Newsdesk Archive
Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing the world today. With the effectuation of the Paris Agreement, there has been a rising interest on carbon capture and utilization (CCU).
A new study, led by Professor Jae Sung Lee of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST uncovers new ways to make biofuel from carbon dioxide (CO2), the most troublesome greenhouse gas.
Since unveiling the new products a few weeks ago, Musk and Tesla officials have been referring to the solar roof’s price as “less than the price of a regular roof when accounting for energy generation” – meaning that it will cost less than a regular roof when you account for your savings on your electricity bills.
In a ghost town of dead coral off a remote Pacific island, scientists have found a little more life.
In excursions a year ago and then last April, scientists examined the normally-stunning coral reefs around the island of Kiritimati and pronounced it mostly a boneyard of dead coral.
In November, the Paris Climate Agreement goes into effect to reduce global carbon emissions. To achieve the set targets, experts say capturing and storing carbon must be part of the solution. Several projects throughout the world are trying to make that happen.
When a forest disappears, vegetation on the other side of the world can feel significant effects, new research shows.
The loss of the forest can also affect global climate patterns
Related: Remote Amazon tribe kills illegal gold miners: officials
Related: Satellite Images Map Deforestation
Representatives from 47 of the world's most disadvantaged nations have pledged to generate all their future energy needs from renewables.
Related: Obama bans new oil drilling in Arctic Ocean
Physicist Stephen Hawking has warned humanity that we probably only have about 1,000 years left on Earth, and the only thing that could save us from certain extinction is setting up colonies elsewhere in the Solar System.
A cute bunny or a coiled snake? If given the choice of looking at happy or ominous images, humans spend more time on the ominous ones. We also remember threatening stimuli more readily and display heightened physiological responses to them. This makes perfect evolutionary sense since organisms not attuned to threats in the environment are less likely to survive and prosper.
Philosophers have long struggled to define human consciousness. Now, a team of researchers led by neurologists at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has pinpointed the regions of the brain that may play a role maintaining it.
In two new experiments, researchers have effectively trained Google's DeepMind AI system to interact with its environment in order to solve problems.
The same teaching method could be used to train AI to navigate a number of real-world situations, such as going through tough terrain on rescue or off-planet missions.
The team designed an algorithm that learns directly from human instructions, rather than an existing set of examples, and outperformed conventional methods of training neural networks by 160 per cent. But more surprisingly, their algorithm also outperformed its own training by nine per cent—it learned to recognize hair in pictures with greater reliability than that enabled by the training, marking a significant leap forward for artificial intelligence.
If life off Earth exists it has probably transitioned to machine intelligence.
Alt: Electronic E.T.: Intelligent Aliens Are Likely Machines
Related: Mysterious Unidentified Object Crashes in Myanmar
Alien life could be so advanced it becomes indistinguishable from physics.
Only about 5 percent of the mass-energy of the universe consists of ordinary matter: the protons, neutrons, and electrons that we’re composed of. A much larger 27 percent is thought to be unseen, still mysterious stuff.
NASA's updated urine-reclaiming system is recycling even more water on the International Space Station, paving the way for long-duration space travel such as the journey to Mars.
Scientists have discovered a new large valley on Mercury that may be the first evidence of buckling of the planet's outer silicate shell in response to global contraction.
Related: Mercury Is Shrinking
Scientists have found the earliest known use of a modern-day metalworking process in a 6,000-year-old amulet from Pakistan, showing that the ancient craftspeople who made it were way ahead of their time.
Alt: Novel imaging approach reveals how ancient amulet was made
Scientific analysis of a cob of corn dating back 5,000 years shows how maize became one of our most popular cereals.
Farming by early civilisations started a process of domestication that produced the sweet yellow corn we use today for food or fuel.
While we may enjoy a wide and varied diet, our ancient relatives may have preferred to stick to grass.
Wear patterns on the fossil teeth from early East African hominids suggest that they may have eaten softer food than previously thought, according to new research.
Alt: Tooth wear patterns suggest Paranthropus early hominins had softer diets than expected
Long before the Vikings reached America, and before doomed Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan sailed into the unknown for history’s first circumnavigation of Earth (completed in 1552), a group of spiders was already crossing the oceans and settling faraway lands in the Southern Hemisphere.
