Newsdesk Archive
There are advantages associated with exposure to two languages in infancy, as team of investigators and clinician-scientists in Singapore and internationally have found. The findings reveal a generalized cognitive advantage that emerges early in bilingual infants, and is not specific to a particular language.
Too much face-to-screen time and not enough face-to-face interaction could degrade kids' ability to read other people's emotions, a new study suggests.A team of researchers from UCLA discovered that a group of sixth graders who didn't use a phone, TV or computer for five days were much better at reading other people's emotions correctly than a group of sixth graders who spent those five days engrossed with their phones and other electronic devices for their normal amount of time.
Neurons in human skin perform advanced calculations, previously believed that only the brain could perform. This is according to a study from Umea University in Sweden published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.A fundamental characteristic of neurons that extend into the skin and record touch, so-called first-order neurons in the tactile system, is that they branch in the skin so that each neuron reports touch from many highly-sensitive zones on the skin.
The world's first personal robot named "Pepper" will be sold in US stores next year, Japanese technology company SoftBank has announced.The 1.2m robot, which is equipped with a laser sensor and 12 hours of battery life, can dance, make jokes and even interpret human emotions based on facial expressions.Originally designed for families and the elderly, it increasingly appears as though the robot has captured the imagination of big business.
Mexico is the third largest consumer of disposable diapers globally, which led to a Mexican scientist to design a technology capable of degrading the product materials by the mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus."The idea came after considering that mushrooms feed on cellulose, material present in diapers, but they also possess non-biodegradable synthetic elements such as polyethylene, polypropylene, and superabsorbent gel (sodium polyacrylate) which collects fluids".
A gas which can power cars and heat homes has been made using a renewable process for the first time.Propane, which makes up the bulk component of liquefied natural gas (LPG), has previously only ever been produced from fossil fuels.Related: Scientists use E.coli bacteria to create fossil fuel alternative
Monkeys at the top and bottom of the social pecking order have physically different brains, research has found.A particular network of brain areas was bigger in dominant animals, while other regions were bigger in subordinates.
A trio of researchers working in a South American jungle has shown that wild monkeys are able to learn how to perform an activity by watching videos of other monkeys performing the task. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, Tina Gunhold, Thomas Bugnyar and Andrew Whiten of the Universities of Vienna and St Andrews, respectively, describe how they trained monkeys to perform tasks, videotaped them doing it and then showed the results to wild marmosets living in Pernambuco Brazil, and what they learned as a result of doing so.Related: Should Monkeys Go to School?
Goffin's cockatoos can learn how to make and use wooden tools from each other, a new study has found.The discovery, made by scientists from Oxford University, the University of Vienna, and the Max Planck Institute at Seewiesen, is thought to be the first controlled experimental evidence for the social transmission of tool use in any bird species.
A supermarket has been built on top of the ancient city of Myrleia, dating back to 700 BC, in the western province of Bursa, despite ongoing court cases related to the protection of the area.Bursa Municipality had granted tourism and trading construction permits for a 60,000-square meter area above the ancient city, after which a branch of the supermarket chain store Kipa was built.
A 1,500 year-old papyrus fragment found in The University of Manchester's John Rylands Library has been identified as one the world's earliest surviving Christian charms.The remarkable document uniquely contains some of the earliest documented references to the Last Supper and 'manna from heaven'. It is the earliest surviving document to use the Christian Eucharist liturgy - which outlines the Last Supper - as a protective charm.
A huge wave that lifted 70-tonne boulders as if they were grains of sand hit the island of Malta in the recent past and could do so again with devastating consequences, a study has found.Scientists have found the first evidence of a highly destructive tsunami in this part of the Mediterranean which was probably caused by an earthquake with an epicentre focused near Sicily or Greece.
Coral reefs may look static to the naked eye, but scientists have now seen "violent" activity on their surface.Using powerful microscopes, researchers filmed tiny hairs on the surface of corals "stirring up" surrounding water.
We are not born with the ability to lie and distrust, but appear to acquire these 'skills' at around seven years of age, researchers have found.The team of child psychologists and game theorists published their results today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It may be possible to train the brain to prefer healthy low-calorie foods over unhealthy higher-calorie foods, according to new research by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University and at Massachusetts General Hospital. Published online today in the journal Nutrition & Diabetes, a brain scan study in adult men and women suggests that it is possible to reverse the addictive power of unhealthy food while also increasing preference for healthy foods.
