Newsdesk Archive
New evidence suggests that a chemical derived from marijuana may be an effective treatment for patients with drug-resistant forms of epilepsy
Related: Medical marijuana can cure migraines
Related: Marijuana might not be the culprit in adolescent IQ decline
Two prairie voles, life-long mates, sit in separate cages. One hears a distinctive tone, and receives a small electric shock. When the voles are reunited, the second vole quickly starts licking and grooming its stressed mate, continuing for around 10 minutes. It looks a lot like what we’d call consolation.
Storks feeding on rubbish dumps instead of migrating are more likely to survive the winter, research shows.
The bird is among a growing number of migratory species that have changed their behaviour due to human influences, says an international team.
If you've always thought of a zebra's stripes as offering some type of camouflaging protection against predators, it's time to think again, suggest scientists at the University of Calgary and UC Davis.
Findings from their study will be published Friday, Jan. 22, 2016 in the journal PLOS ONE.
Alaska is known for unique fish sightings such as the century rockfish and white killer whales, but recently a creature that lives 4,000 feet under the sea has mystified experts.
A six-foot ragfish was found washed up on the shore last week, which is only the second sighting in 40 years.
A Jurassic "sea monster" found in Cambridgeshire could prove to be a new species of plesiosaur, scientists said.
Oxford archaeologists discovered the 165 million-year-old reptile bones at Must Farm quarry near Whittlesey.
The fancy frill and cheek horns that adorned the head of a triceratops relative may have helped the dinosaur communicate, possibly acting as a social or sexy signal, a new study suggests.
This isn't the first time researchers have analyzed the skull of Protoceratops andrewsi, a sheep-size dinosaur with four legs that dates to the Cretaceous period, about 75 million years ago.
Two brothers hunting for ichthyosaur fossils along the coast of the United Kingdom came across something far more astounding: The bones of what may be the earliest known dinosaur from the Jurassic period in the U.K., and possibly even the world, a new study finds.
An international team of researchers has identified and named a new species of dinosaur that is the most complete, primitive duck-billed dinosaur to ever be discovered in the eastern United States.
This new discovery also shows that duck-billed dinosaurs originated in the eastern United States, what was then broadly referred to as Appalachia, before dispersing to other parts of the world. The research team outlined its findings in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The world’s oldest monuments may soon get an image makeover. A new project will promote and preserve Göbekli Tepe, home to the most ancient temple structures ever discovered.
Turkey hopes to eventually boost tourism at the site, which is in a region where tourism has declined because of the nearby Syrian conflict and refugee crisis.
Alt: Oldest Monument Gets Multi-Million Dollar Funding
Satellite images confirm that the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been destroyed by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).
St Elijah's stood on a hill near the northern city of Mosul for 1,400 years.
The human brain's memory capacity may be as much as 10 times larger than previously thought, according to a new study by scientists in California that looked at how hippocampal neurons in the brain function with low energy but high computational power.
OK, quick: Name a few important things that happened in the 11th century.
If you're not tenured in medieval studies, that may be tough, although several modestly notable events took place in those hundred years - for example, the Battle of Hastings and the launch of the Crusades. When we look back a millennium, even the highest parapets of history become hard to discern. Nonetheless, those long-ago happenings dramatically altered the future.
The oldest of the old are living even longer, a new report shows.
In recent years, the death rate among American centenarians — people who have lived to age 100 or older — has decreased, dropping 14 percent for women and 20 percent for men from 2008 to 2014, according to the report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Packaging a cancer drug in bubble containers derived from a patient’s own immune system makes it much more effective. Doing so protects the drug paclitaxel from being destroyed by the body’s own defenses, which means the entire payload is delivered to the tumor.
Related: Researchers pinpoint place where cancer cells may begin
"Yeehaw!" cries the rocket-engineer as he drives the all-terrain buggy hard over the rocks and scrub of the Nevada Desert.
With his big hat and moustache, he looks like a cowboy riding out over his territory.
Invisible structures shaped like noodles, lasagne sheets or hazelnuts could be floating around in our Galaxy radically challenging our understanding of gas conditions in the Milky Way.
CSIRO astronomer and first author of a paper released in Science Dr Keith Bannister said the structures appear to be 'lumps' in the thin gas that lies between the stars in our Galaxy.
