Newsdesk Archive
The blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus), a species that lives at great depths and is rarely seen but resembles a marine Jabba the Hut, has been voted the world's ugliest animal.More than 3,000 votes were cast in the online competition, with 795 for the blobfish.The campaign, run by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society to decide its new mascot, was set up to raise awareness for endangered and aesthetically challenged animals.
I am today launching a campaign (pdf) aimed at ending an industry that I created. That trade is in kopi luwak, AKA civet coffee
Do violent video games such as
Fish are dying off en masse in the waters around Honolulu after hundreds of thousands of gallons of molasses spilled into Honolulu Harbor this week -- and there's nothing officials can do to clean it up.Thousands of fish, suffocated by the sugary sludge, have been killed or threatened. Footage from local media showed fish floating in the harbor, with some seeming to gasp above the surface of the water, which was contaminated by the thick, syrupy sweetener.
As the climate changes and oceans' acidity increases, tiny plankton seem set to succeed. An international team of marine scientists has found that the smallest plankton groups thrive under elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. This could cause an imbalance in the food web as well as decrease ocean CO2 uptake, an important regulator of global climate. The results of the study, conducted off the coast of Svalbard, Norway, in 2010, are now compiled in a special issue published in Biogeosciences, a journal of the European Geosciences Union.
Vapour has begun rising again from a reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, more than two-and-a-half years after its core melted down, the site's Japanese operator said Friday.Tokyo Electric Power said it believed the steam was coming from a puddle sitting atop the reactor, but has not been able to clarify why vapour started appearing occasionally from July this year.
The human finger is so sensitive it can detect bumps as small as a few nanometres in height, according to a new study.The finding, publish today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, could have applications in fields as diverse as personal electronics and robotics, through hair products and tissues.
Bitcoins, the online currency built on cryptography and beloved by libertarians, could be available for purchase through specialized ATMs in the United States this year.At least two firms have plans to ship out Bitcoin ATMs to American cities in the coming months.
A Spanish nun has become one of Europe's most influential left-wing public intellectuals. This year, thousands have joined her anti-capitalist movement, which campaigns for Catalan independence, the reversal of public spending cuts and nationalisation of banks and energy companies.
The 1,300-year-old tomb of one of ancient China's most influential women has been found in Shaanxi Province, adding another chapter to a soap-opera tale of slavery, redemption, intrigue and beheading.Archaeologists deciphered the epitaph on a marker to determine that it came from the tomb of Shangguan Wan'er, an influential 7th-century politician and poet during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (690-705), China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
Model organisms, brought into labs because they are easy to work with, adapt to the lab, often shedding characteristics that allowed them to survive in the wild. Scientists who work with model organisms rarely look at the wild strains, but when they do, they can be surprised by what they find.
The Mars One venture says more than 200,000 people registered their interest in taking a one-way trip to the Red Planet, but only a fraction of those are officially in the running for the trip.To be precise, 2,782 people have paid their registration fee and submitted public videos in which they make their case for going to Mars in 2023
Scientists used to scan the skies for messages from alien civilisations. Now they go looking for their ruinsThe natural sciences tell us that time is deep, and that civilisations could have arisen well before the Earth formed. Today, a small group of interstellar archaeologists is looking for evidence of those civilisations. They are tantalised by the possibility that the universe is not just a birthplace of alien cultures but also their necropolis.
Brynne Larson and Tess and Savannah Scherkenback are all-American girls from Arizona, who enjoy martial arts and horse riding. But something sets them apart from most teenagers - they perform public exorcisms and often appear on TV chat shows.
Icebreakers trawl the world's frozen seas, cutting a path for other ships in the harsh Arctic winter. Now, a new kind of ship that can drift sideways could make traffic - and trade - easier. Could the maritime technology change life in the extreme north?Traditional icebreakers use their weight, size and power to bulldoze crusts of ice as much as 3m (10ft) thick when the sea freezes over.In its wake, this special class of ship leaves a narrow, open lane along which other vessels can follow.
For five years, a scientific expedition tried reaching Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in a remote, wind-ridden corner of Antarctica. The obstacles to get to the ice shelf were extreme, but the science goal was simple: to measure how fast the sea was melting the 37-mile long ice tongue from underneath by drilling through the ice shelf.
The blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus), a species that lives at great depths and is rarely seen but resembles a marine Jabba the Hut, has been voted the world's ugliest animal.More than 3,000 votes were cast in the online competition, with 795 for the blobfish.The campaign, run by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society to decide its new mascot, was set up to raise awareness for endangered and aesthetically challenged animals.
I am today launching a campaign (pdf) aimed at ending an industry that I created. That trade is in kopi luwak, AKA civet coffee
Do violent video games such as
Fish are dying off en masse in the waters around Honolulu after hundreds of thousands of gallons of molasses spilled into Honolulu Harbor this week -- and there's nothing officials can do to clean it up.Thousands of fish, suffocated by the sugary sludge, have been killed or threatened. Footage from local media showed fish floating in the harbor, with some seeming to gasp above the surface of the water, which was contaminated by the thick, syrupy sweetener.
As the climate changes and oceans' acidity increases, tiny plankton seem set to succeed. An international team of marine scientists has found that the smallest plankton groups thrive under elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. This could cause an imbalance in the food web as well as decrease ocean CO2 uptake, an important regulator of global climate. The results of the study, conducted off the coast of Svalbard, Norway, in 2010, are now compiled in a special issue published in Biogeosciences, a journal of the European Geosciences Union.
Vapour has begun rising again from a reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, more than two-and-a-half years after its core melted down, the site's Japanese operator said Friday.Tokyo Electric Power said it believed the steam was coming from a puddle sitting atop the reactor, but has not been able to clarify why vapour started appearing occasionally from July this year.
The human finger is so sensitive it can detect bumps as small as a few nanometres in height, according to a new study.The finding, publish today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, could have applications in fields as diverse as personal electronics and robotics, through hair products and tissues.
Bitcoins, the online currency built on cryptography and beloved by libertarians, could be available for purchase through specialized ATMs in the United States this year.At least two firms have plans to ship out Bitcoin ATMs to American cities in the coming months.
A Spanish nun has become one of Europe's most influential left-wing public intellectuals. This year, thousands have joined her anti-capitalist movement, which campaigns for Catalan independence, the reversal of public spending cuts and nationalisation of banks and energy companies.
The 1,300-year-old tomb of one of ancient China's most influential women has been found in Shaanxi Province, adding another chapter to a soap-opera tale of slavery, redemption, intrigue and beheading.Archaeologists deciphered the epitaph on a marker to determine that it came from the tomb of Shangguan Wan'er, an influential 7th-century politician and poet during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (690-705), China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
Model organisms, brought into labs because they are easy to work with, adapt to the lab, often shedding characteristics that allowed them to survive in the wild. Scientists who work with model organisms rarely look at the wild strains, but when they do, they can be surprised by what they find.
The Mars One venture says more than 200,000 people registered their interest in taking a one-way trip to the Red Planet, but only a fraction of those are officially in the running for the trip.To be precise, 2,782 people have paid their registration fee and submitted public videos in which they make their case for going to Mars in 2023
Scientists used to scan the skies for messages from alien civilisations. Now they go looking for their ruinsThe natural sciences tell us that time is deep, and that civilisations could have arisen well before the Earth formed. Today, a small group of interstellar archaeologists is looking for evidence of those civilisations. They are tantalised by the possibility that the universe is not just a birthplace of alien cultures but also their necropolis.
Brynne Larson and Tess and Savannah Scherkenback are all-American girls from Arizona, who enjoy martial arts and horse riding. But something sets them apart from most teenagers - they perform public exorcisms and often appear on TV chat shows.
Icebreakers trawl the world's frozen seas, cutting a path for other ships in the harsh Arctic winter. Now, a new kind of ship that can drift sideways could make traffic - and trade - easier. Could the maritime technology change life in the extreme north?Traditional icebreakers use their weight, size and power to bulldoze crusts of ice as much as 3m (10ft) thick when the sea freezes over.In its wake, this special class of ship leaves a narrow, open lane along which other vessels can follow.
For five years, a scientific expedition tried reaching Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in a remote, wind-ridden corner of Antarctica. The obstacles to get to the ice shelf were extreme, but the science goal was simple: to measure how fast the sea was melting the 37-mile long ice tongue from underneath by drilling through the ice shelf.
The blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus), a species that lives at great depths and is rarely seen but resembles a marine Jabba the Hut, has been voted the world's ugliest animal.More than 3,000 votes were cast in the online competition, with 795 for the blobfish.The campaign, run by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society to decide its new mascot, was set up to raise awareness for endangered and aesthetically challenged animals.