Are thrillers making us fat?One thing's for certain -- new research shows that the snack bowl sees a lot more action when TV viewers watch action movies than when they watch other kinds of programming.
A lack in serotonin might not be entirely to blame for depression, new evidence suggests.It's widely believed that people with depression don't make enough serotonin-a messenger in the brain. But mice lacking serotonin did not exhibit symptoms of depression, reports a study in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience.
Ardent believers in the existence of a mythical creature known as the Yeti may be excited to learn that rare photographic "evidence" of this mysterious beast is now up for auction.In 1951, British mountaineer Eric Earle Shipton was leading an expedition on Mount Everest when he took a series of photographs of what he believed might be the footprints of a bipedal, apelike creature known as the Yeti. The photos sparked debate in Europe about the existence of the mythical Himalayan creature, according to Christie's, the auction house handling the online sale.
Neanderthals, long assumed to be simple, early forms of human beings, whose looks characterise them as brutish creatures, have shown signs of being more considered and creative than the species has previously been given credit for.Related: Newly Discovered Engraving May Revise Picture of Neanderthal Intelligence, Nat Geo
Google has become the latest tech giant to get into the drone business.The company announced late on Thursday that its advanced-research arm, Google X, is developing a system of drones to deliver goods. Amazon announced a similar scheme to great fanfare but little actual progress late last year.
Alana Saarinen loves playing golf and the piano, listening to music and hanging out with friends. In those respects, she's like many teenagers around the world. Except she's not, because every cell in Alana's body isn't like mine and yours - Alana is one of a few people in the world who have DNA from three people.
The office pot plant has often been criticised as a symbol of corporate or government waste. Taxpayer, ratepayer and shareholder-funded foliage has regularly been stripped from offices by efficiency or cost-cutting crusaders.But that might be short-term thinking, as leafy-green offices enriched with plants can boost productivity by 15%.
What's the fix for a warming planet? Just one word: Plastics.As the world grapples with greenhouse gas emissions still rising despite years of political wrangling over how to combat global climate change, a technology to convert carbon dioxide and methane into plastic is emerging as one potential market-driven solution. To boot, the process can be less expensive than producing plastics from petroleum.
It seems like the Sun finished August with a bit of bang.The latest footage from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory showed a region of the Sun unleashing over half a dozen solar flares between August 25 and 26.The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare that erupted on the left side of the sun followed by several more. While solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation, harmful radiation cannot pass through the Earth's atmosphere and affect people on the ground.
It may sound like science fiction, but astronomers have worked out a scheme that will allow them to detect and measure particles ten times smaller than the width of a human hair, even at many light-years distance. They can do this by observing a blue tint in the light from far-off objects caused by the way in which small particles, no more than a micron in size (one-thousandth of a millimeter) scatter light.
NASA new mega-rocket, a towering booster designed for deep space missions, will be ready for its first test flight no later than November 2018, space agency officials announced Wednesday (Aug. 27).Related: New NASA Rocket, the Largest Ever Made, May Carry Humans to Mars
Life as we know it requires energy of some sort to survive and thrive. For plants, that source of energy is the Sun. But there are some microbes that can survive using energy from chemical reactions. Some of them even eat salts, such as perchlorates.Perchlorate (ClO4-) is a highly oxidized form of chlorine. Perchlorate salts are found not only on Earth, but also on Mars. They're highly toxic to humans but are useful for components such as rocket fuel.
An American academic is creating a searchable database of 12 million historical copyright-free images.Kalev Leetaru has already uploaded 2.6 million pictures to Flickr, which are searchable thanks to tags that have been automatically added.The photos and drawings are sourced from more than 600 million library book pages scanned in by the Internet Archive organisation.
Archaeologists in Japan have discovered that a large mound in the village of Asuka in Nara Prefecture contains a pyramid-shaped tomb underneath, according to a news release in the Japan Times. While work at the site is ongoing, the tomb has preliminarily been dated to the latter half of the sixth century. The finding adds to the mystery in Asuka, where multiple carved granite stones in peculiar shapes are dotted across the region, including the most well-known structure - the Rock Ship of Masuda.