Related: This Never Before Seen Spider Looks Like a Leaf
New research from North Carolina State University shows that a 75-million-year-old Mongolian oviraptor, preserved while brooding its eggs, also preserved the original keratinous claw sheath that covered its digits. The work adds to the body of evidence that original organic materials can preserve over time.
A newly described fossil skull from one of the largest of the saber-toothed cats, Machairodus horribilis, is the biggest saber-toothed skull ever found, and is helping scientists understand the diversity of killing techniques used by these extinct and fearsome predators.
Earth-shattering, deadly asteroid strikes might also create safe harbour for life. An expedition to the Chicxulub crater has drawn a new timeline of how the cataclysmic impact that probably killed the dinosaurs happened – and how it may have carved out new niches in which life could flourish, even in the face of utter destruction.
Alt: Asteroid strike made 'instant Himalayas'
Way before trees or lichens evolved, soils on Earth were alive, as revealed by a close examination of microfossils in the desert of northwestern Australia, reports a team of University of Oregon researchers.
In the region of space just outside Earth’s magnetic field, NASA has detected electrons that are being accelerated to almost the speed of light - and no one can explain why.
Pluto may harbour a slushy water ocean beneath its most prominent surface feature, known as the "heart".
This could explain why part of the heart-shaped region - called Sputnik Planitia - is locked in alignment with Pluto's largest moon Charon.
Astronomers claim to have discovered the roundest object ever measured in nature.
Kepler 11145123 is a distant, slowly rotating star that's more than twice the size of the Sun.
Are the laws of nature constant throughout the universe, or do they change depending on where one is? As far as we can tell, the fundamental laws that govern our understanding of reality, including the four fundamental forces — the strong and weak nuclear force, the gravitational force, and the electromagnetic force — are unchanging, and a new study based on light spectra of a distant quasar has now provided further confirmation.
Scientists engaging in exoplanet hunting have recently seen a host of new discoveries. Teams of these celestial sleuths are combing the observable universe looking for a planet that might be capable of hosting life similar to our own.
Related: Exoplanet hunters are missing 75 per cent of two-star worlds
Related: 'False' biosignatures may complicate search for ancient life on Earth, other planets
Saturn’s rings are billions of years younger than we thought, say Cornell University researchers analyzing an almost forgotten set of data, collected 10 years ago by NASA’s Cassini mission.
Everyone learns in school that that dinosaur skeletons are bones turned to stone. Mineral-rich water percolated through the earthly remains of the ancient reptiles, transforming their osteology into something much harder over time. But over the past decade, paleontologists have begun to realize what “everyone knows” isn’t quite right.
An extinct bird that lived about 120 million years ago had iridescent feathers that it may have used to attract a mate, fossil evidence shows.
The prehistoric bird, which was found recently in China, may have puffed up its feathers like a peacock.
The discovery of a pair of fossilized skulls from dome-headed dinosaurs is shedding light on how these bizarre creatures called pachycephalosaurs evolved, researchers say.
Researchers have discovered two small dinosaurs together with a lagerpetid, a group of animals that are recognized as precursors of dinosaurs. The discovery made in Brazil and reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on November 10 represents the first time that a dinosaur and a dinosaur precursor have ever been found together.
A team of scientists and archaeologists have discovered widespread evidence of prehistoric milk production in southern Europe.
The study, a collaboration between the University of York, the University of Bristol, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, uncovered evidence that humans have been utilising milk and dairy products across the northern Mediterranean region from the onset of agriculture – some 9,000 years ago.
The only thing we know for certain about Jesus is that he's one of the most famed religious icons in human history.
Only last week, one of the locations believed to house his tomb - the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem - was opened for the first time in hundreds of years.
On October 25th this year, the Vatican released a document that had remained in its secret archives for seven hundred years. It is the report of the official Church investigation into the activities of the Knights Templar in the early fourteenth century.
