Newsdesk Archive
A man used to believe his future children were safe as long as he had good genes, regardless of his lifestyle. Turns out a father can pass on both, according to a new study published in the journal, Nature Communications.Researchers found that a father's diet in the months leading up to conception can affect the expression of particular genes in his offspring, and potentially result in birth defects, cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, the Los Angeles Times reported.
A new study suggests that treating obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy improves golf performance in middle-aged men.
Patients named Brady could be at an increased risk of requiring a pacemaker compared with the general population, say researchers in a paper published in the Christmas edition of The BMJ this week.
An official in Bahrain has demanded that his government take steps to warn its citizens about the dangers of witchcraft and crack down on its practice.Bahrain is hardly alone in its embrace of, or perhaps belief in, witches and black magic.
Lloyd Pye, who died earlier this week and who argued for a human-alien connection based on a bizarre skull found in the Mexican desert.
The universe as we know it could cease to exist at any moment, the Daily Mail reported.It's more likely than ever that the universe could collapse and everything in it would be compressed into a small, hard ball, according to theoretical physicists. Researchers said the process may have already started in our cosmos and is deconstructing the rest of the universe.
Climate change is causing the North Pole's location to drift, owing to subtle changes in Earth's rotation that result from the melting of glaciers and ice sheets. The finding suggests that monitoring the position of the pole could become a new tool for tracking global warming.
Chimpanzees are sensitive to social influences but they maintain their own strategy to solve a problem rather than conform to what the majority of group members are doing. However, chimpanzees do change their strategy when they can obtain greater rewards, MPI researchers found. The study was published in PLOS ONE on November 28, 2013.
New research finds that hummingbird species living at high altitudes have evolved hemoglobin with enhanced oxygen-binding properties so they can thrive in oxygen-poor environments. This enhanced oxygen-binding property is derived from the same mutations that arose independently in these birds' hemoglobin genes.
Archaeologists investigating the Samanco archaeological complex in the region of Ancash have made a discovery that they are hailing as a new window into the relationships maintained between the Inca and the cultures they conquered.
A regional cold snap spread to Egypt on Friday, with some Cairo suburbs seeing snowfall for the first time in 122 years, a weather official said.The Middle East has been hit by a fierce winter storm, with temperatures in Egypt plummeting over the past two days as torrential rain also lashed parts of the country.
For the first time scientists have begun mapping one of the "last frontiers" of Antarctica.The area, called the Recovery Catchment, sits around 400 km inland from the British Antarctic Survey's Halley VI Research Station in northeast Antarctica.It is important because it the vast area contains enough ice to raise sea-levels by up to 3 m and the bedrock on which it sits is poorly understood.
Scientists say the eruption of the Lusi mud volcano in Indonesia should be all but over by the end of the decade - much sooner than previous estimates.The assessment is based on satellite data that records the rate at which the ground is changing in response to the material spewing up on to the surface.
In a new paper, hydrologists suggest at least part of the answer to the Earth's future water woes may be buried underneath the oceans.Over the past several decades, massive aquifers beneath the seabed have been found off coastlines across the globe, filled with water that ranges from fresh to about two-thirds less saline than seawater.
Imagine standing on the lush shores of a lake. Now imagine that it isn't one on Earth. The vegetation disappears, the temperature drops to -179ºC, and the sky takes on a sickly orange hue. Despite a bone-chilling breeze, the lake's dark surface lacks even the tiniest ripple. Welcome to Ligeia Mare on Titan.
A cave on the northwestern coast of Sumatra holds a remarkable record of big tsunamis in the Indian Ocean.The limestone opening, close to Banda Aceh, retains the sandy deposits washed ashore by huge, earthquake-induced waves over thousands of years.
Scientists from the University of Lyon have discovered a new way to split hydrogen gas from water, using rocks.The method promises a new green energy source, providing copious hydrogen from a simple mixture of rock and water.
A charity which bought 24 sacred Native American masks at a controversial Paris auction is to return them to the Hopi and Apache tribes in the US.The US-based Annenberg Foundation said it had spent a total of $530,000 (£322,000; 385,000 euros) at the auction of masks and other artefacts.
Differences in children's exam results at secondary school owe more to genetics than teachers, schools or the family environment, according to a study published yesterday.The research drew on the exam scores of more than 11,000 16-year-olds who sat GCSEs at the end of their secondary school education.
