Newsdesk Archive
As a trio of lawsuits claim compensation for sea rises resulting from fossil fuel emissions, campaigners say carbon majors must change their business models
Humans have created more than 8 billion metric tons of plastic since the large-scale production of synthetic materials began in the early 1950s, a new study suggests.
The study provides the first global analysis of the production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made, including synthetic fibers.
Environmental contamination with heavy metals is often the result of various types of industrial processes. Because heavy metals can be dangerous to humans and other wildlife, contaminated sites need to be cleaned up. This isn't easy. Chemical extraction methods can introduce different types of pollutants into the environment.
The idea of geoengineering, also known as climate engineering, is very controversial. But as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in our atmosphere, scientists are beginning to look at possible emergency measures.
The world's first full-scale floating wind farm has started to take shape off the north-east coast of Scotland.
The revolutionary technology will allow wind power to be harvested in waters too deep for the current conventional bottom-standing turbines.
South Miami approved legislation that any new residential building project must have a solar energy aspect. This is a major advancement in a state that has a long and complex history with renewable energy.
Almost 300 years ago Brazilian bandits stumbled upon a ruined city. It was such an intriguing site that the city was eventually described in ink. This text became known as Manuscript 512 – a document steeped in mystery and legend.
Related: Ancient African Coins Found in Australia Pose Interesting Questions About the Nation’s History
The National Museum of Chinese Writing in Anyang is offering a huge reward to anyone able to crack an ancient code found cut into bones and shells dating back more than 3,000 years to the Shang dynasty.
Today, there are over six million people that speak a language that evolved out of the Maya civilization, which inhabited parts of what are now Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador for over 3,000 years. However, while spoken languages have been largely retained, the written language has not been so fortunate.
Related: Imaging Reveals Medieval Manuscript Hidden in Book Binding
Language patterns could be predicted by simple laws of physics, a new study has found.
Dr James Burridge from the University of Portsmouth has published a theory using ideas from physics to predict where and how dialects occur.
Over the past 10,000 years human cultures have expanded from small groups of hunter-gatherers to colossal and complexly organized societies. The secrets to how and why this major cultural transition occurred have largely remained elusive.
New research finds that people who think they are less active than others in a similar age bracket die younger than those who believe they are more active—even if their actual activity levels are similar.
Physical exercise seems beneficial in the prevention of cognitive impairment and dementia in old age, numerous studies have shown. Now researchers have explored in one of the first studies worldwide how exercise affects brain metabolism.
Ketamine can have a “truly remarkable” effect on people with depression, researchers have said after a new study showed promising results among elderly patients.
Colleen Loo, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, led the world’s first randomised control trial into the drug’s effect on people over 60 with treatment-resistant depression.
More than a third of Americans don’t get enough sleep, and growing evidence suggests it’s not only taking a toll on their physical health through heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and/or other conditions, but hurting their mental health as well.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of East Anglia (UEA) found that owning or walking a dog was one of the most effective ways to beat the usual decline in later-life activity.
Related: Puppies have stroppy teenage phases too! Dogs go through an adolescent period when they hit 8 months
New research from Australia and Sweden has shown how a dragonfly's brain anticipates the movement of its prey, enabling it to hunt successfully. This knowledge could lead to innovations in fields such as robot vision.
Related: To Shrink Mosquito Population, Scientists Are Releasing 20 Million Mosquitoes
Humpback whales learn songs in segments – like the verses of a human song – and can remix them, a new study involving University of Queensland research has found.
Having a conversation causes the brains of the participants to begin to work simultaneously, researchers have found.
Researchers analyzed the brain activity of two strangers who had a conversation for the first time, finding that the movement of their brain waves took place at the same time.
See, hear. Our eardrums appear to move to shift our hearing in the same direction as our eyes are looking. Why this happens is unclear, but it may help us work out which objects we see are responsible for the sounds we can hear.