I am today launching a campaign (pdf) aimed at ending an industry that I created. That trade is in kopi luwak, AKA civet coffee
Do violent video games such as
Fish are dying off en masse in the waters around Honolulu after hundreds of thousands of gallons of molasses spilled into Honolulu Harbor this week -- and there's nothing officials can do to clean it up.Thousands of fish, suffocated by the sugary sludge, have been killed or threatened. Footage from local media showed fish floating in the harbor, with some seeming to gasp above the surface of the water, which was contaminated by the thick, syrupy sweetener.
As the climate changes and oceans' acidity increases, tiny plankton seem set to succeed. An international team of marine scientists has found that the smallest plankton groups thrive under elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. This could cause an imbalance in the food web as well as decrease ocean CO2 uptake, an important regulator of global climate. The results of the study, conducted off the coast of Svalbard, Norway, in 2010, are now compiled in a special issue published in Biogeosciences, a journal of the European Geosciences Union.
Vapour has begun rising again from a reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, more than two-and-a-half years after its core melted down, the site's Japanese operator said Friday.Tokyo Electric Power said it believed the steam was coming from a puddle sitting atop the reactor, but has not been able to clarify why vapour started appearing occasionally from July this year.
The human finger is so sensitive it can detect bumps as small as a few nanometres in height, according to a new study.The finding, publish today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, could have applications in fields as diverse as personal electronics and robotics, through hair products and tissues.
Bitcoins, the online currency built on cryptography and beloved by libertarians, could be available for purchase through specialized ATMs in the United States this year.At least two firms have plans to ship out Bitcoin ATMs to American cities in the coming months.
A Spanish nun has become one of Europe's most influential left-wing public intellectuals. This year, thousands have joined her anti-capitalist movement, which campaigns for Catalan independence, the reversal of public spending cuts and nationalisation of banks and energy companies.
The 1,300-year-old tomb of one of ancient China's most influential women has been found in Shaanxi Province, adding another chapter to a soap-opera tale of slavery, redemption, intrigue and beheading.Archaeologists deciphered the epitaph on a marker to determine that it came from the tomb of Shangguan Wan'er, an influential 7th-century politician and poet during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (690-705), China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
Model organisms, brought into labs because they are easy to work with, adapt to the lab, often shedding characteristics that allowed them to survive in the wild. Scientists who work with model organisms rarely look at the wild strains, but when they do, they can be surprised by what they find.
Scientists used to scan the skies for messages from alien civilisations. Now they go looking for their ruinsThe natural sciences tell us that time is deep, and that civilisations could have arisen well before the Earth formed. Today, a small group of interstellar archaeologists is looking for evidence of those civilisations. They are tantalised by the possibility that the universe is not just a birthplace of alien cultures but also their necropolis.
Brynne Larson and Tess and Savannah Scherkenback are all-American girls from Arizona, who enjoy martial arts and horse riding. But something sets them apart from most teenagers - they perform public exorcisms and often appear on TV chat shows.
Icebreakers trawl the world's frozen seas, cutting a path for other ships in the harsh Arctic winter. Now, a new kind of ship that can drift sideways could make traffic - and trade - easier. Could the maritime technology change life in the extreme north?Traditional icebreakers use their weight, size and power to bulldoze crusts of ice as much as 3m (10ft) thick when the sea freezes over.In its wake, this special class of ship leaves a narrow, open lane along which other vessels can follow.
For five years, a scientific expedition tried reaching Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in a remote, wind-ridden corner of Antarctica. The obstacles to get to the ice shelf were extreme, but the science goal was simple: to measure how fast the sea was melting the 37-mile long ice tongue from underneath by drilling through the ice shelf.
The blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus), a species that lives at great depths and is rarely seen but resembles a marine Jabba the Hut, has been voted the world's ugliest animal.More than 3,000 votes were cast in the online competition, with 795 for the blobfish.The campaign, run by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society to decide its new mascot, was set up to raise awareness for endangered and aesthetically challenged animals.
Fish are dying off en masse in the waters around Honolulu after hundreds of thousands of gallons of molasses spilled into Honolulu Harbor this week -- and there's nothing officials can do to clean it up.Thousands of fish, suffocated by the sugary sludge, have been killed or threatened. Footage from local media showed fish floating in the harbor, with some seeming to gasp above the surface of the water, which was contaminated by the thick, syrupy sweetener.