It is a mystery which has intrigued archaeologists for centuries: did the huge Neolithic stones which make up Stonehenge form a complete circle? Now the puzzle has been answered after the dry summer revealed the faint outline of the missing megaliths.Images here
Astronomers have shown that dead stars known as white dwarfs can re-ignite and explode as supernovas.The discovery appears to solve a mystery surrounding the nature of a particular category of stellar explosions known as Type Ia supernovas.Theorists suspected that white dwarfs could explode due to a disruptive interaction with a companion star, but lacked definitive evidence until now.
Two volcanoes half a world apart are causing havoc today: Several flights have been diverted around an eruption in Papua New Guinea, and authorities in Iceland briefly put aviation on highest alert (again) owing to a temperamental Mount Bardarbunga, which has been rumbling for the past week.Related: 'Widespread methane leakage' from ocean floor off US coast
SO MUCH for slowing down as you age. Earth's tectonic plates are moving faster now than at any point in the last 2 billion years, according to the latest study of plate movements. But the result is controversial, since previous work seemed to show the opposite.If true, the result could be explained by another surprising recent discovery: the presence of more water within Earth's mantle than in all of the oceans combined.
Last year saw the biggest worldwide boom in renewable energy yet. Across the globe, wind turbines and solar panels were rolled out and set up at a more rapid clip than ever before."In 2013, renewable power capacity expanded at its fastest pace to date," the Paris-based International Energy Agency wrote in its latest market report.Related: A new renewable energy source? Device captures energy from Earth's infrared emissions to outer space
It might seem strange to use an ingredient found in cupcakes and cookies as an energy source, but most living cells break down sugar to produce energy. And, interestingly, the energy density of sugar is significantly higher than that of current lithium-ion batteries.Recently, my colleagues and I successfully demonstrated the concept of a sugar biobattery that can completely convert the chemical energy in sugar substrates into electricity.
Diederik Stapel, the infamous "lying Dutchman" who in 2011 admitted to inventing the data in dozens of psychology research papers, unwittingly signalled his deceit through the language he used. As well as inflating the certainty surrounding his results, Stapel included more science-related terms to describe his methods when writing up his fraudulent "findings" than when describing genuine results.
The domestication of animals and plants, a prerequisite for the development of agriculture, is one of the most important technological revolutions during human history.The genetic changes that transformed wild animals into domesticated forms have long been a mystery. An international team of scientists has now made a breakthrough by showing that many genes controlling the development of the brain and the nervous system were particularly important for rabbit domestication.
The way in which the Italian city of Venice dealt with the outbreak of the plague in the fourteenth century holds lessons on how to even mitigate the consequences of today's emerging threats, like climate change, terrorism, and highly infectious or drug-resistant diseases. So says Dr. Igor Linkov of the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, and a visiting professor of the Ca Foscari University in Italy.
Prehistoric experts in Croatia claim to have found what they say is the world's oldest Aga. The 6,500-year-old oven was unearthed in a ancient home during an archeological dig at a Neolithic site in Bapska, a village in eastern Croatia, which experts say is one of the most important in Europe.
Ancient human DNA is shedding light on the peopling of the Arctic region of the Americas, revealing that the first people there did not leave any genetic descendants in the New World, unlike previously thought.The study's researchers suggest the first group of people in the New World Arctic may have lived in near-isolation for more than 4,000 years because of a mindset that eschewed adopting new ideas. It remains a mystery why they ultimately died off, they added.
Almost immediately after Albert Hofmann discovered the hallucinogenic properties of LSD in the 1940s, research on psychedelic drugs took off. These consciousness-altering drugs showed promise for treating anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and addiction, but increasing government conservatism caused a research blackout that lasted decades. Lately, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in psychedelics as possible therapeutic agents.
Ecuador is planning to create what it calls the world's first digital currency issued by a central bank, which some analysts believe could be a first step toward abandoning the country's existing currency, the U.S. dollar.The electronic money, which Central Bank officials say they expect will start circulating in December, does not have a name and officials would not disclose technical details.Related: Giant Chinese Bitcoin Mines Are the Foundation of the Next Economy
A UFO that changed colors was spotted in Lower Paxton Township Pennsylvania on August 25 and three police officers called out by the woman who first spotted it could not identify it. What was it?Police in Lower Paxton Township responded to a call by local resident Stephanie Wilkerson that she had been watching an apparent UFO for twenty minutes and wanted someone official to see it as well.