Sperm counts among men have more than halved in the last 40 years, research suggests, although the drivers behind the decline remain unclear.
The latest findings reveal that between 1973 and 2011, the concentration of sperm in the ejaculate of men in western countries has fallen by an average of 1.4% a year, leading to an overall drop of just over 52%.
Related: Sex is good for the heart, say scientists - but only if you're a man
At Jef Boeke's lab, you can whiff an odor that seems out of place, as if they were baking bread here.
But he and his colleagues are cooking up something else altogether: yeast that works with chunks of man-made DNA.
Finnish researchers have created a batch of single-cell protein that is nutritious enough to serve for dinner using a system powered by renewable energy. The entire process requires only electricity, water, carbon dioxide, and microbes. The synthetic food was created as part of the Food From Electricity project, which is a collaboration between Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) and the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
A combined team of researchers from Université Paris Diderot in France and Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina has discovered a reaction process that can be used to convert carbon dioxide to methane. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the team describes their technique, how well it worked, and their ideas for improving it.
While NASA experts (and eye doctors) are warning that the upcoming solar eclipse is not something to look at directly, fortunately some NASA scientists are peering through their smoked glasses at the sun and what they see is ominous at best, apocalyptic at worst.
Related: Yes, the sun is an ordinary, solar-type star after all
Worlds with a permanent day and night side aren’t obvious places to look in the search for extraterrestrial life. Apart from having extremes of temperature, such planets would make it hard for a biological clock to get going.
Related: Topsy-turvy motion creates light switch effect at Uranus
NASA's WISE spacecraft, scanning the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, has delivered new insights about these distant wanderers. Scientists found that there are about seven times more long-period comets measuring at least 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) across than had been predicted previously. They also found that long-period comets are on average up to twice as large as "Jupiter family comets," whose orbits are shaped by Jupiter's gravity and have periods of less than 20 years.
New results suggest free-floating giant planets are less common than previously believed, but hint at vast numbers of smaller castaway worlds
Studies show that the ancient Greek temples could have astronomical intentions – but on what scale?
The idea of a triangulation of the Greek world is not new, but rather an example of ‘sacred geography’, or how religious sites were situated according to astronomy or mythology.
The Siberian Times has reported the discovery of a set of strange mummies which display all of the hallmarks of an unknown ancient culture. The mummies were discovered near Salekhard in Russia’s far north at the Zeleniy Yar burial site, a medieval archaeological site containing dozens of graves. So far, two of the these strange new mummies have been discovered
Here’s some good news for those shaking their heads in disbelief at the unfolding stories out of Peru about the five (so far) 3-fingered, long-skulled mummies being touted as anything from 3-fingered, long-skulled mummies to aliens. The world’s leading authorities on mummies have come out with an official statement (well, as official as a statement on Facebook can be), and they’re not buying any of the possibilities and predictions put out by paranormal journalist Jamie Maussan and his friends at Gaia.com who are said to be conducting studies on the mummies, including DNA testing.
Related: Peruvian Mummy Update — And Then There Were Five
In his famous book, “The History of the America Indians” eighteenth century explorer and trader, John Adair stated that several hundred Cherokees, living in the North Carolina Mountains, spoke an ancient Jewish language that was nearly unintelligible to Jews from England and Holland. From this observation, Adair extrapolated a belief that all Native Americans were the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
In saliva, scientists have found hints that a "ghost" species of archaic humans may have contributed genetic material to ancestors of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa today.
The research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that sexual rendezvous between different archaic human species may not have been unusual.
Alt: Spit hints ancient humans interbred with ‘ghost’ species
A new species of non-photosynthesizing parasitic plant, Sciaphila sugimotoi, has been discovered on the subtropical island of Ishigaki in Okinawa, Japan
Related: Massive two-ton species of the world's largest bony fish is finally discovered after hiding away in the ocean's depths for centuries
Even a single urban tree can help moderate wind speeds and keep pedestrians comfortable as they walk down the street, according to a new study that also found losing a single tree can increase wind pressure on nearby buildings and drive up heating costs.