With evidence growing that meditation can have beneficial health effects, scientists have sought to understand how these practices physically affect the body.A new study by researchers in Wisconsin, Spain, and France reports the first evidence of specific molecular changes in the body following a period of mindfulness meditation.
To protect themselves, some animals rapidly change color when their environments change, but chameleons change colors in unusual ways when they interact with other chameleons. Arizona State University researchers have discovered that these color changes don't happen "out-of-the-blue" -- instead, they convey different types of information during important social interactions.
A new greenhouse gas that is 7,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the Earth has been discovered by researchers in Toronto.The newly discovered gas, perfluorotributylamine (PFTBA), has been in use by the electrical industry since the mid-20th century.
Air flows mostly in a one-way loop through the lungs of monitor lizards -- a breathing method shared by birds, alligators and presumably dinosaurs, according to a new University of Utah study.
Scientists say they are in for an anxious wait as they prepare to wake a comet-chasing probe from deep-space hibernation.In January, they will attempt to bring the Rosetta spacecraft back online so it can journey towards Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Jupiter's icy moon Europa may erupt with fleeting plumes of water more than 20 times the height of Mt. Everest, scientists say.If these giant waterspouts are confirmed, they could be a way to detect signs of any life that might exist in the underground ocean that researchers suspect Europa has, scientists added.
A new look at data from a NASA spacecraft has revealed evidence a colossal impact on Jupiter's moon Europa, a collision that may have delivered key minerals and perhaps even the raw ingredients for life, scientists say.
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs may have catapulted life to Mars and the moons of Jupiter, US researchers say.They calculated how many Earth rocks big enough to shelter life were ejected by asteroids in the last 3.5bn years.
The team operating Nasa's Curiosity rover is implementing a new exploration strategy on the Red Planet.Having established that the ancient environment at the robot's landing site was once habitable for certain types of microbe, the scientists now want to focus on specific questions relating to life.
The planet closest to the sun has shrivelled much more over its lifetime than previously thought, scientists have found.Studies of Mercury show that it has shrunk by about 11 kilometers across since the solar system's fiery birth 4.5 billion years ago. As the planet cooled and contracted, it became scarred with long curved ridges similar to the wrinkles on a rotting apple.
When teams participating in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) were announced last year, almost all of them provided reasonably detailed renderings that gave us a good idea of the robots that they were working on.The notable exception was NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC), which only released a piece of concept art that appeared to show a Robonaut-like humanoid, but didn't give much detail. And since then, NASA JSC has been extraordinarily secretive about what they've been working on. Naturally, we got a little bit curious, and back in October, IEEE Spectrum went to Houston for a preview of NASA JSC's DRC robot, Valkyrie.
At the Roman necropolis in Al-Qantara East the Egyptian mission of the Ministry of State of Antiquities (MSA) uncovered two Ptolemaic tombs that can be dated to the first century AD.MSA Minister Mohamed Ibrahim told Ahram Online that the first tomb belongs to a priest called Mina from a Roman area named Sila.The tomb is 6.5 meters high and 2.5 meters long. It is built of mud brick and has a vaulted ceiling and a burial shaft.
Geologists from Brigham Young University, Berkeley Geochronology Center and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found evidence of twenty ancient supervolcanoes near the Utah-Nevada border.
A newly discovered greenhouse gas is believed to be 7,000 times stronger than standard carbon dioxide (CO2), but researchers suggest it may not be new at all.Accoridng to the Guardian, the University of Toronto (U of T) research team determined that the electrical industry has used perfluorotributylamine (PFTBA), the newly discovered gas, since the mid-20th century.
The Terracotta Warriors, along with other life-size sculptures built for the First Emperor of China, were inspired by Greek art, new research indicates.About 8,000 Terracotta Warriors, which are life-size statues of infantryman, cavalry, archers, charioteers and generals, were buried in three pits less than a mile to the northeast of the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor. He unified the country through conquest more than 2,200 years ago. Pits containing sculptures of acrobats, strongmen, dancers and civil servants have also been found near the mausoleum.
Uruguay became the first country to legalize the growing, sale and smoking of marijuana on Tuesday, a pioneering social experiment that will be closely watched by other nations debating drug liberalization.A government-sponsored bill approved by 16-13 votes in the Senate provides for regulation of the cultivation, distribution and consumption of marijuana and is aimed at wresting the business from criminals in the small South American nation.