When UFOs fly over a metropolitan area known as "Space City," it's safe to assume explanations for the sightings also will fly.During an Aug. 11 rain storm in Houston, some odd lights were photographed above the city that's home to the Johnson Space Center, headquarters of NASA's Mission Control. Groups of aerial lights were seen maneuvering and changing their configurations in the sky, while others were photographed in a distinct circular pattern.
The most precise measurement yet of the distance to the Pleiades star cluster is reviving a dispute that has split the astronomy community largely down a trans-Atlantic divide for the past 17 years.The latest result, from a US team using a worldwide network of radio telescopes, is in good agreement with more than a dozen previous measurements to the Pleiades, made using multiple techniques. But it stands in sharp contrast to a figure from the Hipparcos satellite of the European Space Agency.
Earlier this week a pilot and his co-pilot spotted a mysterious orange and red glow while flying over the Pacific Ocean. The strange lights baffled the pilots, with no obvious explanation available.But a Nasa researcher has told MailOnline that he thinks the answer may lie in an 'energised bubble' in Earth's atmosphere caused by either solar wind, a powerful microwave beam or even a controversial research station in Alaska.
TIME to get hands-on. A new project is printing Braille picture books for visually impaired children. Each page turns the pictures from the original book into raised 3D shapes alongside traditional Braille text."The advantage of 3D-printing is really about making one-of-a-kind objects," says Tom Yeh, who heads up the Tactile Picture Books Project at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Memory can be boosted by using a magnetic field to stimulate part of the brain, a study has shown. The effect lasts at least 24 hours after the stimulation is given, improving the ability of volunteers to remember words linked to photos of faces.Scientists believe the discovery could lead to new treatments for loss of memory function caused by ageing, strokes, head injuries and early Alzheimer's disease.
The next time you get really mad, take a look in the mirror. See the lowered brow, the thinned lips and the flared nostrils? That's what social scientists call the "anger face," and it appears to be part of our basic biology as humans.Now, researchers at UC Santa Barbara and at Griffith University in Australia have identified the functional advantages that caused the specific appearance of the anger face to evolve.
Whether it's Beethoven or Eminem - everyone has a favourite song that takes them back to a point in time.Now, US scientists have uncovered why listening to a song you like might be enjoyable but a favourite song may plunge you into nostalgia.They have discovered that music triggers different functions of the brain, they report in the journal Scientific Reports.
In a few weeks, sensors in Indiana will go online that will record, in the words of Bryan Pijanowski, every sound the Earth makes. The array of microphones, geophones, and barometric gauges will run for a year, taping everything from the songs of birds arriving in the spring to the vibrations of the continent as ocean waves pound the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. They will measure earthquakes on the other side of the world and the stomping of cattle nearby, the ultrasonic whistles of bats and the barometric drop of cold fronts.
By artificially activating circuits in the brain, scientists have turned negative memories into positive ones.They gave mice bad memories of a place, then made them good - or vice versa - without returning to that place.
Sometimes a fish out of water really can do better on land! Scientists studying a strange fish called a bichir from riverbanks in Africa have found that when they raise this fish in a terrestrial environment, their bodies actually change in ways that make them more successful walkers.Related: Fish raised on land give clues to how early animals left the seas
A new fossil discovery identifies the earliest evidence for animals with muscles. An unusual new fossil discovery of one of the earliest animals on earth may also provide the oldest evidence of muscle tissue -- the bundles of cells that make movement in animals possible. The fossil, dating from 560 million years ago, was discovered in Newfoundland, Canada.
This article is a continuation of a couple of previous articles that I have written on the topic of Hercules and Balarama, and their Egyptian counterpart Khonsu. In this two-part article, I shall explore the lasting impact that Hercules had on the institution of Kingship in ancient Egypt. But, before I begin, here is a brief outline of what I had discussed in the previous two articles.Part 1Part 2
Ancient Barrier Canyon-style paintings crafted on sunset-washed rock faces of the Great Gallery, located in Horseshoe Canyon in southern Utah's Canyonlands National Park, are younger than expected, say Utah State University scientists."The most accepted hypotheses pointed to the age of these paintings as 2,000 to 4,000 years old or perhaps even 7,000 to 8,000 years old.