Related: Ancient Ten Commandments tablet sold at auction for $850,000
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The enforcement of prohibition - a ban on the production, supply, possession, and use of some drugs for non-medical purposes - causes huge harm, and doctors should lead calls for drug policy reform, argues The BMJ today.
Related: Bring your own weed: Denver allows pot in bars, eateries
Related: Berlin likely to semi-legalize marijuana
Related: Marijuana Use May Weaken Your Heart Muscle
US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wants Americans to see addiction as a brain disorder instead of a moral failing.
Related: Marijuana could help treat drug addiction, mental health
A third structure has been found within the famous Kukulkan pyramid in eastern Mexico, experts say.
The 10m (33t) tall pyramid was found within two other structures that comprise the 30m pyramid at the Mayan archaeological complex known as Chichen Itza in Yucatan state.
Alt: Mexican pyramid has two more inside, scientists discover
An international investigation has been launched into the mysterious disappearance of three Dutch second world war shipwrecks which have vanished from the bottom of the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia.
The Netherlands defence ministry has confirmed that the wrecks of two of its warships that sank in 1942 have completely gone, while large parts of a third are also missing.
Four-year study by linguists and historians of British and Irish records back to 11th century analyses family names
Some names have been around for many centuries while other more recent arrivals are explained for the first time in the work, the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, which is published on Thursday.
A subtle change occurred in our evolutionary history 100,000 years ago which allowed people who thought and behaved differently – such as individuals with autism – to be integrated into society, academics from the University of York have concluded.
Related: Autism intervention is first to show benefits over the long term
A lost sketchbook containing 65 drawings by Van Gogh has been discovered 130 years after he used it to perfect some of his most famous works of art, an expert has claimed, as a high-profile row threatens to rock the art world.
Alt: Van Gogh: Dispute over sketches book
A three-month detailed excavation of Shakespeare’s Curtain Theatre by MOLA archaeologists has revealed details of a stage that is much longer than originally thought with evidence of a passageway running beneath it. Archaeologists can now also confirm that the theatre was a purpose-built structure at the rear of another building on Curtain Road in Shoreditch.
A remarkable paper claims that staying off Facebook for a week could make you happier: The Facebook Experiment, by Morten Tromholt of Denmark.
What makes this study so interesting is that it was a randomized controlled trial (RCT) and so was able, at least in theory, to determine whether quitting Facebook actually causes changes in well-being.
You can't keep a positive pig down. A new study finds that, like humans, pigs can be optimists or pessimists, and that the pessimists are more strongly affected by their current environments.
The results, described in the journal Biology Letters, hint that the complex interplay between personality and mood may extend far beyond the human experience.
Alt: Pigs can be pessimists, scientists find
A new study sheds light on why so many seabirds, fish, whales, and other critters are gobbling up so much marine plastic debris. And it's not quite what scientists thought.
Related: Huge Puffin Die-Off May Be Linked to Hotter Seas
Related: 80,000 reindeer have starved to death as Arctic sea ice retreats
Related: 70 Car-Size Stingrays Die Mysteriously
It takes a village to raise a whale. Rather than sticking exclusively to their mothers’ side, baby pilot whales in the north Atlantic take turns swimming next to other adults – including both females and males.
In a game that tests sense of direction, people from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark scored higher than 187 other countries – but we don’t know why
When you think about next December or last January what do you imagine? If you see calendars vividly laid out in front of you, you might be a “calendar synaesthete”. Research into the phenomena gives a clue to how we evolved the ability to mentally navigate through time and space.
One of the great mysteries of the cosmos is why it is expanding at an apparently accelerating rate. Physicists have suggested an outward force, dubbed "dark energy," causes this expansion, but they have yet to discover its origin. One among many theories is that in the vacuum of space, short-lived virtual particles constantly appear and wink out of existence, and their mutual repulsion creates dark energy's effects. While it's a reasonable enough explanation on some levels, physicists calculate that these particles would create so much repulsive force that it would immediately blow the universe apart. So how can they reconcile observations with the virtual particle idea?
Let’s be honest. Dark matter’s a pain in the butt. Astronomers have gone to great lengths to explain why is must exist and exist in huge quantities, yet it remains hidden. Unknown. Emitting no visible energy yet apparently strong enough to keep galaxies in clusters from busting free like wild horses, it’s everywhere in vast quantities.