The number of Australians living in high-rise apartments doubled between 1991 and 2011 and that trend has continued since then. The quarter-acre dream is fast disappearing and larger blocks and family gardens along with it. As more people move from country areas to the city and as land to build homes near the city centre becomes scarce, we're getting further and further away from nature. It turns out this isn't great for our health.
African hunter-gatherers created the first “affluent society.” They were rich in time.
Every year automation and computerization squeeze out new segments of the labor force. In response, trade unions and workers anxiously wring their hands while savvy politicians demonize the “sinister” forces of globalization and make promises about job retention that they almost certainly won’t be able to keep.
Antidepressants have been linked to 28 reports of murder and 32 cases of murderous thoughts, in cases referred to the UK medicines regulator over the past 30 years, a BBC investigation has discovered.
Related: Psychopaths are better at learning to lie, say researchers
Stem cells in the brain could be the key to extending life and slowing ageing. These cells — which are located in the hypothalamus, a region that produces hormones and other signalling molecules — can reinvigorate declining brain function and muscle strength in middle-aged mice
A chance to remember? Forgotten memories have been reawakened in mice with Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting that the condition may not actually destroy our memories, but instead impair our ability to recall them.
It has long been assumed that Alzheimer’s disease completely erases memories. The condition involves clumps of proteins known as amyloid plaques and tau tangles accumulating in the brain, where they are thought to destroy the neurons that store our memories.
One of the primary open questions of astrobiology is whether there is extant or extinct life elsewhere the Solar System. Some scientists such as Penn State astrophysicist Jason Wright, a member of the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, have considered the possibility that a technological species could have existed in the Solar System prior to humanity's rise on Earth.
This week we all had a good laugh at the expense of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who asked NASA scientists during a committee hearing whether it was possible that a civilization existed on Mars thousands of years ago. "Would you rule that out?" he asked. "See, there's some people... Well, anyway."
Last week, astronomers at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico announced they had picked up some strange radio signals coming from a small red dwarf star, and they couldn’t quite figure out what was causing them. Now, it seems they have an answer: it turns out these bizarre radio signals most likely came from the transmissions of a couple of satellites.
Correlated noise in the two LIGO gravitational-wave detectors may provide evidence that the universe is governed by conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC) which assumes that the universe consists of a succession of aeons, says Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford. Penrose proposes that the apparent noise is actually a real signal of gravitational waves generated by the decay of hypothetical dark-matter particles predicted by CCC.
A large spinning hunk of hot, vaporized rock that forms when rocky, planet-sized objects collide
Earth may have taken on a jelly doughnut shape early in its history. The rocky planet was spinning through space about 4.5 billion years ago when it smacked into a Mars-sized hunk of rotating rock called Theia, according to one theory
Ancient hot springs may have bubbled up at a spot just south of the Martian equator. Left-behind mineral deposits described in a new study are not the first evidence of such features on Mars. But if confirmed, the discovery could affect where NASA’s Mars 2020 mission rover lands to start its hunt for signs of life.
The Trojan asteroids that follow Mars in its orbit might have come from the planet itself, blown off in an ancient impact rather than being late arrivals, a new study suggests.
The vast deposits of water ice likely lurking at the moon's poles could be tapped to help spur a sustainable economic and industrial expansion into space, researchers say.
Alt: The Moon's Interior Could Contain Lots of Water, Study Shows
Alt: Lunar colonies take a step closer to reality as large amounts of water are found under the Moon's surface
Physicists believe they have discovered a particle that is both matter and anti-matter, an idea that was first theorised 80 years ago.
When the Big Bang created the universe out of nothing, scientists believe the explosion created equal amounts of matter and anti-matter.