About 600 miles from Earth's surface is the first of two donut-shaped electron swarms, known as the Van Allen Belts, or the radiation belts. Understanding the shape and size of the belts, which can shrink and swell in response to incoming radiation from the sun, is crucial for protecting our technology in space. The harsh radiation isn't good for satellites' health, so scientists wish to know just which orbits could be jeopardized in different situations.
The power source for Earth's magnetic field may be magnesium that has been trapped in the core since our planet's violent birth, a new model suggests.
Magnesium is the fourth most common element in the Earth's outer layers, but previously, scientists thought there was almost no magnesium in the core. Iron and magnesium don't easily mix, and researchers thought that the Earth's core was mostly iron.
Denmark produced an unheard-of 42 percent of its electricity from wind turbines in 2015, according to official figures, setting a new world record for wind energy generation.
The Scandinavian country has gone from strength to strength when it comes to the renewable energy source, with 2014 seeing it generate 39.1 percent of its energy from wind turbines.
Bolivia's second largest lake, Poopó, has all but dried up, threatening the livelihood of fishing communities and spelling ecological disaster for hundreds of species. The Bolivian government is blaming dry weather spurred by El Niño and a changing climate, but that's not the whole story.
A new analysis of ice-core climate data, archaeological evidence and ancient pollen samples strongly suggests that agriculture by humans 7,000 years ago likely slowed a natural cooling process of the global climate, playing a role in the relatively warmer climate we experience today.
A day’s work in an Arizona corn field some 2,500 years ago has been frozen in time, thanks to the footprints of some ancient farmers, their children, and even their dogs, which have been found perfectly preserved at a construction site just north of Tucson.
The prints number in the dozens and depict the movements of several adults and at least one child, as they tended to their neatly arranged crops and the small irrigation ditches that watered them.
New anomalies have been detected on Egypt’s pyramids by researchers scanning the monuments with innovative technologies, the Ministry of Antiquities said.
According to preliminary results, thermal “points of interest” were observed on the northern facade of the Great Pyramid at Giza, known as Khufu or Cheops, and on the west face of Red pyramid in Dahshur.
Fairy stories such as Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin can be traced back thousands of years to prehistoric times, with one tale originating from the bronze age, academics have revealed.
Using techniques normally employed by biologists, they studied common links between 275 Indo-European fairy tales from around the world and found some have roots that are far older than previously known, and “long before the emergence of the literary record”.
The solar system appears to have a new ninth planet. Today, two scientists announced evidence that a body nearly the size of Neptune—but as yet unseen—orbits the sun every 15,000 years. During the solar system’s infancy 4.5 billion years ago, they say, the giant planet was knocked out of the planet-forming region near the sun. Slowed down by gas, the planet settled into a distant elliptical orbit, where it still lurks today.
Alt: Evidence suggests huge ninth planet exists past Pluto at solar system's edge
Alt: There's a ninth planet in our solar system -- we just can't see it yet, study says
Very occasionally, my imagination gets the better of me. When I encountered a paper entitled "How to Recover a Qubit That Has Fallen into a Black Hole," I envisioned a typical lab experiment. One student, having been given a precious quantum state, accidentally drops it into a black hole—"accidentally" in the same way that you accidentally break into the chemistry supplies cupboard and mix everything together under a fume hood just to see what will happen
Early galaxies are shining light on a decades-old mystery, helping to determine the size and composition of the gas clouds responsible for forming their neighbors.
A new technique uses the light from some of the first galaxies to illuminate gas clouds from the early universe.
A thought experiment involving a paradox of pigeons shows a new kind of quantum link that could be happening everywhere in the cosmos, all the time
PARTICLES on opposite ends of the universe can link quantum mechanical hands. The phenomenon hints at an entirely new aspect of the quantum reality underlying all matter.
The very first experimental observations of knots in quantum matter have just been reported. The scientists created knotted solitary waves, or knot solitons, in the quantum-mechanical field describing a gas of superfluid atoms, also known as a Bose--Einstein condensate.
New year. New largest prime.
A computer in Missouri has discovered the largest known prime number, 274,207,281– 1. It is about 22 million digits long, 5 million digits longer than the previous largest known prime, which was discovered in January 2013.
A recent study shows that the social gazing behavior of domestic dogs resembles that of humans: dogs view facial expressions systematically, preferring eyes. In addition, the facial expression alters their viewing behavior, especially in the face of threat.
Adding flashing lights and music to gambling encourages risky decision-making -- even if you're a rat.
In research published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, scientists at UBC discovered rats behaved like problem gamblers when sound and light cues were added to a "rat casino" model.
