) shown here, have revealed thousands of galaxies in a volume of the Universe that represents a fraction of a millionth of the sky. Ambitious, flagship-class
The drivers behind climate change denial look to be even more complex than we thought, with new research finding evidence of a “racial spillover” – in which racist attitudes have become linked with skepticism over climate change. A new study examining attitudes to climate change during the Obama presidency found white Americans became significantly less
Last week, the coastal city of Qingdao in eastern China experienced a massive rainstorm, complete with sea creatures allegedly falling from the sky amidst the buffeting winds and heavy rainfall. Residents took to social media with photos of this ‘seafood rain’ bounty, which included prawns and starfish splatted against car windscreens, and even a dramatic
Astronomers have spotted what they think is a super-rare cosmic phenomenon: a type of medium-weight black hole proven so elusive that researchers thought it might not exist at all. There are a few different black hole size categories out there in the Universe. There are the stellar-mass black holes. Those are the ones whose collisions
HOUSTON (Reuters) – As a boy growing up in Kansas, Nick Hague looked up at the stars and wanted to explore the unknown. In October, his dream will come true when he blasts off on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station. NASA Astronaut Nick Hague kneels down in the Cupola during Robotic Arms
At the height of North American summer, many plants are at their most dangerous. We don’t normally think of plants as particularly scary organisms. But this rather entertaining Reddit thread from 2016 will make you reconsider that assumption. “Botanists of Reddit, what are the scariest plants in the world?” user Zipzapadam asked. And Reddit delivered.
When Mexico beat Germany 1–0 at the FIFA World Cup on Sunday, the upset was so stunning Earth literally shook at the shock result. It wasn’t natural seismic activity making the ground shake, though, but an artificial quake created entirely by celebrating Mexican fans, whose jumping elation at their team’s unexpected triumph was thunderous enough
Archaeologists excavating the site of a future highway have found a very unusual ancient burial: the skeletons of two men, with smashed skulls, and both legs chopped off at the knees. They were buried with their amputated legs next to their arms. The bodies are among the latest in a long list of discoveries during
AI knows when you’re going to die. But unlike in sci-fi movies, that information could end up saving lives. A new paper published in Nature suggests that feeding electronic health record data to a deep learning model could substantially improve the accuracy of projected outcomes. In trials using data from two US hospitals, researchers were
The DNA results are in for a mysterious wolf-like animal shot and killed in Montana in May. To nobody’s great surprise, it didn’t turn out to be some sort of mythical monster. But, contrary to the expectations of experts at Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP), it’s not a wolf-dog hybrid, either. The animal has
Courtesy Hauck Center for the Albert B. Sabin Archives, Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions, University of Cincinnati Libraries. Dr. Albert Sabin (l) and Dr. Jonas Salk (r), an immigrant and the son of an immigrant, created the two vaccines without which “American children would continue to be paralyzed for
The more we know about a volcano, the better we can predict when its next eruption will be. Now, scientists have come up with a new method of analysis, and the secret lies with an eerie phenomenon we can best describe as ‘volcano music’. The Cotopaxi volcano in central Ecuador has been pushing out sounds resembling
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he was ordering the creation of a sixth branch of the military to focus on space, a move critics said could harm the Air Force. “It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space,” Trump
As a genetic counselor, it is always challenging to tell the patient sitting in front of you that she carries a genetic mutation (or, a pathogenic variant, as it is now called) that could negatively impact her health. But, perhaps more challenging, is telling the person that her family members are also at risk of
Chris Hadfield, most widely known for his zero-gravity guitar-playing, has seen an impressive amount of space travel. Between his first spaceflight in 1995, his second in 2001, and a third in 2013, Hadfield has flown inside NASA space shuttles, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and the International Space Station. Hadfield, who’s now retired, shares his expertise
A mysteriously fluctuating bulge observed in the atmosphere of Venus now has a more concrete explanation. According to a newly published study, the planet’s enormous mountain ranges are to blame for a massive gravity wave. Venus is often called Earth’s sister planet because of the similarities between the two. If it’s a twin, though, it’s
If Hollywood wanted to make a movie about a horrifying plant invasion, giant hogweeds would make a great candidate for the lead role – they are absolutely massive, incredibly toxic, and readily spread wherever their seeds take root. Listed as a noxious weed in at least eight states, last week the giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum)
It takes a particular kind of person to succeed in politics, but the psychological traits that make for leadership material could be more extreme than anybody ever realised. A first-of-its-kind analysis ranking state-level estimates of psychopathy across the continental United States and the District of Columbia has found Washington DC harbours the highest concentration of
Fusion is the process of building up simple atoms into larger more complex ones. It releases a lot of energy, and occurs every day in the sun and every other star in the Universe. The trick for humans is to harness it on Earth for producing clean abundant energy. On February 22, 2016 Bill Gates
A lobster caught off the coast of Grand Manan Island, Canada has had a lucky escape from the seafood markets, thanks to a genetic quirk that has given it a unique colouration. Rather than the typical dark blue, orange, or green, the crustacean – appropriately named Lucky – is delicately tinted pastel blue and pink.