As the climate changes and oceans' acidity increases, tiny plankton seem set to succeed. An international team of marine scientists has found that the smallest plankton groups thrive under elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. This could cause an imbalance in the food web as well as decrease ocean CO2 uptake, an important regulator of global climate. The results of the study, conducted off the coast of Svalbard, Norway, in 2010, are now compiled in a special issue published in Biogeosciences, a journal of the European Geosciences Union.
Vapour has begun rising again from a reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, more than two-and-a-half years after its core melted down, the site's Japanese operator said Friday.Tokyo Electric Power said it believed the steam was coming from a puddle sitting atop the reactor, but has not been able to clarify why vapour started appearing occasionally from July this year.
The human finger is so sensitive it can detect bumps as small as a few nanometres in height, according to a new study.The finding, publish today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, could have applications in fields as diverse as personal electronics and robotics, through hair products and tissues.
Bitcoins, the online currency built on cryptography and beloved by libertarians, could be available for purchase through specialized ATMs in the United States this year.At least two firms have plans to ship out Bitcoin ATMs to American cities in the coming months.
A Spanish nun has become one of Europe's most influential left-wing public intellectuals. This year, thousands have joined her anti-capitalist movement, which campaigns for Catalan independence, the reversal of public spending cuts and nationalisation of banks and energy companies.
The 1,300-year-old tomb of one of ancient China's most influential women has been found in Shaanxi Province, adding another chapter to a soap-opera tale of slavery, redemption, intrigue and beheading.Archaeologists deciphered the epitaph on a marker to determine that it came from the tomb of Shangguan Wan'er, an influential 7th-century politician and poet during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (690-705), China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
Model organisms, brought into labs because they are easy to work with, adapt to the lab, often shedding characteristics that allowed them to survive in the wild. Scientists who work with model organisms rarely look at the wild strains, but when they do, they can be surprised by what they find.
A new study led by Adelaide researchers has estimated, for the first time, the rates of evolution during the "Cambrian explosion" when most modern animal groups appeared between 540 and 520 million years ago.The findings, published online today in the journal Current Biology, resolve "Darwin's dilemma": the sudden appearance of a plethora of modern animal groups in the fossil record during the early Cambrian period.
New research has revealed the hidden past of crocodiles, showing for the first time how these fierce reptiles evolved and survived in a dinosaur dominated world.While most modern crocodiles live in freshwater habitats and feed on mammals and fish, their ancient relatives were extremely diverse -- with some built for running around like dogs on land and others adapting to life in the open ocean, imitating the feeding behaviour of today's killer whales.
On the same day that the latest installment of the Jurassic Park film series has been confirmed, a study published in PLOS One has detailed experiments that seem to demonstrate once and for all that dinosaurs will never again walk the Earth.The 1993 film, based on a book by Michael Crichton, depicts a theme park island filled with dinosaurs, resurrected from ancient DNA extracted from fossilized mosquitoes trapped in amber.
With two diminutive legs locked into a leap-ready position, the tiny jumper bends its body taut like an archer drawing a bow. At the top of its legs, a minuscule pair of gears engage
In the centuries-old best friendship between dogkind and humankind, humans are apparently easily replaced with robots. Seemingly loyal canines are totally willing to interact with cold, hard machines, according to a new study in Animal Cognition, gazing lovingly at their robot faces and finding hidden foodstuffs that the robot pointed to. Robots, stop taking things away from us!
It's a question that has long fascinated and flummoxed those who study human behavior: From whence comes the impulse to dream? Are dreams generated from the brain's "top" -- the high-flying cortical structures that allow us to reason, perceive, act and remember? Or do they come from the brain's "bottom" -- the unheralded brainstem, which quietly oversees such basic bodily functions as respiration, heart rate, salivation and temperature control?.
There
The Voyager-1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to leave the Solar System.Scientists say the probe's instruments indicate it has moved beyond the bubble of hot gas from our Sun and is now moving in the space between the stars.Launched in 1977, Voyager was sent initially to study the outer planets, but then just kept on going.
