Newsdesk Archive

A rare new glass sponge reef as old as the dinosaurs has been discovered near Prince Rupert, off B.C.'s northwest coast, CBC News has learned. The reef in Chatham Sound is twelve kilometres long, making it one of the largest in the world, second only to the prehistoric reefs in nearby Hecate Strait.

As the planet heats up so do the world's waters, and that means more coral bleaching. But now a new study reveals that some corals can bounce back from such near death experiences. Related: Massive 'Bleaching' Affects Great Barrier Reef

For the first time, the U.S. Geological Survey has released a map predicting the likelihood of both man-made and natural earthquakes in 2016. The addition of unnatural quakes — caused by fracking — puts another 7 million Americans at risk of being affected by a quake. Related: Study: California could get 74% of power from rooftop solar

Space habitats have long been an object of fascination for thinkers, dreamers, and engineers. Science fiction is littered with space habitats, whether in books or movies. And their designs have ranged from titanic, uber-engineered types to fanciful, organic types.

The Earth's magnetic field permanently protects us from the charged particles and radiation that originate in the sun. This shield is produced by the geodynamo, the rapid motion of huge quantities of liquid iron alloy in the Earth's outer core. To maintain this magnetic field until the present day, the classical model required the Earth's core to have cooled by around 3,000° C over the past 4.3 billion years.

Ever since the beginning of the Space Age, scientists and futurists have explored the idea of transforming other worlds to meet human needs. Known as terraforming, this process calls for the use of environmental engineering techniques to alter a planet or moon’s temperature, atmosphere, topography or ecology (or all of the above) in order to make it more “Earth-like”. As Earth’s closest celestial body, the Moon has long been considered a potential site.

Mysterious mile-high mounds on Mars evolved from layer-cake craters, but for four decades, scientists have puzzled over how. By mimicking Martian winds in the lab, scientists think they have solved the mystery. And they've generated a series of rainbow-colored images of the process to boot.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has spotted evidence that liquids might have once flowed across the dwarf planet that stole everyone's heart. The evidence comes in the form of a frozen lake that researchers think once harbored liquid nitrogen.

The famous geysers seen erupting from the surface of Saturn's striped moon Enceladus are a striking visual feature, but a scientific mystery. A new model may finally explain what sustains these eruptions.

Crane your neck up and get the coffee on; beginning in April, the early mornings and late nights are going to be splashed with meteors. The Eta Aquarids will start around April 20 and will continue right up until May 21. The best time to view them will be in the small hours between May 5 and 7, when the sky will be the darkest during the new Moon.

Periodic mass extinctions on Earth, as indicated in the global fossil record, could be linked to a suspected ninth planet, according to research published by a faculty member of the University of Arkansas Department of Mathematical Sciences. Daniel Whitmire, a retired professor of astrophysics now working as a math instructor, published findings in the January issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that the as yet undiscovered "Planet X" triggers comet showers linked to mass extinctions on Earth at intervals of approximately 27 million years. Alt: Planet X --"The 9th Planet May Have Influenced the Evolution of Life on Earth"

Astronomers estimated that on March 23, a comet would fly closer to the Earth than any comet since 1770. But Vishnu Reddy, a research scientist at the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute, made his observations using NASA's infrared telescope in Hawai’i two weeks before the expected pass.

Astronomers have captured video evidence of a collision between Jupiter and a small celestial object, likely a comet or asteroid. Though it looks like a small blip of light, the resulting explosion was unusually powerful.

So you think the gold in your ring or watch came from a mine in Africa or Australia? Well, think farther away. Much, much farther. Michigan State University researchers, working with colleagues from Technical University Darmstadt in Germany, are zeroing in on the answer to one of science's most puzzling questions: Where did heavy elements, such as gold, originate?

Earth is a bountiful planet rich in resources. And, if you believe Stephen Hawking, that might cause our demise. Such alien alarmists compare first contact to the devastation Europeans brought to North America.

The search for radio signals from alien worlds is expanding to 20,000 star systems that were previously considered poor targets for intelligent extraterrestrial life, US researchers said Wednesday. New scientific data has led the SETI Institute to believe systems orbiting red dwarfs—dim, long-lived stars that are on average billions of years older than our sun—are worth investigating.

Earlier this week something happened to make Japan’s brand new black hole satellite suddenly, mysteriously lose all contact with Earth. Now, we have video of it spinning wildly in space—and JAXA has also received a few odd, new messages. Alt: Did Japan just lose a $265 million satellite?