Related: Solving the mystery of the big G controversy
Physicists have discovered that liquid water has a whole new set of properties when it hits temperatures of 40-60°C (104-140°F), essentially entering a second liquid state.
With water covering most of the Earth and comprising 60% of the human body, this discovery could have huge implications in our understanding of our world and ourselves.
Related: Dr. Gerald H. Pollack | The Fourth Phase of Water [48:36] (video)
A team of researchers with members from Canada, Sweden and U.S. has found that bird excrement may be playing a role in cooling the Arctic during its warmer months.
Related: Mysterious Winds Cause Rapid Melting of Antarctic Ice
In vertebrate paleontology, complete bones are a luxury. More often than not, what ends up in front of paleontologists, are bits and pieces. The shaft of a long bone, a chunk of bone of something bigger, or a bone crushed under the weight of earth and time but held together by its rocky matrix. Those specimens are difficult, if not impossible, to identify, and many disheartening hours can be spent cataloging tiny bits of fossilized bone as nothing more than “bone indet.”
As the Iraqi military struggle to reclaim the city of Mosul in northern Iraq from the Islamic State (ISIS), satellite images show that two iconic archaeological sites have been purposefully destroyed - and not necessarily by fighting.
Spanish archaeologists find remains in tomb said to date from between 1075BC and 664BC near Luxor in southern Egypt
Related: Egyptian giant crocodile mummy is full of surprises
Related: Pharaonic boat burial uncovered in Abydos, Egypt
Yeast microbes from the world's oldest bottle of beer — a 220-year-old bottle found in one of Australia's earliest shipwrecks — are being used to create a new, modern beer with the characteristic taste of the 18th-century brew.
The medieval ship lay more than a half-mile down at the bottom of the Black Sea, its masts, timbers and planking undisturbed in the darkness for seven or eight centuries. Lack of oxygen in the icy depths had ruled out the usual riot of creatures that feast on sunken wood.
A study of the genomes of 25 individuals who lived 1,000 to 6,000 years ago on the north coast of present-day British Columbia, and 25 of their descendants who still live in the region today, opens a new window on the catastrophic consequences of European colonization for indigenous peoples in that part of the world.
The Human Genome Project was a huge milestone of scientific discovery. The project aimed to map the uncharted world of the genome — the entirety of a human’s genes. The project was successful but it came with a hefty price tag. It took a decade and $2.7 billion to complete. Still, it has given researchers more insight into the inner workings of human DNA.
A Chinese group has become the first to inject a person with cells that contain genes edited using the revolutionary CRISPR–Cas9 technique.
Related: Scientists May Have Found Protein That Could Help Unlock Spinal Regeneration in Humans
Related: Nose cells fix knee cartilage in human trial
If scientists had sacred objects, this would be one of them: a single, closely guarded 137-year-old cylinder of metal, housed in a vault outside of Paris. It is a prototype that precisely defines a kilogram of mass everywhere in the universe.
It’s like catching light in action. For the first time, physicists have measured changes in an atom to the level of zeptoseconds, or trillionths of a billionth of a second – the smallest division of time yet observed.
In this case, the speed demon was an electron escaping the bonds of its parent atom.
Twisted light has transmitted information across 143 kilometres of open space — almost 50 times further than the previous record. The breakthrough could revolutionise how we communicate with satellites.
The future of hyper-fast flight could be taking off very soon.
At an aeronautics forum held last month, great minds form global tech leaders spoke on the future of flight and aircraft. The forum welcomed speakers from NASA, Mojave Air and Space Port, and members of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
Last week, a leaked NASA paper appeared to show that scientists had successfully created a working EmDrive prototype.
The radical fuel-free engine defies the laws of physics and has long been dubbed ‘impossible,’ but if achieved, it could get humans to Mars in just 10 weeks.
As the world looks toward Mars as the first destination for humanity's foray into the solar system, it's time for a reality check.