High doses of cocaine can cause the brain to eat itself, research suggests.
A study of mice found that the drug can trigger out-of-control “autophagy”, a process by which cells digest themselves.
Neuroscientists have identified the brain network system that causes us to stumble and stall just when we least want to. Previous research has shown that people tend to exert more force when they know they are being watched. For example, pianists unconsciously press keys harder when they play in front of an audience compared to when playing alone. The new research explores why.
The US government is researching technology that it hopes will turn soldiers into cyborgs, allowing them to connect directly to computers.
The US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has unveiled a research programme called Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) which aims to develop an implantable neural interface, connecting humans directly to computers.
The scientist who claims to be about to carry out the first human head transplant says that he has successfully done the procedure on a monkey.
Maverick neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has tested the procedure in experiments on monkeys and human cadavers, he told New Scientist.
Modern humans (Homo sapiens) are thought to have first emerged in Africa about 150’000 years ago. 100’000 years later, a few of them left their homeland travelling first to Asia and then further east, crossing the Bering Strait, and colonizing the Americas.
Danish archaeologists have unearthed a burial site in an ancient town in southern Jordan that suggests the dead were not buried until they had decomposed to skeletal remains. The skeletons were then dismantled and bones of similar types were buried together
Even nomadic hunter-gatherers engaged in deliberate mass killings 10,000 years ago
Skulls smashed by blunt force, bodies pin-cushioned by projectile points and hapless victims—including a pregnant woman—abused with their hands bound before receiving the fatal coup de grâce.
A Neolithic Spanish burial site contains remains of a closely-related local community from 6000 years ago, according to a study by Kurt W. Alt from Danube Private University, Austria, and colleagues.
The Neolithic people are thought to have introduced new burial rituals in the modern-day Europe. This included building megalithic tombs, which were used over an extended period of time as collective burial sites and venues for ritual acts.
About 60 drawings and hieroglyphic inscriptions, dating back around 5,000 years, have been discovered at a site called Wadi Ameyra in Egypt’s Sinai Desert. Carved in stone they were created by mining expeditions sent out by early Egyptian pharaohs archaeologists say.
Related: Photos: 5,000-Year-Old Hieroglyphs Discovered in Sinai Desert
The present-day English owe about a third of their ancestry to the Anglo-Saxons, according to a new study.
Scientists sequenced genomes from 10 skeletons unearthed in eastern England and dating from the Iron Age through to the Anglo-Saxon period.
People in the Roman Empire really got around.
Evidence from a Roman-era cemetery in York, England shows that the city—once a major outpost on Rome’s distant frontier—was home to both locals and to immigrants from thousands of miles away.
A team of researchers from several institutions in France has found that some common black garden ants leave building instructions in pillars for other worker ants to follow. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes their study of ants in their lab, what they have found so far, and their goal of learning once and for all how it is that creatures with such tiny brains can build such complicated nests.
Researchers at Purdue University are hoping to deploy teams of tiny robots in fields ranging from manufacturing to medicine. To control them, scientists have developed a technology likened to "mini force fields."
Researchers want the robots to work cooperatively, but be controlled individually. To do so, they built miniature remote controls made of planar coils. The coils can emit individualized magnetic fields.
In an interview with Yahoo News, Amazon has revealed a little more about its forthcoming drone-based delivery system. Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy, said that the company has very specific targets for "Prime Air."
Are the robots coming to take our jobs? Advances in any tech that aids in automation always come with questions about the jobs they take versus the jobs they create, but the World Economic Forum warned in a report published on Monday that advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and other modern technologies are currently likely to lead to a net loss of 5.1 million jobs worldwide by the year 2020.
Atlas robot assistant from Team IHMC has a way to go before it can perform tasks nearly as effectively as humans can
Robotic humanoid butlers still have a way to go before you’ll be able to let them have free reign of the house, but Team IHMC from Florida and their multimillion dollar Google-developed US government Atlas robot are giving it a good try.
Are you polite when you talk to Siri, or Cortana, or any of the other machines in your life?
Most of us are, experts say, even though what we're actually talking to is nothing more than compiled code -- an endless stream of 1s and 0s with no real personality or feelings.
In the not-too-distant future, we could be communicating with our computers — and each other — using only our thoughts.
Scientists are already working on technology that connects the brain to electronic gadgets and two new devices unveiled this week could help usher in a future without keyboards: a wireless brainwave headset and a brain sensor that dissolves in the body after completing its job.