Following the discovery of gravitational waves from the merging of two black holes, ESA's INTEGRAL satellite has revealed no simultaneous gamma rays, just as models predict. On 14 September, the terrestrial Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves – fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime – produced by a pair of black holes as they spiralled towards each other before merging. The signal lasted less than half a second.

It’s a two-mile trudge through forested, swampy ground to reach Point Rosee, a narrow, windswept peninsula stretching from southern Newfoundland into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Last June, a team of archaeologists was drawn to this remote part of Canada by a modern-day treasure map: satellite imagery revealing ground features that could be evidence of past human activity.

A 17th century manuscript written by Sir Isaac Newton was purchased at a Bonhams auction in Pasadena, California by the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF), after spending decades locked away in a private collection. Now the incredible and mysterious contents have finally been made public.

A remarkable 3,400-year-old necropolis has been discovered at an Egyptian quarry site, the Ministry of Antiquities announced on Wednesday. Consisting of dozens of rock-cut tombs, the New Kingdom necropolis was found at Gebel el Sisila, a site north of Aswan known for its stone quarries on both sides of the Nile. Blocks used in building almost all of ancient Egypt’s great temples were cut from there.

The Fitzwilliam Museum is marking its bicentenary with an exhibition that takes its title from Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile. But it turns out it was another writer of a different type of fiction who was directly involved. M.R. James, author of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, amassed some of the exhibits in his capacity as director of the Fitzwilliam from 1893 to 1908. And almost any object on display would have made a perfect prop for one of his tales, because the subject is ancient Egyptian coffins.

We have all watched numerous documentaries on the lives of Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Tutankhamun. These prominent players from the eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom in ancient Egypt have also been the subject of countless publications over the years. All this has served to keep the mystique of the Amarna royal family alive in public consciousness.

A bulldozer operator at a sand pit in northwestern Oklahoma got quite a surprise this month when he spotted a huge skull that belonged to a Columbian mammoth. These giants were plentiful across the plains of Oklahoma during the Pleistocene epoch, which lasted from about 1.8 million to 11,700 years ago, said Leland Bement of the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey.

An ancient snakeskin preserves the bright green coloration of its wearer, researchers report March 31 in Current Biology. In the early 20th century, miners discovered the fossilized remains of an 11.2-million- to 8.7-million-year-old snake in northeastern Spain.

We often ridicule what we love, and, in the realm of dinosaurs, that may explain our complicated relationship with the late, great Tyrannosaurus rex. The gigantic carnivore is the A-list celebrity of the Mesozoic, making repeated appearances on the silver screen as well as holding an obligatory presence in most museum exhibits. Yet, we just can’t stop ourselves from poking fun at the tyrant’s dinky arms. Maybe, though, it’s time we stifle our laughter.

An extinct creature sometimes described as a “Siberian unicorn” roamed the Earth for much longer than scientists previously thought, and may have lived alongside humans, according to a study in the American Journal of Applied Science.

Archaeologists in Italy have discovered what may be a rare sacred text in the Etruscan language that is likely to yield rich details about Etruscan worship of a god or goddess. The lengthy text is inscribed on a large 6th century BCE sandstone slab that was uncovered from an Etruscan temple.

Humanity's closest living relative, the bonobo ape, can remember the voices of old friends for several years, just as people can, researchers have shown. An international research team from the Universities of St Andrews and Saint-Etienne in France, made the discovery after recording the calls of individual bonobos and playing them to those they had known years before.

Antarctic seabirds called skuas are so clever that they can recognize individual humans after seeing them only a few times. Some Korean researchers discovered this by messing with the birds’ nests and then waiting to get attacked. They’re either very brave or have never watched The Birds.

Scientists in east Africa plan to exploit rats’ highly developed sense of smell to carry out mass screening for tuberculosis among inmates of crowded prisons in Tanzania and Mozambique.

Genes are not destiny in determining whether a person will suffer from depression, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. Environment is a major factor, and nurture can override nature.

The average life expectancy in the United States is approximately 78 years old. Americans live longer, with better diets and improved health care, than ever before, but only 0.02 percent will hit the century mark.

Some people today are hardwired to have improved health when on a vegetarian diet, suggests new research that reveals how our ancestors’ food choices continue to impact human health today. In this case, cultures from certain parts of India, Africa and Asia have eaten a mostly vegetarian diet for so long that they have evolved a genetic adaption that boosts their body’s ability to process certain fatty acids Alt: Are we what we eat?