Depression strikes some 35 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, contributing to lowered quality of life as well as an increased risk of heart disease and suicide. Treatments typically include psychotherapy, support groups and education as well as psychiatric medications. SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, currently are the most commonly prescribed category of antidepressant drugs in the U.S., and have become a household name in treating depression.
The National Library of Norway is planning to digitize all the books by the mid 2020s. Yes. All. The. Books. In Norwegian, at least. Hundreds of thousands of them. Every book in the library's holdings.Related: Norway To Digitize All Norwegian Books, Allowing Domestic IP Addresses To Read All Of Them, Irrespective Of Copyright Status
Cultural commentators and itinerant moaners have often complained that our obsession with taking pictures stops us from experiencing the moment, and now scientists are saying that our snap-happy habits may also be ruining our memory.
A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our Universe could be just one big projection.In 1997, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed that an audacious model of the Universe in which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin, vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics.
NSA and GCHQ collect gamers' chats and deploy real-life agents into World of Warcraft and Second LifeTo the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs.
More young men in California rise in pitch at the end of their sentences when talking, new research shows.This process is known as "uptalk" or "valleygirl speak" and has in the past been associated with young females, typically from California or Australia.But now a team says that this way of speaking is becoming more frequent among men.
Mankind's attitude to gold is bizarre. Chemically, it is uninteresting - it barely reacts with any other element. Yet, of all the 118 elements in the periodic table, gold is the one we humans have always tended to choose to use as currency. Why?Why not osmium or chromium, or helium, say - or maybe seaborgium?
When it comes to making food yummy and pleasurable, humans clearly outshine their fellow animals on Earth. After all, you don't see rabbits caramelizing carrots or polar bears slow-roasting seal.But in terms of the global food chain, Homo sapiens are definitely not the head honchos.
A material made from plastic bottles can knock out a drug-resistant fungal infection that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts will become a more serious health problem in coming years.Antibiotic-resistant bacteria and fungi kill at least 23,000 people in the U.S. alone each year, and many of these microbial infections are acquired by people hospitalized for other reasons.
Well, that's one way to go about it. Over the past few weeks, Australian scientists have collected billions of sperm from spawning coral in the Great Barrier Reef, Australian news station ABC News reports. The sperm are to be cryogenically frozen, in case scientists want to rebuild parts of the reef in the future.
The final part of an epic dictionary of medieval Latin is to be published this week, bringing to a close a project initiated 100 years ago.The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources has more than 58,000 entries and currently spans 15 volumes, the first of which came out in 1975.
A new study co-authored by (among others) Dean Radin and Julie Beischel has found that electrocortical activity during mediumistic 'communication' is distinctly different than during other contemplative moments such as thinking about living or imaginary people.
The coldest place on Earth has been measured by satellite to be a bitter minus 93.2 Celsius (-135.8F). As one might expect, it is in the heart of Antarctica, and was recorded on 10 August, 2010.Researchers say it is a preliminary figure, and as they refine data from various space-borne thermal sensors it is quite likely they will determine an even colder figure by a degree or so.
Less than five days after leaving Earth atop a blazing Long March launcher, China's Chang'e 3 spacecraft reached lunar orbit Friday to prepare for an historic rocket-assisted touchdown in the moon's Bay of Rainbows later this month.Outfitted with a six-wheeled robotic rover and smarts to avoid hazards in the landing zone, Chang'e 3 is China's boldest unmanned space mission to date, extending feats achieved by a pair of lunar orbiters launched in 2007 and 2010.
The scientists behind the Curiosity rover mission on Mars have fleshed out their findings about an ancient lake that they now say apparently had everything needed to sustain microbes that can live off minerals.Related: Lake on Mars could have teemed with microbial life
Two patients who researchers hoped had been cured of HIV have seen their infections return, dashing hopes that the virus had been eradicated from their bodies.
In our youth we are strong and healthy and then we weaken and die - that's probably how most would describe what ageing is all about. But, in nature, the phenomenon of ageing shows an unexpected diversity of patterns and is altogether rather strange, conclude researchers from The University of Southern Denmark.