And, if they were ever to meet, they would annihilate each other – returning to ‘nothing’ apart from a burst of energy.
Scientists aren’t yet certain that electrons and their relatives are violating the Standard Model of particle physics, but the evidence is mounting
Modern physics has accustomed us to strange and counterintuitive notions of reality—especially quantum physics which is famous for leaving physical objects in strange states of superposition. For example, Schrödinger's cat, who finds itself unable to decide if it is dead or alive. Sometimes however quantum mechanics is more decisive and even destructive.
A boom in nanosatellites could revolutionize space science and industry, but also dramatically increase the hazards of space junk
Back in February an Indian Space Research Organization rocket deployed over a hundred miniature spacecraft into Earth orbit.
It rides along pavements, crosses roads, and avoids driving into humans, and can travel up to three miles at 4 mph. The robot is part of a trial by Starship Technologies, a company created by two Skype co-founders. Starship is developing self-driving robotic delivery vehicles, but the current robot isn’t autonomous just yet.
We're always hearing how robots are going to take our jobs, but there might be a way of preventing that grim future from happening: by becoming workplace cyborgs first.
Researchers have designed a bracelet that harvests biomechanical energy from the wearer's wrist movements, which can then be converted into electricity and used to extend the battery lifetime of personal electronics or even fully power some of these devices.
Finding time to stop, plug in and recharge could become history, with scientists developing a new electrode design that could charge batteries in seconds instead of hours.
Tiny capsules embedded in the clothes we wear could soon be used to counteract the rise of sensitive skin conditions.
Attaching curcumin, a component of the common spice turmeric, to nanoparticles can be used to target and destroy treatment-resistant neuroblastoma tumor cells, according to a new study published in Nanoscale.
No sooner had the American Psychological Association released their 2015 task force report supposedly confirming that violent video games make players aggressive than the criticisms of the report started pouring in, of bias and bad practice.
Related: Feeling stressed during the workday? Playing video games may help
Using money to free-up time is linked to increased happiness, a study says.
In an experiment, individuals reported greater happiness if they used £30 ($40) to save time - such as by paying for chores to be done - rather than spending the money on material goods.
Alterations were found in parts of the brain known as white matter, which contains fibre tracts that enable brain cells to communicate with one another by electrical signals.
A study indicates that the transition from foraging to farming was associated with modest but functionally relevant changes in the shape of the human skull. Previous studies indicate that the shape of the human skull changed with the emergence of agriculture, likely due to the increased availability of soft foods. However, determining the consistency and extent of changes in skull shape at a global scale has proven difficult
An excavation in the Dargeçit district of the southeastern region of Turkey, which will soon be left under the reservoir waters of the Il?su Dam, has revealed crucial information about the North Mesopotamian people’s social life 10 millennia ago, particularly about burial rituals and the ancient belief in life after death.
IT SEEMED like a curse. The summer of 821 was wet, cold and yielded a poor harvest. Then winter came. Temperatures plunged. Blizzards smothered towns and villages. The Danube, the Rhine and the Seine—rivers that never froze—froze so hard that the ice covering them could be crossed not just on foot but by horse and cart. Nor did spring bring respite. Terrible hailstorms followed the snow. Plague and famine followed the storms. The next few winters were worse.
Researchers have been studying not just the monument itself, but the area around it, hoping to find clues in this intriguing landscape of prehistoric monuments.
Underground imaging and excavation have revealed that Stonehenge was once part of a complicated network of structures: ancient burial mounds, unknown settlements, processional routes and even gold-adorned burials.
An impressively large 2,700-year-old water system has been discovered during excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority near Rosh Ha-Ayin.
According to Gilad Itach, director of excavations for the IAA, “It is difficult not to be impressed by the sight of the immense underground reservoir quarried out so many years ago
The Voynich manuscript is among the most perplexing texts ever discovered as it has never been decoded despite over 25 analyses conducted in an attempt to decipher its meaning. As a result, many have drawn into question whether the manuscript is authentic, or nothing more than a hoax. However, a study published in the journal PLOS One offers convincing evidence that the patterns present in the writing resemble those from real languages, suggesting the enigmatic text is authentic and does indeed contain a genuine message.