NASA's Curiosity rover has captured two stunning videos of solar eclipses from the surface of Mars, including one that shows the Red Planet's skies darkening dramatically above the 1-ton robot.Curiosity recorded the two Mars solar eclipse videos on back-to-back days last month, Aug. 19 and Aug. 20. In both cases, Phobos
It's been a week of doom as far as the public face of science is concerned. On Tuesday we had Sir David Attenborough's depressing prognostications that the future is going to be worse for our children and their children (especially if we insist on producing more children in the first place).
New genetic research led by the Genographic Project consortium shows a distinctive ancestry for the Uros populations of Peru and Bolivia that predates the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores and may date back to the earliest settlement of the Altiplano, or high plain, of the central Andes some 3,700 years ago.
Long before the arrival of European colonists, the indigenous people of Mexico showed wide variation in their facial appearance, a diversity that perhaps has not been fully appreciated, a new study of skulls suggests. Researchers hope their findings might help forensic investigators acurately identify people who are killed attempting to cross the U.S. border.
An international team of researchers and archaeologists, led by Oxford University has new dating evidence indicating when the earliest fully modern humans arrived in the Near East, the region known as the Middle East today.They have obtained the radiocarbon dates of marine shell beads found at Ksar Akil, a key archaeological site in Lebanon, which allowed them to calculate that the oldest human fossil from the same sequence of archaeological layers is 42,400
The trait of lactase persistence (lactose tolerance) is probably one of the better schoolbook examples of natural selection in human populations. The reasons for this are probably two-fold. There is a very strong signature of selection within a specific gene known to associate with the trait in question in many populations. And, there is a very compelling historical narrative which explains rather neatly how this particular functional change could have undergone such strong selection within the past ~5,000 years across these populations.
Employers discriminate against "unattractive" job applicants - particularly women - according to a study at an Italian university.The study, from from the University of Messina, was titled: "Searching for a job is a beauty contest".Researchers sent more than 1100 fake CVs to more than 1500 advertised job openings. Keeping the skills and qualifications the same on them all, changed the names, genders, and pictures of the "applicants.".
Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, a 74-year-old astrobiologist and his team from the University of Sheffield believe to have found evidence of alien life after sending a balloon 27 km into the stratosphere. The specifically designed balloon was sent into the atmosphere above Chester during the annual Perseid meteor shower.On its way back to Earth, the balloon captured small biological organisms on the sterile microscope slides.
A new study led by Adelaide researchers has estimated, for the first time, the rates of evolution during the "Cambrian explosion" when most modern animal groups appeared between 540 and 520 million years ago.The findings, published online today in the journal Current Biology, resolve "Darwin's dilemma": the sudden appearance of a plethora of modern animal groups in the fossil record during the early Cambrian period.
New research has revealed the hidden past of crocodiles, showing for the first time how these fierce reptiles evolved and survived in a dinosaur dominated world.While most modern crocodiles live in freshwater habitats and feed on mammals and fish, their ancient relatives were extremely diverse -- with some built for running around like dogs on land and others adapting to life in the open ocean, imitating the feeding behaviour of today's killer whales.
On the same day that the latest installment of the Jurassic Park film series has been confirmed, a study published in PLOS One has detailed experiments that seem to demonstrate once and for all that dinosaurs will never again walk the Earth.The 1993 film, based on a book by Michael Crichton, depicts a theme park island filled with dinosaurs, resurrected from ancient DNA extracted from fossilized mosquitoes trapped in amber.
With two diminutive legs locked into a leap-ready position, the tiny jumper bends its body taut like an archer drawing a bow. At the top of its legs, a minuscule pair of gears engage
In the centuries-old best friendship between dogkind and humankind, humans are apparently easily replaced with robots. Seemingly loyal canines are totally willing to interact with cold, hard machines, according to a new study in Animal Cognition, gazing lovingly at their robot faces and finding hidden foodstuffs that the robot pointed to. Robots, stop taking things away from us!
It's a question that has long fascinated and flummoxed those who study human behavior: From whence comes the impulse to dream? Are dreams generated from the brain's "top" -- the high-flying cortical structures that allow us to reason, perceive, act and remember? Or do they come from the brain's "bottom" -- the unheralded brainstem, which quietly oversees such basic bodily functions as respiration, heart rate, salivation and temperature control?.
There
The Voyager-1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to leave the Solar System.Scientists say the probe's instruments indicate it has moved beyond the bubble of hot gas from our Sun and is now moving in the space between the stars.Launched in 1977, Voyager was sent initially to study the outer planets, but then just kept on going.