Scientists have discovered a previously undescribed species of giant clam on coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific region.The yet-to-be-named species belongs to Tridacna, a genus of large saltwater clams.
Spider webs actively spring towards prey thanks to electrically conductive glue spread across their surface, Oxford University scientists have discovered.The researchers found that the electrostatic properties of the glue that coats spider webs causes them to reach out to grab all charged particles, from pollen and pollutants to flying insects.
Scientists led by Dr David Fairlie from the University of Queensland, Australia, have found abnormal amounts of an inflammatory protein called PAR2 in the fat tissues of overweight and obese rats and humans.
Some of Madagascar's ring-tailed lemurs head to bed in caves every night, new research finds. The study is the first evidence of modern wild primates sleeping regularly in caves.
Ancient farming practices, such as raising fish in rice paddies in China or Aboriginal Australian fire controls, will get a new lease of life under plans to slow extinctions of animals and plants, experts said on Monday.
Usually referred to as chilli peppers, the flowering plants of the genus capsicum are well known today, but there are relatively few pre-Columbian archaeological sites that actually contain any remains.
National Geographic and Google are trying to recreate the thrill of cracking open one of the magazine's signature paper maps, but in the digital world. A new project puts more than 500 of National Geographic's 800 historic maps online using Google's Maps Engine platform.
Egyptian police say they have recovered an ancient statue of Tutankhamun's sister, stolen during unrest in August.The limestone figurine believed to be of Ankhesamon was among hundreds of artefacts taken from the museum in Mallawi, amid the unrest following the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi.
What if the universe had no beginning, and time stretched back infinitely without a big bang to start things off? That's one possible consequence of an idea called "rainbow gravity," so-named because it posits that gravity's effects on spacetime are felt differently by different wavelengths of light, aka different colors in the rainbow.
In Japan, wet umbrellas are a problem taken a little more seriously than in the rest of the world. Many of the country's stores offer disposable bags for you to pack your dripping umbrella into, and now some of its creative types have taken on the task of improving the basic design as well.
In Japan, wet umbrellas are a problem taken a little more seriously than in the rest of the world. Many of the country's stores offer disposable bags for you to pack your dripping umbrella into, and now some of its creative types have taken on the task of improving the basic design as well.
WHO needs wires? An idea for sending power over long distances via lasers and balloons could help provide emergency power where it is needed. Stephen Blank of the New York Institute of Technology wants to use aerostats, military-grade balloons, to send hundreds of kilowatts of power over several hundred kilometres. A laser would be sent up to the aerostat through a fibre-optic cable, then beamed through the air to a distant aerostat where the high-energy light is converted into electricity, which streams back down to earth via a tether.
Engineers have figured how to harvest energy from sound; a neat physics trick that could soon lead to quieter jet engines, heavy construction equipment and factory machines, and perhaps a new way to generate wind power.Separate teams of investigators have developed prototype devices that create small amounts of energy, just enough to run sensors inside noisy places. These sensors can then be used to actually dampen the sound of the noise itself, according to Stephen Horowitz, a research engineer at Ducommun Miltec, an aerospace contractor based in Huntsville, Ala.
In a refreshingly pro-science move, the House Science Committee set aside two hours yesterday to discuss the ongoing search for extraterrestrial life. The ensuing conversation was fascinating, but at times infuriating, with the experts discussing everything from alien biosignatures to the possibility that we're being watched.
Your phone knows everything about you - how much you walk, talk and what level of Candy Crush you're stuck on - but soon it could be spilling secrets to your doctor. More and more physicians are prescribing apps that help track their patients' illnesses through information collected by their smartphones. "With the widespread use now of smartphones, it's a really exciting opportunity to help people live healthier lives."Related: NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show
Conduct an Internet search for "masturbation," and you will find hundreds, if not thousands, of slang phrases for the act.This proliferation of slang phrases suggests people want to talk about masturbation, but are uncomfortable about doing so directly. Using comedic terms provides a more socially acceptable way to express themselves.
Dr. Anthony Youn, a doctor in Detroit, said cannabis use can result in a decrease in testosterone levels, leading to the development of excess breast tissue. Gynecomastia, otherwise known as man boobs, is caused by a hormone imbalance between testosterone and estrogen.