Homo sapiens, the ancestor of modern humans, shared the planet with Neanderthals, a close, heavy-set relative that dwelled almost exclusively in Ice-Age Europe, until some 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals were similar to Homo sapiens, with whom they sometimes mated -- but they were different, too. Among these many differences, Neanderthals were shorter and stockier, with wider pelvises and rib-cages than their modern human counterparts.

Tissue samples from a Hungarian mummy have revealed that people in the early 17th and 18th centuries suffered from colon cancer, long before the modern plagues of obesity, physical inactivity and processed food were established as causes of the disease, according to new research.

With their heavy, thickset bodies and slow-witted reputation, Neanderthals are thought to have been fairly cumbersome hunters. But new forensic analysis of the hunting grounds where these prehistoric human relatives are known to have killed their prey has revealed they were in fact brilliant tacticians.

A team of researchers have concluded that the Younger Dryas, the worldwide climatic downturn between 12,900 and 11,500 BP that many scientists suggest marked a return to glacial conditions, was cool but not as dry as previously thought in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

Scientists say a 305 million-year-old fossil is the closest relative to "true spiders" ever discovered - but is not itself a spider. Easily pre-dating the dinosaurs, the 1.5cm creature lived alongside the oldest known ancestors of modern spiders but its lineage is now extinct.

Scientists from the University of Liverpool have developed computer models of the bodies of sauropod dinosaurs to examine the evolution of their body shape. Sauropod dinosaurs include the largest land animals to have ever lived. Some of the more well-known sauropods include Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus. They are renowned for their extremely long necks, long tails as well as four thick, pillar-like legs and small heads in relation to their body.

Palaeontologists seem to be CT-scanning everything these days. A paper published in March by an international team led by Juan D. Daza, used scans to get a better look at fossil lizards encased in 99 million year old amber. These tropical lizards from Myanmar can be seen in their orange, glass-like tombs with the naked eye, but not in great detail.

Homo floresiensis, the mysterious and diminutive species found in Indonesia in 2003, is tens of thousands of years older than originally thought — and may have been driven to extinction by modern humans. Alt: Indonesian 'Hobbits' may have died out sooner than thought

Most non-Africans possess at least a little bit Neanderthal DNA. But a new map of archaic ancestry—published March 28 in Current Biology—suggests that many bloodlines around the world, particularly of South Asian descent, may actually be a bit more Denisovan, a mysterious population of hominids that lived around the same time as the Neanderthals. The analysis also proposes that modern humans interbred with Denisovans about 100 generations after their trysts with Neanderthals.

A new study by scientists at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and Harvard Medical School offers surprising new insight into the genetic ancestry of modern humans. The research, published today in the journal Current Biology, also rewrites the timeline of when ancient humans interbred with other hominids by thousands of years.

Researchers have identified a single, universal facial expression that is interpreted across many cultures as the embodiment of negative emotion. The look proved identical for native speakers of English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and American Sign Language. It consists of a furrowed brow, pressed lips and raised chin, and because we make it when we convey negative sentiments, such as 'I do not agree,' researchers are calling it the 'not face.'

Many birds learn their songs from their parents, but what if they could get a head start? A new paper, published in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, expands Flinders University research into how Australian fairy-wrens start learning to imitate their parents before they even hatch.

Tardigrades, also known as moss piglets or water bears, are eight-legged microscopic animals that have long fascinated scientists for their ability to survive extremes of temperature, pressure, lack of oxygen, and even radiation exposure.

Bees can use sophisticated signals to warn their nestmates about the level of danger from predators attacking foragers or the nest, according to a new study. Biologists at UC San Diego and in China found that an Asian species of honey bee can produce different types of vibrational "stop signals" when attacked by giant Asian hornets.

Groundbreaking research being published in the March 29th issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows the majority of the world's fisheries could be recovered in just 10 years, and that global fish populations could double by 2050 with better fishing practices compared to business as usual. The peer-reviewed study is authored by researchers from the University of California Santa Barbara, The University of Washington and Environmental Defense Fund. Related: Australia's Great Barrier Reef hit by 'worst' bleaching

Californians have lived with the risk of a damaging earthquake for centuries. Now Oklahomans, and some Kansans, face the same threat, federal seismologists said on Monday. In an assessment released by the United States Geological Survey, experts said the chance of a destructive temblor in the next year is as great in parts of north-central Oklahoma and southern Kansas — where oil-and-gas operations have set off man-made quakes for about five years — as it is in the shakiest parts of quake-prone California.

Archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem uncovered in central Israel the earliest known Neolithic quarry in the southern Levant, dating back 11,000 years. Finds from the site indicate large-scale quarrying activities to extract flint and limestone for the purpose of manufacturing working tools.

The recapture of the Syrian desert city of Palmyra must lift the spirits of all who knew its former glory. But after the dust dies down, a new army arrives: that of archaeologists brandishing questions. How much of what has gone should be restored? By what means, and by whom? And where does Palmyra belong, to Syria or the world? Related: 'Very doubtful' Palmyra can be restored after IS: UN expert

Archaeologists exploring the remote mesas of northern Arizona have uncovered a trove of previously undocumented rock art, including more than 1,500 petroglyphs, and confirmed the presence a prehistoric solar calendar, which has been marking the seasons for more than 700 years with a striking “shadow dagger” that travels across its sandstone face.

An archaeological site in southern Myanmar may be the missing link in a chain that explains how sublime celadon porcelain from Asia ended up as far as the Middle East centuries ago. Celadon pottery, distinctive by its jade green celadon color, was highly prized by China's imperial court in ancient times.

Italian archaeologists have found a site near Naples where the precursors of non-stick pans were produced more than 2,000 years ago. 29 The finding confirms that non-stick frying pans, an essential tool in any modern kitchen, were used in the Roman Empire.

A previously unknown building has been found within Hadrian’s Villa—the 1,900-year-old imperial complex of the Roman emperor Hadrian. Even more exciting, it is decorated with stunning artwork, according to archaeologists.

During construction of a road in Chile's El Olivar region, located some 470 kilometers (290 miles) from Santiago, workers came upon archaeological remains that experts call a historic discovery that will enrich the world's understanding pre-Columbian communities.

Abu Dhabi: New archaeological excavations on Marawah Island have uncovered the earliest known inhabitants of Abu Dhabi, providing a unique insight into life during the Late Stone Age in Abu Dhabi’s Western Region.

The hunters searching for mammoth tusks were drawn to the steep riverbank by a deposit of ancient bones. To their astonishment, they discovered an Ice Age puppy's snout peeking out from the permafrost. Five years later, a pair of puppies perfectly preserved in Russia's far northeast region of Yakutia and dating back 12,460 years has mobilised scientists across the world.

With enough ingenuity, 3-D printers can print out pretty much anything. But they're definitely not fast—especially for heavy, complex jobs. "3-D printing is measured in ounces per hour, so if you need to print a 100-pound object and can only do an ounce an hour, well, you do the math," Autodesk's Corey Bloome says.

A viral video released in February showed Boston Dynamics' new bipedal robot, Atlas, performing human-like tasks: opening doors, tromping about in the snow, lifting and stacking boxes. Tech geeks cheered and Silicon Valley investors salivated at the potential end to human manual labor.

The war in Syria is horrifying. According to the UN, over 3 million Syrian refugees are now in neighboring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, with millions more displaced within Syria. To help with this crisis, artificial intelligence startup X2AI is in the middle of a two week stay in Beirut, Lebanon, where it's piloting the use of artificial intelligence as a psychotherapy treatment for refugees.

Diabetes is growing into a global public health crisis, one that places enormous economic burdens on many nations. Once thought of as a disease that typically strikes affluent adults, type 2 diabetes has quickly spread all over the world, indifferent to socioeconomic status or age.

Right now, there are 4,186 people waiting for a heart transplant in the U.S., but with a huge donor shortage not all of these patients are likely to survive. Growing transplantable hearts in a laboratory has been a long-standing dream within the medical community, and a study in the journal Circulation Research has moved it one step closer to reality: A team of researchers have successfully grown a beating human heart in the laboratory using stem cells.

Writing in the March 28, 2016 issue of Nature Medicine, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, with colleagues in Japan and Wisconsin, report that they have successfully directed stem cell-derived neurons to regenerate lost tissue in damaged corticospinal tracts of rats, resulting in functional benefit.

In recent years, computer scientists have been investigating a range of techniques for removing reflections from digital photographs shot through glass. Some have tried to use variability in focal distance or the polarization of light; others, like those at MIT, have exploited the fact that a pane of glass produces not one but two reflections, slightly offset from each other.