A surgical implant no bigger than a grain of rice which measures a patient’s temperature and blood pressure for several days before dissolving harmlessly in body fluids has been invented by scientists.
The biodegradable device could be implanted into the brain or other vital organs to monitor a patient’s medical recovery without the need for cumbersome wires or operations to remove the implant once its job is done, the researchers said.
To most of us “virulent” means “aggressive,” or just plain “bad,” but to a microbiologist it has a more specific meaning. Virulent strains of bacteria are ones that produce “virulence factors,” small molecules and proteins that convert a benign bacterium into a pathogen.
They make the difference between E. coli that are helpful members of our gut microbiome and the E. coli O157:H7 responsible for the Jack-in-the-Box outbreak.
Eight decades have passed since physicists realized that the theories of quantum mechanics and gravity don’t fit together, and the puzzle of how to combine the two remains unsolved. In the last few decades, researchers have pursued the problem in two separate programs—string theory and loop quantum gravity—that are widely considered incompatible by their practitioners. But now some scientists argue that joining forces is the way forward.
We might commonly think of Earth as having an oxygen-dominated atmosphere, but in reality the molecule makes up only a fifth of our air. Most of what surrounds us is nitrogen, at 78 percent. Astrobiologists are beginning to see nitrogen — and not just oxygen — as a key indicator of a planet's habitability. Nitrogen is essential for life on Earth and could signal an atmosphere thick enough to stabilize liquid water on a planet's surface, fundamental to creating habitable conditions.
Five planets will parade across the dawn sky early Wednesday in a rare celestial spectacle set to repeat every morning until late next month.
Headlining the planetary performance are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. It will be the first time in more than a decade that the fab five will be simultaneously visible to the naked eye, according to Jason Kendall, who is on the board of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York.
Star Wars is many things to many people: nostalgia-tinted staple of childhood memory, space opera extraordinaire, modern day merchandising behemoth.
The climactic scene of The Force Awakens is situated on a distant island on a distant planet, supposedly the site of the mystical remains of the First Jedi Temple. These scenes were actually filmed on the visually stunning World Heritage Site of Skellig Michael: an unearthly pinnacle of rock jutting out of the Atlantic Ocean, seven miles off the western Irish coast.
President Juan Orlando Hernández flew in to endorse claims of a legendary ‘city of the Monkey God’ but scientists are sceptical and indigenous group furious
A new expedition to ruins in the Honduran jungle has prompted skepticism from archaeologists and fury from the country’s indigenous people, who say President Juan Orlando Hernández’s embrace of a legendary lost city of the Monkey God is “offensive, discriminatory and racist”.
The fierce, fearsome, war-loving female warriors known as Amazons existed in ancient Greece, according to American historian Adrienne Mayor.
The Stanford University historian’s book “The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World,” reveals that such women actually existed in the ancient world.
“Excavations of Eurasian graves have uncovered battle-scarred female skeletons dressed in tunics and trousers, and buried with quivers full of arrows, battle-axes, spears, and horse gear,” Mayor told CNN.
Brains images are becoming standard evidence in some of the country’s most controversial and disturbing death penalty trials – including the case of Steven Northington
It’s a classic high school conundrum: Women want female companionship, but definitely don’t want a so-called friend to try and steal their partner.
In a paper published on Thursday (Jan. 14) in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, psychologists from Arizona State University studied women’s efforts to guard their mates from other ovulating women.
Most biology students will be able to tell you that neural signals are sent via mechanisms such as synaptic transmission, gap junctions, and diffusion processes, but a new study suggests there's another way that our brains transmit information from one place to another.
The crash of ocean waves, the babbling of brooks, the pitter-patter of rain on shingles — many people swear by these watery sounds to help them fall asleep and stay in la-la land. Why does flowing "agua" apparently have such a powerful and popular drowsing effect?
Part of the answer lies in how our brains interpret the noises we hear — both while awake and in the dead of night — as either threats or non-threats.
When water is scarce, why not pull it out of thin air? An industrial designer in Austria is hoping to do just that (well, sort of).
Kristof Retezár, a designer based in Vienna, invented a device that can extract humidity from the air and condense it into drinkable water.
The most efficient way to clean up ocean plastics and avoid harming ecosystems is to place plastic collectors near coasts, according to a new study.