"Most people think to get more trees, you just collect seeds and plant them," said Scott Merkle, a professor of forest biology in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources."We're actually making trees from the cells that grow in our cultures," he said.
Around the world, there are buildings that are decorated and built almost entirely with human bones. They form eerily symmetrical patterns, and turn death into an architectural flourish. These are some of the most remarkable.
Indigenous Australians took European glass beads from Macassan seafarers in return for giving them fishing rights on traditional lands as early as the 18th Century, say archaeologists.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is diagnosed when individuals exhibit characteristic behaviors that include repetitive actions, decreased social interactions, and impaired communication. Curiously, many individuals with ASD also suffer from gastrointestinal (GI) issues, such as abdominal cramps and constipation.
A 115-million-year-old fossilized wasp from northeast Brazil presents a baffling puzzle to researchers. The wasp's ovipositor, the organ through which it lays its eggs, looks a lot like those of present-day wasps that lay their eggs in figs. The problem, researchers say, is that figs arose about 65 million years after this wasp was alive.
Neil Armstrong may have made a giant leap forward for mankind when he landed on the moon more than 40 years ago, but scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center in California are looking out for plantkind. The Lunar Plant Growth Habitat project is hoping to put some basil, flowers and turnips on the moon in late 2015.
Just over a year since launch, NASA's Van Allen Probes mission continues to unravel longstanding mysteries of Earth's high-energy radiation belts that encircle our planet and pose hazards to orbiting satellites and astronauts.Derived from measurements taken by a University of New Hampshire-led instrument on board the twin spacecraft.
Want to know when the Anthropocene started exactly? It will only cost an entirely revamped scientific effort in archaeology, ecology and paleontology, among other disciplines, at an unprecedented planetary scale, according to a new paper calling for such a scheme.
University of Bristol climate scientist Dan Lunt, writing under the name Radagast the Brown, released a paper today where he used powerful supercomputers to model the climate of Middle Earth. So of course he had to release it in Dwarvish, Elvish and English. He made some fascinating scientific observations, too.
The visitors from the Arctic have shown up as far south as North Carolina, on the island of Bermuda and in unusually large numbers in the Northeast and around the Great Lakes. Yesterday (Dec. 5), 15 were counted at Logan Airport in Boston.For reasons no one understands, snowy owl sightings are spiking in eastern North America this winter.
After spending decades puzzling over the origin of Mima mounds, scientists have suggested that pocket gophers may be the mystery architects of the 8-foot-tall, 30-foot-wife dirt pyramids.Mima mounds - massive, grass-covered round or oval earth pimples - were first discovered in 1841 in Western Washington state in a 630-acre prairie.
Potted plants are normally grown for decorative purposes, positive psychological effects and health benefits. Now, a new study by the University of Exeter has revealed that houseplants at workplace can enhance creativity and productivity of employees, which could eventually lead to promotion and improve company's overall performance.
Scientists from Rice University and the University of Bremen's Center for Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM) in Germany have combined cutting-edge experimental techniques and computer simulations to find a new way of predicting how water dissolves crystalline structures like those found in natural stone and cement.
A giant extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, has been discovered orbiting a distant star. But this is no "ordinary" alien planet -- it shouldn't exist. To put it bluntly, it's an affront to current planet formation theories.HD 106906b is a gas giant exoplanet with a mass 11 times that of Jupiter. So far, this may not seem too strange; hundreds of massive explanets have been spotted in our galaxy. But this one is peculiar in that it orbits its star 650 times the distance the Earth orbits the sun. It's this 650 AU (astronomical unit) distance that is causing some serious astronomical confusion.
Sharks are some of nature's most spectacular creatures--and lemon sharks are no exception. Scientists have discovered that after 15 years, these animals return to their birthplace to give birth to their own young. The findings confirm this behavior for the first time ever in sharks.Sharks are difficult to track as they make their way through the ocean. That's why the scientists tagged more than 2,000 baby sharks in the Bahamas over the 19-year ongoing project.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has obtained the highest-resolution movie yet of a unique six-sided jet stream, known as the hexagon, around Saturn's north pole.This is the first hexagon movie of its kind, using color filters, and the first to show a complete view of the top of Saturn down to about 70 degrees latitude. Spanning about 20,000 miles (30,000 kilometers) across, the hexagon is a wavy jet stream of 200-mile-per-hour winds (about 322 kilometers per hour) with a massive, rotating storm at the center.