Attaching a stone tip on to a wooden spear shaft was a significant innovation for early modern humans living around 500,000 years ago. However, it was also a costly behavior in terms of time and effort to collect, prepare and assemble the spear. Stone tips break more frequently than wooden spears, requiring more frequent replacement and upkeep, and the fragility of a broken point could necessitate multiple thrusts to an angry animal. So, why did early hunters begin to use stone-tipped spears?
The hand axe is the first tool. Ever. Contrary to the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, this tool isn't a bone, but a pointy rock - which is pretty impressive when you consider that it dates back at least 1.5 million years. Typically made of a flint stone, rounded on one side, pointed on the other, with sharp edges in between, the hand axe was an all-purpose utility tool used for hunting, digging, chopping and whatever other tasks early hominids could dream up. Today, we can dream up a lot more.
The bucolic custom of a shepherd rounding-up his flock with a sheep dog is one of the few farming traditions which have endured in Britain, despite the mechanisation of much of the industry.But technology could be at last threatening the Border Collie, after academics discovered the algorithm for herding sheep.
One of the issues of self-driving vehicles is legal liability for death or injury in the event of an accident. If the car maker programs the car so the driver has no choice, is it likely the company could be sued over the car's actions.One way around this is to shift liability to the car owner by allowing them to determine a set of values or options in the event of an accident.
The technology behind a new type of photodetector mimics the way squid likely sense colors.Cephalopods like octopus and squid are masters of camouflage, but they are also color-blind. Scientists suspect that cephalopods may detect color directly through their skin.Based on that hypothesis, Bob Zheng, a graduate student at Rice University, set out to design a photonic system that could detect colored light.
Scientists have confirmed how the Sun makes 99 per cent of its energy.They have detected subatomic particles called pp neutrinos, they report in the journal Nature.Related: Strange Neutrinos from the Sun Detected for the First Time
Schrödinger's cat is the poster child for quantum weirdness. Now it has been immortalised in a portrait created by one of the theory's strangest consequences: quantum entanglement.These images were generated using a cat stencil and entangled photons. The really spooky part is that the photons used to generate the image never interacted with the stencil, while the photons that illuminated the stencil were never seen by the camera.
Humans are generally highly cooperative and often impressively altruistic, quicker than any other animal species to help out strangers in need. A new study suggests that our lineage got that way by adopting so-called cooperative breeding: the caring for infants not just by the mother, but also by other members of the family and sometimes even unrelated adults. In addition to helping us get along with others, the advance led to the development of language and complex civilizations, the authors say.
A growing number of younger Native Americans are helping to restore native animals to the Northern Great Plains, providing new homes for the animals and a connection to the past.They include people like Robert Goodman, an Oglala Lakota Sioux, who moved away from his reservation in the early 2000s and earned a degree in wildlife management. When he graduated in 2005, he could not find work in that field, so he took a job in construction in Rapid City, S.D.
Flashpoint Ferguson: When is Enough, Enough by Mike AliverniaFlashpoint Ferguson. Battlelines, Blurry by Mike AliverniaSTOP! Nuclear War Ahead by Sergey Baranov
Synchronised movement such as military parades makes men feel more powerful and intimidates opponents, a new study suggests.Social animals such as humans have had to evolve ways of quickly deciding whether to fight or run when confronted by an opponent, says anthropologist, Professor Daniel Fessler, of the University of California, Los Angeles.
American teenagers, rejoice! The American Academy of Pediatrics wants all US schools attended by children aged 10 to 18 to delay their opening times to 8.30 am or later. Currently, only 15 per cent start after this time.The aim is to tackle widespread sleep deprivation by helping teenagers manage the shift in their body clocks that coincides with puberty. This turns them into "night owls" who favour going to bed and rising 2 hours later than when they were youngers.
Bacteria in the gut can help protect mice against peanut food allergies, according to a new study. The findings suggest that probiotics might help treat or prevent these potentially lethal food allergies in people, researchers say.Food allergies, which are sometimes deadly immune system reactions to certain foods, currently affect about 15 million people in the United States. Food allergy rates among children rose by about 50 percent between 1997 and 2011.
Severe pain? Reach for the yeast. Genetically engineered yeasts can now efficiently produce a range of opiates, including morphine and oxycodone. With growing anxieties about supplies of opium poppies, it could be just what the doctor ordered.Opiates are primarily used as painkillers and cough suppressants, and many of the most widely used opiates can be produced only from opium poppies (Papaver somniferum).