The vast majority of Americans are unprepared or under-prepared for a natural disaster. At least that’s what they said in a recent poll from Business Insider partner MSN. MSN surveyed Americans on their emergency preparedness. It then used machine learning and big data, such as the census, to model how a representative sample of the US
The world’s highest mountain has, in the last few decades, turned into the world’s highest-altitude rubbish dump, thanks to wealthy tourists who mindlessly leave a trail of disgusting refuse in their wake. Since explorer Sir Edmund Hillary reached the 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) peak of Everest – known as Chomolungma in Tibet and Sagarmatha in Nepal –
The auditorium at Weeki Wachee Springs sits 5 metres (16 feet) underground. Long wooden benches face a thick glass wall, which stays shrouded in blue curtains, resembling ruched swimsuits. But three or four times a day, the curtains rise to reveal clear water. A ledge juts out, and below, the bottom drops down to a
Mars will look brighter in the night sky over the next six weeks than it has appeared in 15 years. That’s because the red planet will be at its closest point to Earth since 2003 throughout June and July, as our planet passes between Mars and the Sun. On July 31, when Mars will be
COLLEGE STATION, Texas (Reuters) – A master distiller and a crop scientist who specializes in corn breeding are working on a project they hope one day will help bring local identities to American whiskeys. Seth Murray, a top corn breeder at Texas A&M University, and Rob Arnold, working on a doctorate at the school while
Nine of Africa’s 13 largest and oldest baobabs have suddenly collapsed and died, likely due to climate change, say scientists who study these ancient and iconic trees Ferdinand Reus via a Creative Commons license Baobab tree (Adansonia digitata) and elephant in Tanzania.(Credit: Ferdinand Reus / CC-BY-SA 2.0) Baobabs, sometimes known as “upside down trees”, have
In the future, seas will rise far higher than they are today. The question is whether it happens quickly or slowly. There’s enough ice stacked on top of Antarctica to raise seas around the globe by almost 200 feet. While it takes time for major changes to occur with that much ice, Antarctica is melting
In 2006, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) established orbit around the Red Planet. Using an advanced suite of scientific instruments – which include cameras, spectrometers, and radar – this spacecraft has been analyzing landforms, geology, minerals and ice on Mars for years and assisting with other missions. While the mission was only meant to last
Three out of four pediatricians disapprove of spanking, research finds. The survey of pediatricians around the US finds that most think spanking seldom or never results in positive outcomes for kids. Catherine Taylor, an associate professor of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, surveyed sent
Instagram/Robinson Russell Lucky the lobster He’s named Lucky and is easily the most famous lobster in North America at the moment. The bizarre almost-albino crustacean was caught off the northern coast of Maine last November but just recently went viral on social media and began his stay at a Canadian aquarium. Canadian fisherman Robinson Russell
Ever since humanity split into dog and cat people, we’ve been arguing over which one of our beloved companions is a smarter species. This latest study mightn’t be the last word on the matter, but for those who think more neurons means more intelligence, it looks as if dogs stand out among carnivores for having
COLLEGE STATION, Texas (Reuters) – A master distiller and a crop scientist who specializes in corn breeding are working on a project they hope one day will make whiskey drinkers think of Texas in the same way as lovers of American wine think of California. Seth Murray, a top corn breeder at Texas A&M University,
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 5
- Next Page »