The five components are: Ren, Ka, Ib, Ba and Sheut.The simplest concept is Ren, which is literally your name: it lives for as long as you are remembered, or can be read about on inscriptions, or included in prayers for the ancestors and their achievements.Ka is also easy enough to translate into modern idiom, for it is that vital essence that makes the difference between the living and the dead, between life and dead meat, between a warm body and cold clay.
The sound of icebergs breaking apart in the ocean could make the seas a noisier place. In turn, whales and other cetaceans could have a harder time hearing other animals' calls in the din when icebergs are calving, new research suggests.Anthony looks at the dire state of perhaps the most interesting and diverse part of our planet.Scientists generally agree that the North Atlantic has become noisier in the last 30 years, with commercial shipping traffic and storms the main culprits.
Seeds from Moringa oleifera trees can be used to purify water. Uppsala University leads a research group which has discovered that seed material can give a more efficient purification process than conventional synthetic materials in use today.
Multiple tombs lay hidden in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, where royalty were buried more than 3,000 years ago, awaiting discovery, say researchers working on the most extensive exploration of the area in nearly a century.The hidden treasure may include several small tombs, with the possibility of a big-time tomb holding a royal individual, the archaeologists say.Egyptian archaeologists excavated the valley, where royalty were buried during the New Kingdom (1550 - 1070 B.C.), between 2007 and 2010...
Nearly half a century ago, scientists started to unravel the structure of the sun and determine how solar material flowed on its surface. At the time, they predicted that the star should have massive cell structures, some 16 times the width of Earth, that carry currents across its surface.
Vast freshwater reserves are trapped beneath the ocean floor which could sustain future generations as current sources dwindle, say an international team of scientists.In this week's issue of Nature they estimate 500,000 cubic kilometres of low-salinity water is buried beneath the seabed on continental shelves around the world, including off Australia, China, North America and South Africa.
Popular television shows such as "Doctor Who" have brought the idea of time travel into the vernacular of popular culture. But problem of time travel is even more complicated than one might think. LSU's Mark Wilde has shown that it would theoretically be possible for time travelers to copy quantum data from the past.
A new, improved sequencing of ancient human relative genomes reveals that Homo sapiens didn't only have sex with Neanderthals and a little-understood line of humans called Denisovans. A fourth, mystery lineage of humans was in the mix, too.
For thousands of years, humans have been wondering whether there's life elsewhere in the universe. Now, the technology finally exists to search for it.To find extraterrestrial life, be it microbes or intelligent life, scientists need telescopes capable of detecting Earth-like planets in Earth's neighborhood and ways to detect biological signatures of life or signs of alien technology. While some of these tools already exist, astrobiologists asked the U.S. Congress Dec. 4 to invest in the next chapter of the search for life beyond Earth.
Launching a mission to the planet Venus might help reveal exactly how the moon formed nearly 4.5 billion years ago, one prominent researcher says.Planetary scientists think the moon coalesced out of material blasted into space when a large object slammed into the proto-Earth in the early days of the solar system.
Insects prefer to eat green leaves rather than red ones, research from Victoria University has shown. Ignatius Menzies, who will be awarded a PhD in Ecology and Biodiversity next week, tested a long-standing hypothesis that plants use red foliage as a visual warning to deter approaching insect pests.Related: Insects Recognize Faces Using Processing Mechanism Similar to That of Humans
Bees have a much greater economic value than is widely known, according to a scientific probe into strawberry-growing published on Wednesday.Strawberries pollinated by bees were of far higher commercial value than fruit that was self-pollinated or pollinated by the wind.
A new study by researchers at Washington University, UCLA, and Indiana University claims that one can easily identify a person's height just by listening to their voice.Researchers found that taller people have lower tones than their shorter counterparts. This is because the sound produced in the lower airways of the lungs, known as a subglottal resonance, deepens with height.
Conjuring up a visual image in the mind -- like a sunny day or a night sky -- has a corresponding effect on the size of our pupils, as if we were actually seeing the image, according to new research.
Ever wondered just where humans fall on the food chain? Wonder no more. Researchers have calculated our precise location (somewhere right next a pig or an anchovy, apparently), along with another surprising trend: While we're firmly omnivores, we're also becoming more and more carnivorous.