The Vancouver group that wants to send a satellite to low-Earth orbit for UFO Disclosure has raised $30,000, and is now poised to launch their instrument-packed CubeSat in summer of 2017. Related: My time as a UFO investigator for the government Related: Police: Parts of missing UFO found near Roswell Related: "Pleiadian" Alien Base Uncovered In Argentina, UFO And Paranormal Researchers Claim

New evidence strengthens the idea that there is a mysterious planet hiding at the far edge of our solar system. Objects have been spotted moving around unusually at the edge of our solar system. And the best explanation for the strange orbits is the mysterious Planet Nine, according to one of the scientists who has argued that the hidden planet exists.

More evidence has emerged, so to speak, of fog over a very special place: Titan. Titan is one of the largest moons in the solar system and is full of hydrocarbons, making it an interesting Saturn moon that looks like a precursor to what Earth was billions of years ago.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft spied several features on Pluto that offer evidence of a time millions or billions of years ago when – thanks to much higher pressure in Pluto's atmosphere and warmer conditions on the surface – liquids might have flowed across and pooled on the surface of the distant world.

New research suggests that some of Saturn's icy moons, as well as its famous rings, might be modern adornments. Their dramatic birth may have taken place a mere hundred million years ago, more recent than the reign of many dinosaurs.

A new analysis of the prehistoric origin of malaria suggests that it evolved in insects at least 100 million years ago, and the first vertebrate hosts of this disease were probably reptiles, which at that time would have included the dinosaurs.

We live in a dramatic epoch of astrophysics. Breakthrough discoveries like exoplanets, gravitational waves from merging black holes, or cosmic acceleration seem to arrive every decade, or even more often. But perhaps no discovery was more unexpected, mysterious, and challenging to our grasp of the "known universe" than the recognition that the vast majority of matter in the universe cannot be directly seen.

A large enough flare from the Sun could pose a threat to Earth, a new study finds. Led by Aarhus University scientists, an international team of researchers examined the possibility of the Sun releasing a superflare – a massive explosion on the solar surface up to 10,000 times more powerful than the strongest flares ever observed.

Every now and then large sun storms strike the Earth where they cause aurora and in rare cases power cuts. These events are, however, nothing compared to the apocalyptic destruction we would experience if the Earth is struck by a superflare. An international research team has now shown that this is a scenario we may have to consider a real possibility.

The moon's poles have shifted over the eons, likely as a result of geological activity beneath the lunar crust, a new study suggests. This finding — which is based on an analysis of the distribution of water ice near the lunar north and south poles — sheds light on the structure and evolution of the moon, and also provides clues about where Earth's water came from, researchers said.

The US space agency's Dawn satellite continues to return remarkable images from the dwarf planet Ceres. Now just 385km above the surface (lower than the space station is above Earth), the probe has revealed new features inside the mini-world's Occator Crater.

Here’s one trick to make yourself feel happier: Listen to your own voice—digitally manipulated to make it sound cheery. That’s one potential application of a new study, in which researchers modified the speech of volunteers as they read a short story by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. The team then altered the voice’s pitch, among other features, to make it sound happy, sad, or fearful.

Poor people and small businesses rely on cash. A contactless system will likely entrench poverty and pave the way for terrifying levels of surveillance

On Feb. 29, Carol Greider of Johns Hopkins University became the third Nobel Prize laureate biologist in a month to do something long considered taboo among biomedical researchers: She posted a report of her recent discoveries to a publicly accessible website, bioRxiv, before submitting it to a scholarly journal to review for “official’’ publication.

It’s hard to be an optimist these days. We are living through what biologists call the sixth mass extinction, a time of dramatic depletion of species, from frogs to rhinos and butterflies. By the end of the century, it is estimated that one in six species will be extinct. The causes—human population growth, habitat loss, climate change—are complex and interlocking, fueling each other in an ever faster destructive spiral. But E.O. Wilson, the esteemed biologist and National Geographic Hubbard Award winner, believes we can still save what is left of the planet. And in his new book, Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight For Life, he outlines a bold new plan to set aside half the planet for conservation.

Imagine tons of stinking dung, blood and offal, tipped into a giant tub for germs to feed on. It sounds vomit-worthy, but experts say this project at a Costa Rican slaughterhouse will help the environment—and spare neighbors from the awful smell.