Related: Jacques Cousteau's Calypso to sail again
Related: Ocean heating doubles
A tardigrade that had been frozen solid for more than 30 years has been brought back to life by researchers in Japan, and has gone on to produce 14 healthy babies. That’s record-smashing stuff right there, because before this tough little water bear came back to life, the world record for reviving a frozen tardigrade was nine years.
Ants collectively build nests whose size can reach several thousand times that of individual ants and whose architecture is sometimes highly complex. However, their ability to coordinate several thousand individuals when building their nests remains a mystery. To understand the mechanisms involved in this process, researchers combined behavioral analysis, 3D imaging and computational modeling techniques.
OXFORD, England — Before humans milked cows, herded goats or raised hogs, before they invented agriculture, or written language, before they had permanent homes, and most certainly before they had cats, they had dogs.
Volcanic eruptions are something of a spectator sport today, with orbital satellites and high-speed connectivity bringing glorious images of the planet’s pyrotechnic power to the comfortable safety of our computer screens. But a fascinating new study suggests people have been chronicling Earth’s powerful outbursts since long before modern technology.
In Rosh Ha-Ayin, a city in the Center District of Israel, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) have unearthed the remains of a 2,700-year-old farmhouse and a 1,500-year-old monastery.
In January 1813, 26 men shivered on a cold beach in Southeast Alaska. They had scrambled from a wreck that claimed the lives of most of their shipmates, fighting waves and rocks that in some cases literally tore the shirts from their backs. The freezing rain mixed with snow. A constant wind blew off the North Pacific. They had no shelter, supplies or any hope of rescue. No one knew where they were.
Modern investigative techniques used by forensic anthropologists to examine the remains of victims of crime can be adapted for the use of biological anthropologists, according to new guidance published by North Carolina State University.
Polish scientists are launching what they say will be the world's largest scientific study of Egyptian mummies. The Warsaw-based project will examine 42 mummies, looking for clues to ancient diseases, the mummies' former occupations, and even whether the corpses were left-handed.
An international team of researchers they will soon begin analysing cosmic particles collected inside Egypt’s Bent Pyramid to search for clues as to how it was built and learn more about the 4,600-year-old structure.
Excavation of a “lost city” in eastern Honduras has begun with a flourish, with President Juan Orlando Hernández personally removing the first stone sculpture from the site Tuesday. The artifact is one of dozens from a cache found in February of last year among ruins of a Pre-Columbian city deep in the jungle of La Mosquitia. The artifacts were left untouched under military protection at the undisclosed location. Now, a joint Honduran-American archaeological team has returned to the site to excavate the artifacts and further explore the region.
Related: Archaeologists Begin Excavation of Honduran “Lost City”
The plague bacterium Yersinia pestis may have lurked in a Medieval European reservoir for at least 300 years, researchers suggest January 13 in PLOS ONE.
During the Revolutionary War, a good map could mean the difference between victory and defeat, especially for British troops facing guerrilla tactics for the first time. Few maps had been made of the interior of what would become the United States, and commanders often had to rely on maps drawn by soldiers in the midst of the fighting.
The new book Revolution: Mapping the Road to American Independence collects many such battle-tested maps, which give fresh perspectives on the period’s key conflicts.
Thousands of archaeological artifacts — and maps detailing where more can be found — are kept inside the national wildlife refuge buildings currently being held by an armed group of protestors angry over federal land policy.
Ryan Bundy, one of the leaders of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon, says they have no real interest in the antiquities. Still, their access to the artifacts and maps has some worried that looters could take advantage of the situation.
How do you eat a skip full of food every day without ever chewing? How do you walk on tiptoes when you’re the length of four London buses? How do you have sex when you weigh 70 tons? While the answers to these three questions is probably “with great difficulty”, scientists are tackling such improbable questions after uncovering what is undoubtedly the biggest dinosaur excavation of all time.
Imagine the Titanic minus the smokestacks, framed out of timber rather than iron. Imagine that instead of a doomed ocean liner bustling with well-dressed elites, it’s home to 2,000 seasick animals, a handful of teenage dinosaurs and one patriarchal family headed by a 500-year-old man bent on saving the world. Cultures all over the globe share the legend of Noah’s Ark, but this summer one especially enthusiastic Christian ministry will try to convince you that it looked exactly like this—dinosaurs and all—when it opens its biblical theme park.
As residents continue to struggle to recover from the impact of the recent flooding, the Met Office has put amber “be prepared” alerts in place for south-east Scotland and the Shetland Islands.