Magic mushrooms could be the wonder cure for depression, if new research is to be believed.
Full to the brim of psilocybin, the drug is proving to be an effective and safe way of combating the blues, experts claim.
A new review indicates that subjective well-being -- factors such as life satisfaction and enjoyment of life -- can influence physical health.
Scientists in Brazil have imaged elderly female yoga practitioners' brains and found they have greater cortical thickness in the left prefrontal cortex, in brain areas associated with cognitive functions like attention and memory. The results suggest that yoga could be a way to protect against cognitive decline in old age.
Related: How Storytelling Can Improve The Care Of People With Alzheimer’s
Stanford researchers found that U.S. adults who believed that they were less active than their peers died younger than those who believed they were more active – even if their actual activity levels were similar
Scientists may be able to use the bacteria living in your baby’s poop to predict how he or she will perform on cognitive tests by age two, a new study suggests. Researchers took fecal samples from nearly 100 one-year-olds and found that those with less diverse microbiomes and higher levels of the bacterial genus Bacteroides had higher cognitive scores one year later.
At least three quarters of the human genome consists of non-functional, 'junk DNA', according to a new study, and the actual proportion is likely to be even greater than that.
Being friendly is in dogs' nature and could be key to how they came to share our lives, say US scientists.
Dogs evolved from wolves tens of thousands of years ago.
In the depths of the ocean, life can extend far beyond its usual limits. Take the tube worm Escarpia laminata: living in an environment with a year-round abundance of food and no predators, individuals seem to live for over 300 years. And some may be 1000 years old or more – meaning they would have been around when William the Conqueror invaded England.
What do elephant seals and Shakira have in common? They can both keep the beat.
A new study suggests that northern elephant seals memorize the rhythm and pitch of individual vocal calls in order to recognize each other.
Whales, sharks, butterflies and lotus leaves might together hold the secret to saving the shipping industry millions and help save the planet, according to a marine biologist.
The tropical forests in western Uganda, home to a dwindling population of endangered chimpanzees, are disappearing at some of the fastest rates on Earth as local people chop down trees for charcoal and to clear space for subsistence farming.
Chile set aside 11 million acres of land for national parks aided by the largest private land donation from a private entity to a country. The conservation effort of the Tompkins Foundation helped pave the way for Chile to greatly expand its conservation of the pristine Patagonia wilderness.
A campaign by scientists and environmental activists to prevent a surge in logging in Europe’s ancient Bia?owie?a Forest is headed to the courts.
The European Commission announced on 13 July that it is referring Poland to Europe's highest court after the Polish government declined to roll back controversial new rules that permit more tree-felling in Bia?owie?a
The vast amount of waste water produced by fracking can contaminate rivers, lakes and other waterways with radioactive material and hormone-affecting chemicals, according to new research.
Environmental contamination with heavy metals is often the result of various types of industrial processes. Because heavy metals can be dangerous to humans and other wildlife, contaminated sites need to be cleaned up. This isn't easy. Chemical extraction methods can introduce different types of pollutants into the environment.
Indian poultry farms aren’t just rearing chickens — they’re also breeding germs capable of thwarting all but the most potent antibiotics, researchers found.
Random tests on 18 poultry farms raising about 50,000 birds each in India’s northwestern state of Punjab found that two-thirds of fowl harbored bacteria that produce special enzymes, known as extended-spectrum beta-lactamase, or ESBL, that destroy most penicillin- and cephalosporin-based antibiotics.
An unlikely hero has emerged in the quest to fight HIV: the cow. In a first for any animal, including humans, four cows injected with a type of HIV protein rapidly produced powerful antibodies against the virus, researchers report. Learning how to induce similar antibodies in humans may be key to a successful HIV vaccine.