We already know the Red Planet is bathed in radiation, has a thin atmosphere and is, for the most part, inhospitable for life (as we know it), but astrobiologists think there might be just enough water below the surface to support microbial life and there was likely a lot more water on the surface in the Red Planet's past. The mere hint of water on Mars is enough for us to hope we can use it to sustain a future Mars settlement.
In 2013, researchers first revealed evidence that the water has been cut off from the surface for as long as 2.7 billion years. Now, they’ve taken the next crucial step, showing that the water comes with its own self-sustaining life-support system, like a space capsule that has been out of contact with Earth for eons but is still perfectly livable.
Even more tantalizing, the team reports indirect evidence that the water is inhabited by some form of life that has yet to be identified.
The Cambridge University phycicist Lord Martin Rees gives humanity only a 50/50 chance of making it through the century. With such unfriendly odds, Norway has given a beautiful gift to the future of the world. No matter what happens to us in the next hundreds of years, our life-sustaining seeds will be kept safe for whatever generations may come in the Arctic Seed Vault, also known as the Doomsday Vault, created as a repository of last resort for humanity’s crop genes. It safeguards the world's edible plant genes from future catastrophes like nuclear war, asteroid impact, and climate change.
Imagine if scientists discovered that an asteroid was hurtling toward Los Angeles.
The possibility has existed on the pages of Hollywood scripts. But in what may be a case of life imitating art, NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government agencies engaged last month in a planetary protection exercise to consider the potentially devastating consequences of a 330-foot asteroid hitting the Earth.
Scientists set out this week to try to find the oldest ice in Antarctica.
They are seeking a location where they can drill a frozen core that contains a continuous record of climate change stretching back 1.5 million years.
A massive, 1,500-year-old stone complex that may have been built by nomad tribes has been discovered near the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan.
The complex contains numerous stone structures sprawled over about 300 acres (120 hectares) of land
Amir Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority said a government research team will spend the next three years surveying hundreds of caves in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, the arid region where the Dead Sea Scrolls, the world's oldest biblical manuscripts, were preserved for thousands of years and discovered in 1947.
Six years ago, divers discovered the oldest known stationary fish traps in northern Europe off the coast of southern Sweden. Since then, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have uncovered an exceptionally well-preserved Stone Age site. They now believe the location was a lagoon environment where Mesolithic humans lived during parts of the year.
RESIDENTS in Wellington may have witnessed a luminous phenomenon in the sky as a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck New Zealand’s South Island.
Several videos have emerged on social media showing colourful flashes of light that lasted around five seconds.
Alt: New Zealand Quake's Strange Side Effect: What Are Earthquake Lights?
Related: New Zealand’s latest earthquake could trigger a mega-quake
Plates move, on average, an inch or two a year. The fastest plate moves at about four inches a year and the slowest isn't moving much at all. Plate motions are the main cause of earthquakes, and seismologists and geologists study the details of plate motions to make more accurate predictions of their likelihood.
A giant metal shield designed to contain radioactive waste at Chernobyl’s damaged nuclear reactor is being moved into place.
Workers at the site of the world’s deadliest nuclear accident have started to move a shield, called the New Safe Confinement, that should prevent further radioactive material from leaking out of the damaged reactor over the next century.
Entrepreneurs in China, South Korea, Russia, and Japan have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that seeks to create the Asia Super Grid. It will transmit electrical power from renewable sources from areas of the world that are best able to produce it to consumers in other parts of the world.
Related: Climate change has destroyed half of Japan’s major coral reef
More good news for the renewable industry: in the face of more a competitive and economically viable green energy sector, the UK has committed to completely move away from coal power by 2025.
Related: Hydroelectric dams emit a billion tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, study finds
Ask any bystander on the street what “killer robots” are and you’d probably hear something out of the “Terminator” series. The fear of autonomous machines killing humans is so ingrained in society that some organizations have made it their mission to ban these terrifying creations.
Businessman Denis Sverdlov just unveiled an electric delivery truck that could be seen on UK streets by as early as next year. Sverdlov is the chief executive of Charge, the firm responsible for this truck, and he says they “are making trucks the way they should be — affordable, elegant, quiet, clean and safe.”