NASA's Curiosity rover has captured two stunning videos of solar eclipses from the surface of Mars, including one that shows the Red Planet's skies darkening dramatically above the 1-ton robot.Curiosity recorded the two Mars solar eclipse videos on back-to-back days last month, Aug. 19 and Aug. 20. In both cases, Phobos
It's been a week of doom as far as the public face of science is concerned. On Tuesday we had Sir David Attenborough's depressing prognostications that the future is going to be worse for our children and their children (especially if we insist on producing more children in the first place).
New genetic research led by the Genographic Project consortium shows a distinctive ancestry for the Uros populations of Peru and Bolivia that predates the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores and may date back to the earliest settlement of the Altiplano, or high plain, of the central Andes some 3,700 years ago.
Long before the arrival of European colonists, the indigenous people of Mexico showed wide variation in their facial appearance, a diversity that perhaps has not been fully appreciated, a new study of skulls suggests. Researchers hope their findings might help forensic investigators acurately identify people who are killed attempting to cross the U.S. border.
An international team of researchers and archaeologists, led by Oxford University has new dating evidence indicating when the earliest fully modern humans arrived in the Near East, the region known as the Middle East today.They have obtained the radiocarbon dates of marine shell beads found at Ksar Akil, a key archaeological site in Lebanon, which allowed them to calculate that the oldest human fossil from the same sequence of archaeological layers is 42,400
The trait of lactase persistence (lactose tolerance) is probably one of the better schoolbook examples of natural selection in human populations. The reasons for this are probably two-fold. There is a very strong signature of selection within a specific gene known to associate with the trait in question in many populations. And, there is a very compelling historical narrative which explains rather neatly how this particular functional change could have undergone such strong selection within the past ~5,000 years across these populations.
Employers discriminate against "unattractive" job applicants - particularly women - according to a study at an Italian university.The study, from from the University of Messina, was titled: "Searching for a job is a beauty contest".Researchers sent more than 1100 fake CVs to more than 1500 advertised job openings. Keeping the skills and qualifications the same on them all, changed the names, genders, and pictures of the "applicants.".
Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, a 74-year-old astrobiologist and his team from the University of Sheffield believe to have found evidence of alien life after sending a balloon 27 km into the stratosphere. The specifically designed balloon was sent into the atmosphere above Chester during the annual Perseid meteor shower.On its way back to Earth, the balloon captured small biological organisms on the sterile microscope slides.
A new study led by Adelaide researchers has estimated, for the first time, the rates of evolution during the "Cambrian explosion" when most modern animal groups appeared between 540 and 520 million years ago.The findings, published online today in the journal Current Biology, resolve "Darwin's dilemma": the sudden appearance of a plethora of modern animal groups in the fossil record during the early Cambrian period.
New research has revealed the hidden past of crocodiles, showing for the first time how these fierce reptiles evolved and survived in a dinosaur dominated world.While most modern crocodiles live in freshwater habitats and feed on mammals and fish, their ancient relatives were extremely diverse -- with some built for running around like dogs on land and others adapting to life in the open ocean, imitating the feeding behaviour of today's killer whales.
On the same day that the latest installment of the Jurassic Park film series has been confirmed, a study published in PLOS One has detailed experiments that seem to demonstrate once and for all that dinosaurs will never again walk the Earth.The 1993 film, based on a book by Michael Crichton, depicts a theme park island filled with dinosaurs, resurrected from ancient DNA extracted from fossilized mosquitoes trapped in amber.
With two diminutive legs locked into a leap-ready position, the tiny jumper bends its body taut like an archer drawing a bow. At the top of its legs, a minuscule pair of gears engage
In the centuries-old best friendship between dogkind and humankind, humans are apparently easily replaced with robots. Seemingly loyal canines are totally willing to interact with cold, hard machines, according to a new study in Animal Cognition, gazing lovingly at their robot faces and finding hidden foodstuffs that the robot pointed to. Robots, stop taking things away from us!
It's a question that has long fascinated and flummoxed those who study human behavior: From whence comes the impulse to dream? Are dreams generated from the brain's "top" -- the high-flying cortical structures that allow us to reason, perceive, act and remember? Or do they come from the brain's "bottom" -- the unheralded brainstem, which quietly oversees such basic bodily functions as respiration, heart rate, salivation and temperature control?.
There