Alt: Village suffers 'biblical' non stop rain for 81 DAYS and even the livestock are 'depressed'
We’re used to thinking of the Middle East as an oil-rich region. But it’s quietly becoming a center for solar power as well, thanks in large part to the United Arab Emirates, which has invested billions of dollars in developing renewable energy technologies.
New observations of the bright star Betelgeuse, famous as the shoulder in the constellation of Orion the hunter, raise fresh questions about how it blows huge amounts of gas into interstellar space.
ESA's XMM-Newton has found a wind of high-speed gas streaming from the centre of a bright spiral galaxy like our own that may be reducing its ability to produce new stars.
It is not unusual to find hot winds blowing from the swirling discs of material around supermassive black holes at the centre of active galaxies.
For the first time ever, a flower has bloomed in space, aboard the International Space Station. This brings cosmic explorers one step closer to growing other flowering plants in space, like tomatoes, which NASA says it hopes to do in 2018.
China will launch a mission to land on the dark side of the moon in two years’ time, state media has reported, in what will be a first for humanity.
The moon’s far hemisphere is never directly visible from Earth and while it has been photographed, with the first images appearing in 1959, it has never been explored.
When massive holes open up in the frozen Siberian ground for no obvious reason and continue to appear across the tundra at an alarming rate, the first causes that come to mind are collapsing ice plugs called pingos, methane exploding due to climate change, meteorites, missiles, UFOs, giant worms or underground aliens. That is, unless you’re a Russian petroleum industry scientist.
Everybody loves that Steven Spielberg movie when a cute, child-friendly ET phones home.
That movie, of course, is pure fiction, but so are news reports claiming that an 800-year-old cellphone, used by extraterrestrials, has been found in Austria.
This is the moment a purported 'UFO' fell from the sky at speed before stopping suddenly, travelling along the surface of the sea and then vanishing.
The footage was captured on a drone by Augustine Lepe, who was flying his aerial vehicle above the South Pacific Ocean, about 12 miles from the north of La Serena, Chile.
The weirdest star in the cosmos just got a lot weirder. And yes, it might be aliens.
Known as KIC 8462852, or Tabby’s star, it has been baffling astronomers for the past few months after a team of researchers noticed its light seemed to be dipping in brightness in bizarre ways. Proposed explanations ranged from a cloud of comets to orbiting “alien megastructures”.
Alt: That bizarre-looking star just got a lot weirder — and yes, it could be aliens
A bright fireball lit up the night sky around Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre South) in South Australia on November 27, 2015.
But how to find the impact site of that meteorite? And how can we know where in the solar system the object came from?
Without Jupiter and Saturn orbiting out past Earth, life may not have been able to gain a foothold on our planet, new simulations suggest.
The two gas giants likely helped stabilize the solar system, protecting Earth and the other interior, rocky planets from frequent run-ins with big, fast-moving objects, researchers said.
Manatees — the gentle, roly-poly marine mammals once mistaken by sailors for mythic mermaids — have been classified as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) since 1967. But that classification may soon change, and for the best possible reason: Manatees have been making a comeback.
Is it a car, a bike or some other kind of contraption?
It looks like an inverted tricycle with an egg-shaped shell. The makers of the Elf vehicle tout it as the future of environmentally friendly urban transport, combining pedal power with battery propulsion and solar charging.
Automakers are imagining a world where nobody dies in car accidents and they say it is closer than most people think.
While they maintain that the real solution to a crash-free world lies in self-driving cars, a host of high-tech safety features are making drivers safer—and better—in the meantime.
A mountain lion killed in the US state of Idaho had a set of fully formed teeth growing out of its forehead, wildlife officials say.
The lion was legally shot dead by a hunter on 30 December.
Hollywood might have a whole new target audience for 3-D movies. Scientists have outfitted praying mantises with old-school 3-D glasses and showed them video clips to find out whether these tiny animals can see the world in three dimensions.
Related: Ants don’t make decisions on the move
A new study from Indiana University could help ensure the hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year to develop potential treatments for Alzheimer's disease aren't wasted on targeting the wrong types of memory.
Brazilian torrent frog stakes his small claim by the side of the stream, where he spends the day uttering a high-pitched chirp. When a rival male gets too close, he lets out a series of peeps and squeals and waves his arm at the intruder. The offender retreats. Message received.
Trust is the key to friendship — not just for humans, but for chimpanzees as well.
Elaborate experiments with chimps reveal that they often trust their BFFs to share a delicious snack. The same isn’t necessarily so when it comes to their mere acquaintances.