The Icelandic volcano that experts fear could erupt and cause significant disruption to air travel was hit by the largest earthquake since tremors began 10 days ago, the country's Meteorological Office said on Tuesday.Intense seismic activity at Bardarbunga volcano has raised worries that an eruption could cause another ash cloud like that from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010, which shut down much of Europe's airspace for six days.
The Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world to survive largely intact. Almost 4000 years old, it is a vast structure constructed from 2.4 million limestone blocks, most about 2.5 tonnes but some weighing in at up to 80 tonnes. These were largely sourced from local limestone quarries.That raises a famous question. How did the Egyptians move these huge blocks into place?Paper here
Past research has indicated that couples who abuse substances are at a greater risk for divorce, in part because substance abuse often leads to an increase in domestic violence.However, new research has found that when it comes to marijuana use, the opposite effect occurs: couples who frequently use marijuana are actually at a lower risk of partner violence.Related: China is busting pot farmers from space
Could medical marijuana be an antidote for the nation's scourge of fatal overdoses caused by prescription pain medication? A new study suggests the answer is yes, and it's set off a flurry of medical debate over the risks and benefits of making cannabis more widely available to patients.The new research, published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, finds that deaths associated with the use of opiate drugs fell in 13 states after they legalized medical marijuana.
Thanks to Niels Vergouwen for permission to share his brilliant cartoon here. Such a perfect comment on the religious intolerance and bigotry swirling in the world today. Niels' website: http://www.couldbeworse-comic.com/index.html. Check out the archive: http://www.couldbeworse-comic.com/archief.html
Women with ancestral exposure to toxins may be more susceptible to stress, according to a recent study.Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and Washington State University found that female rats whose great grandparents were exposed to vinclozolin become much more vulnerable to stress. Males who have the same combination of ancestral exposure and stress do not have the same adverse effects.Related: Smoking during pregnancy may affect grandchildren's growth
The World War II program to develop an atomic bomb was the largest secret project ever undertaken by the U.S. government. But newly-declassified documents reveal how it hard it was to keep things secret as the weapon neared completion. Information leaks were everywhere, even in church sermons.
Researchers from Harvard University have discovered how to orientate small objects in any direction using magnetic levitation.Methods to manipulate small objects are crucial to manufacture complex structures such as electronic components in assembly lines.
The mystery surrounding Stonehenge has suddenly deepened -- literally. A first-of-its-kind study suggests that 15 previously undiscovered or poorly understood monuments lie hidden under the ancient stone monument and its surroundings.For the study, researchers used a variety of techniques -- including ground-penetrating radar and 3D laser scanning -- to create a highly detailed subsurface map of the entire area.
The Taung Child, South Africa's premier hominin discovered 90 years ago by Wits University Professor Raymond Dart, never ceases to transform and evolve the search for our collective origins.Related: Early Human Ancestor's Brain Didn't Grow Like Modern Humans'
When the first Europeans entered the Ohio valley, they encountered hundreds of mysterious earthen mounds and enclosures.According to University of Cincinnati architectural historian John Hancock, a primary reason the ancient American earthworks seemed so mysterious was their vast scale and subtle geometries. That made them fundamentally different from traditional Western ideas of what architecture should look like.
Neanderthals went extinct in Europe about 40,000 years ago, giving them millennia to coexist with modern humans culturally and sexually, new findings suggest.This research also suggests that modern humans did not cause Neanderthals to rapidly go extinct, as some researchers have previously suggested, scientists added.
Virtual reality can be used to give the illusion of going "back in time", according to an exploratory study.In this virtual world, subjects were able to reduce how many people a gunman killed, an event they had unknowingly been part of.
Here's more fodder for the great paper vs. e-book debate.A new study has found that readers using an e-reader were "significantly" worse than print book readers at remembering when events occurred in a story, The Guardian reports.
It sounds like science fiction, but it seems that bacteria within us -- which outnumber our own cells about 100-fold -- may very well be affecting both our cravings and moods to get us to eat what they want, and often are driving us toward obesity.Bacterial species vary in the nutrients they need. Some prefer fat, and others sugar, for instance.
Stimulating nerves in your ear could improve the health of your heart, researchers have discovered. Scientists used a standard TENS machine like those designed to relieve labour pains to apply electrical pulses to the tragus, the small raised flap at the front of the ear immediately in front of the ear canal.