Related: The White House announces a sweeping plan to increase EV charging stations
Lab-grown meat could drastically reduce emissions, save water, and free up space on earth — and it's already been grown and eaten to positive acclaim.
For now, lab-grown meat remains incredibly expensive to produce, but more technological development could bring the food sooner to our dinner tables than we might think.
The sturdy stools and spongy cushions made at a factory in upstate New York are formed with fungus.
Ecovative Design is a business staking its growth on mycelium, the thread-like "roots" of mushrooms. The mycelium grows around small pieces of stalks and stems to create a bound-together material that can be molded into soft packaging for glassware or pressed into the boards used for the footstools they recently began selling.
Treating bees with light therapy can counteract the harmful effects of neonicotinoid pesticides and improve survival rates of poisoned bees, finds a new UCL study.
Farmers looking to reduce reliance on pesticides, herbicides, and other pest management tools may want to heed the advice of agricultural scientists: Let nature be nature—to a degree.
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said gaps need to be bridged across the country, and announced Peru will plant 2 million hectares of trees to restore Amazon forest.
Related: We Won’t Finish Discovering New Trees in the Amazon for 300 Years
A new study describes a method for detecting people dishonestly posting online comments, reviews or tweets across multiple accounts, a practice known as “astroturfing.”
It’s not unusual to find predictions for the upcoming year whenever the end of the current one draws near. These tend to be more for the sake of fun and a means of reflection on the past, or a basic look toward what’s to come—not real attempts at predicting the future. Well, UNU (the world’s first artificial swarm intelligence) takes its predictions more seriously, and rightly so, for it’s been on a streak of accurate predictions for 2016.
Observations of atomic interactions could help pave way to room-temperature superconductors.
If you bottle up a gas and try to image its atoms using today’s most powerful microscopes, you will see little more than a shadowy blur. Atoms zip around at lightning speeds and are difficult to pin down at ambient temperatures.
Nanostructures made using DNA origami are fascinating. The ability to use DNA as a construction material, capable of holding scaffolds of molecules and atoms was one huge step in developing modern nanostrutures.
A gene that regulates bone growth and muscle metabolism in mammals may take on an additional role as a promoter of brain maturation, cognition and learning in human and nonhuman primates, according to neurobiologists.
A paralysed woman has learned to use a brain implant to communicate by thought alone. It is the first time a brain–computer interface has been used at home in a person’s day-to-day life, without the need for doctors and engineers to recalibrate the device.
“It’s special to be the first,” says HB, who is 58 years old and wishes to remain anonymous.
Tickle a rat and it will jump for joy, gleefully squeak and beg for more. In addition to describing these delightful reactions to a tickling hand, a new study identifies nerve cells in the brain that help turn rats into squirmy puddles of giggles.
Alt: Rats laugh when tickled - and this is what it sounds like
The thorny devil is looking sharp. Rows of cactus-like spikes and thorns give this Australian reptile a formidable armor and a don’t-even-think-about-eating-me swagger. But its exterior is remarkable for another reason too: This lizard drinks with its skin.
Related: Snakes Defend Themselves with Shape-Shifting Eyes
Brazilian free-tailed bats may have achieved speeds of up to 160 kilometres per hour in level flight, which would make them faster than any bird.
The narwhal is not an aquatic unicorn. It’s not magical, or mythical. It’s just a whale with two teeth, one of which happens to be really long on males. But it’s not just its snaggletooth — which can be up to nine feet long — that makes this Arctic sea creature unbelievable. The narwhal sees with sound — and it’s exceptionally good at it too, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.
It had feathers and a beak.
It was the size of a donkey, and it did not fly.
It was not a bird, but a dinosaur that was a close relative of birds.
Alt: Unknown dinosaur almost blown to oblivion
Shortly after an asteroid smashed into Earth about 65.5 million years ago, obliterating much of life on Earth,an ancient sea turtle with a triangular-shaped head swam along the relatively arid shores of southern Africa, a new study finds.
Related: First-Ever Madagascar Dolphin Fossil Discovered
Related: 295-Million-Year-Old Frog Relative Immaculately Preserved in Fossil