Paul Davies has a lot on his mind—or perhaps more accurate to say in his mind. A physicist at Arizona State University, he does research on a wide range of topics, from the abstract fields of theoretical physics and cosmology to the more concrete realm of astrobiology, the study of life in places beyond Earth.
Mathematicians at the Universities of York, Munich and Cardiff have identified a unique property of quantum mechanical particles – they can move in the opposite way to the direction in which they are being pushed.
Related: Probability that the quantum world obeys local realism is less than one in a billion, experiment shows
In a discovery that concludes an 80-year quest, researchers found evidence of particles that are their own antiparticles. These 'Majorana fermions' could one day help make quantum computers more robust.
In January of 2016, astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin published the first evidence that there might be another planet in our Solar System. Known as “Planet 9”, this hypothetical body was estimated to be about 10 times as massive as Earth and to orbit that our Sun at an average distance of 700 AU.
Alt: New study claims mysterious Planet Nine DOES exist and is altering the orbits of objects beyond Neptune
The smallest star yet measured has been discovered by a team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge. With a size just a sliver larger than that of Saturn, the gravitational pull at its stellar surface is about 300 times stronger than what humans feel on Earth.
Related: Astronomers track the birth of a 'super-Earth'
Related: Milky Way could be home to 100 billion 'failed stars'
Scientists have discovered a ‘trap’ at the center of the Milky Way that could be capturing high-energy cosmic rays.
These particles travel at nearly the speed of light, and are thought to have been produced outside of the galactic center before being slowed by gas clouds.
Our planet is in constant flux. Tectonic plates—the large slabs of rock that divide Earth’s crust so that it looks like a cracked eggshell—jostle about in fits and starts that continuously reshape our planet—and possibly foster life.
The most common asteroids in the solar system may have started out as giant balls of mud, rather than as rocks, as scientists previously thought, a new study finds.
The origin and nature of Mars is mysterious. It has geologically distinct hemispheres, with smooth lowlands in the north and cratered, high-elevation terrain in the south. The red planet also has two small oddly-shaped oblong moons and a composition that sets it apart from that of the Earth.
When Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon first discovered the chambers of treasures of the 18th Dynasty pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922, it was a phenomenal event in historical discovery. One remarkable, though tiny, component of that haul was result of a phenomenal event that occurred 28 million years earlier.
Famed archaeologist Zahi Hawass and his team say they've found evidence of a tomb that could belong to King Tut's wife.
The archaeologists eventually plan to excavate the new tomb, which is located near the tomb of the pharaoh Ay (1327-1323 B.C.) in Egypt's Valley of the Kings
In late 2013, interesting fresh evidence dating back five and a half millennia was found, giving insights into the enigma of the Mesopotamian clay balls. Through use of CT scanning to peer into the clay balls, the study came to a revealing conclusion that the balls may in fact illustrate the world’s “very first data storage system”.
As robots start to enter public spaces and work alongside humans, the need for safety measures has become more pressing, argue academics
Robots should be fitted with an “ethical black box” to keep track of their decisions and enable them to explain their actions when accidents happen, researchers say.
Amazon, UPS, Domino’s Pizza and other companies planning drone delivery services may be heading for discord. A preliminary NASA study has discovered that people find the noise of drones more annoying than that of ground vehicles, even when the sounds are the same volume.
Soft robotics and 3D printing have allowed a team of researchers from Switzerland to develop an artificial heart that works like the real thing. This proof of concept design was successfully tested in the lab, but it may take a while before it will be ready.
Scientists have created new 2-D nanostructured surfaces which appear as realistic 3-D objects – including shading and shadows - using cutting edge nano-engineering.
The research was carried out by King's College London alongside Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, and is published in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.
Related: MIT’s glasses-free home 3D tech could make help 3D movies more popular