A whole functional organ has been grown from scratch inside an animal for the first time, say researchers in Scotland.A group of cells developed into a thymus - a critical part of the immune system - when transplanted into mice.
The moon has a distinctive smell. Ask any Apollo moonwalker about the odiferous nature of the lunar dirt and you'll get the same answer.With NASA's six Apollo lunar landing missions between 1969 and the end of 1972, a total of 12 astronauts kicked up the powdery dirt of the moon, becoming an elite group later to be tagged as the "dusty dozen.".
Examination of one of the Almahata Sitta meteorites (aka, ALM-A, found in Sudan in 2008) by a team of space scientists working in Germany has revealed a volcanic past. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes how they dated the meteorite to just a few million years after our solar system was born and uncovered evidence that it suggests it was produced by volcanic activity.
Iceland lowered its warning code for possible volcanic disruption to the aviation industry to orange from red on Sunday after further analysis of an apparent eruption under a glacier found there had been no eruption after all.The risk level had been raised to red, the highest level on the country's five-point alert system, on Saturday after authorities detected signs of a small eruption beneath a glacier near the Bardarbunga volcano in central Icela.
A system that allows the exterior of aircraft to "feel" damage or injury in a way similar to human skin is in development by BAE Systems.The British defence contractor said the technology, which works by covering the entire body of a plane with tens of thousands of micro-sensors, is able to detect problems before they occur.
A professor at Texas Tech discovers Androstenone can stop dogs from barking, jumping.In a sense, John McGlone was just like any other pet owner a few years ago. He simply wanted to keep his Cairn Terrier from barking incessantly.
On a hot evening in June, in a crowded room above a London pub, Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, a research associate in the Centre for Neuropsychopharma-cology at Imperial College, is giving a public talk about his work. He is having to make himself heard over the boozy commotion downstairs, where people are watching Chile put Spain out of the World Cup. But there is a slightly giddy atmosphere in the function room, too, because the doctor's area of research is as exciting as it is taboo: he is investigating the brain effects and potential therapeutic uses of psychedelic drugs.
Fossils discovered in South America are evidence of true survivors: a new species of lizardlike reptiles that lived through the event that killed the dinosaurs.Dubbed Kawasphenodon peligrensis, the newly identified specieslived between 66 million and 23 million years ago in what is now Patagonia. K. peligrensis was a rhynchocephalian, a group of reptiles that was quite diverse worldwide until the end of the Cretaceous Period. Today, only one member of this group, the fearsomely toothed tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) survives. It lives only in New Zealand.
Chimpanzees and humans may share the same ability to empathise with other individuals by involuntarily matching their pupil size. The mimicry only appears to work between two humans or between two chimpanzees but not between species, suggesting the signalling reinforces social bonds within species.
From forest to ocean, the animal din of grunts, squawks, squeaks and squeals may be the product of complex vocal systems that are only an evolutionary step away from generating humanlike language.The vocalizations of orangutans, finches, killer whales and four other animal species have some form of grammar and may be more language-like in structure than previously thought, researchers report August 20 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
A new atomic clock is due for installation on the International Space Station in 2016, ushering in a new age of physics experiments probing the relationship between space and time.Called PHARAO (short for Projet d'Horloge Atomique par Refroidissement d'Atomes en Orbit), the atomic clock tells time by using lasers to chill cesium atoms to minus 273 degrees Celsius. It was designed by CNES, the French space agency, and is expected to travel to the station in two years.
Scientists have found a strange structure resembling a microbial cell inside a Martian meteorite, but they're not claiming that it's evidence of Red Planet life.The researchers discovered the microscopic oval object within the Nakhla Mars meteorite, which fell to Earth in Egypt in 1911. While the structure's appearance is intriguing, it most likely formed as a result of geological rather than biological processes, team members said.
Where, oh where, is the planet's missing heat?In 1999, the feverish rise in Earth's surface temperatures suddenly slowed, even as greenhouse gas emissions escalated. This unexpected slowdown has been called a global warming hiatus or global warming pause. Most climate scientists don't think this hiatus means global warming went kaput, but the reason (or reasons) for the slowdown has scientists flummoxed. Researchers have offered more than two dozen ideas to explain the missing heat.