Dangerous nitrate levels in drinking water could persist for decades, increasing the risk for blue baby syndrome and other serious health concerns, according to a new study published by researchers at the University of Waterloo.

Fecal transplants have gone to the dogs—literally. A veterinarian in Palmetto, Florida this week revealed a technique that uses poop transfers to successfully treat service puppies in-training that suffer from recurrent diarrhea, a common problem for dogs kept in kennels. The method reportedly cured 87 percent of dogs in the first round and 93 percent of those needing a second treatment.

No buts about it, the butthole is one of the finest innovations in the past ?540 million years of animal evolution. The first animals that arose seem to have literally had potty mouths: Their modern-day descendants, such as sea sponges, sea anemones, and jellyfish, all lack an anus and must eat and excrete through the same hole. Once an independent exit evolved, however, animals diversified into the majority of species alive today, ranging from earthworms? to humans.

Throughout the Christian world Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Oddly enough, the region where three of the great religions of the world were born, today remains a center of struggle and strife. Perhaps more than any place on earth, the Middle East is truly a land of contrasts.

When leaving his workshop in Amarna, the sculptor Thutmose may have wanted to forget something very painful. A story which may have been carved in his heart perhaps? He decided not to take some of his sculptures with him, and left them instead in an abandoned city. Even the bust of the most beautiful woman of his times remained on the wooden shelf.

Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset, England, is the legendary resting place of King Arthur and Guinevere, and for centuries people have visited to see the grave of the mythical fifth-century King of the Britons and his bride. But the reality behind the abbey's claim to fame had little to do with early monarchy. It was mostly about economics.

A radar scan of William Shakespeare’s tomb has discovered signs of tampering with his final resting place that lend credence to a story about his skull being stolen in the 18th century, researchers say. Archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar on the grave, which is protected by a curse, for a documentary airing on Saturday to mark the 400th anniversary of the famous playwright’s death.

Scientists have found a simple mathematical formula to explain the development of our teeth. The formula is a completely new tool that scientists can use to investigate human evolutionary history, and it might even settle important questions about our ancestors.

It turns out that the rigid 'line in the sand' over which the human sex chromosomes -- the Y and X -- go to avoid crossing over is a bit blurrier than previously thought. Contrary to the current scientific consensus, new research shows that X and Y DNA swapping may occur much more often.

Becoming a big brother or big sister before first grade may lower a child's risk of becoming obese, a new study suggests. Children the same age who didn't have a sibling were nearly three times more likely to be obese by first grade, the study showed.

People with chronic low back pain may benefit from meditating, a new study finds. The practice may reduce pain and make it easier for patients to carry out their daily activities, according to the findings. Related: There’s Not Much Evidence That Standing Desks Benefit Your Health

A pioneering new study has revealed how an individual's movement can give a unique insight into their inherent personality traits. The ground-breaking study could open up new pathways for health professionals to diagnose and treat mental health conditions in the future.

While many people in the world are worrying that robots will take over human jobs once artificial intelligence (AI) is fully developed, it’s a safe bet that no one put “author” at the top of the robot job list. Yet, now that a Japanese AI program has co-authored a short-form novel that passed the first round of screening for a national literary prize, it seems that no occupation is safe. The robot-written novel didn’t win the competition’s final prize, but who’s to say it won’t improve in its next attempt?

Japan has killed 333 minke whales—including more than 200 pregnant females—as part of this year’s Antarctic whale hunt, according to the country’s Institute for Cetacean Research. On Wednesday, four ships returned from their 115-day expedition to conduct “scientific” whaling activities.

South Africa has a major rhino poaching problem. According to conservation organisation, Save the Rhino, 5,940 African rhinos have been killed for their horns since 2008, and that number keeps rising, despite efforts to stop the illegal activity. With no end in sight, a new project will relocate 80 rhinos from South Africa to safari parks in Australia. Basically, rhinos are becoming refugees.

Frequently, scientific discoveries are accompanied not by a cry of "Eureka!" but rather a puzzled "Well, that's weird." Take what happened to a group of researchers who were crossbreeding different species of cichlids — a type of freshwater fish — to learn about their genetics.

Researchers have identified unique anatomical features in a species of blind, walking cavefish in Thailand that enable the fish to walk and climb waterfalls in a manner comparable to tetrapods, or four-footed mammals and amphibians.

You may have heard of crows, magpies, and mockingbirds recognizing individual people. These birds live among people, so it may be natural that they learn to differentiate people. But what about the animals that live in remote areas?