Newsdesk Archive
These plants swing both ways, you might say. Sunflowers growing densely in a field adopt a zigzag pattern, with neighbours leaning in opposite directions to grab as much light as possible.
The strategy – which other plants might be using as well, without anyone noticing – may someday give us a way to boost crop yields.
Herbivorous pests often turn on each other when their food is of poor quality or it runs out. And some plants are known to affect the behaviour of their pests by making them more predatory towards other species. But until now it was unclear whether plants could directly cause caterpillar cannibalism.
Need an incentive to eat healthier? A new study suggests that people who make even small tweaks in their diet to make it healthier over time may live longer.
Related: Eating more vegetable protein may protect against early menopause
Related: Food scientists find cranberries may aid the gut microbiome
A bill proposed to the Australian House of Representatives would ban animal testing of industrial chemicals for use in cosmetics. This would have a positive effect on the lives of animals and set an example for other countries.
Millions of people want selfies riding elephants, or washing them, or patting their trunks. But according to a study carried out by World Animal Protection (WAP) across Asia this is helping to fuel a rise in elephants captured from the wild and kept for entertainment. The number in Thailand has increased by almost a third over the last five years.
Related: $10K reward offered for killer of rare Yellowstone wolf
Related: Record number of environmental activists killed around the world
Mexico's government says it plans to use dolphins trained by the US Navy to try to save the world's most endangered marine species, the vaquita porpoise.
Sea level rise caused by global warming is usually cast as a doomsday scenario that will play out so far into the future, it’s easy to ignore. Just ask anyone in South Florida, where new construction proceeds apace.
The idea behind Mattingly’s project is to bring foraging to the concrete jungle, where very little fresh produce is grown locally. Mostly, fresh fruits and vegetables are imported and thus expensive. There’s definitely a market for local food: New York City alone is estimated to have over $600 million worth of unmet annual demand for local food.
The Netherlands’ concept, a project called “Space at Sea,” includes 87 triangular pieces of various sizes that would come together to make almost 2 square miles of space, a floating island of concrete or steel that would be anchored to the seafloor and attached to the shore. For now, however, it is just a small wooden model.
A Delaware-sized iceberg, one of the largest ever seen, was set adrift after snapping from a West Antarctic ice shelf that will be closely watched for signs of collapse, scientists said Wednesday.
A crack in the Larsen C ice shelf, a drifting extension of the land-based ice sheet, finally broke through after inching its way across the frozen formation for years.
Feeling hopeless about a situation is cognitively associated with inaction. Instead of being defeatist, look to climate change heroes who are leading the way
Related: The most effective individual steps to tackle climate change aren't being discussed - "The four actions that most substantially decrease an individual's carbon footprint are: eating a plant-based diet, avoiding air travel, living car-free, and having smaller families."
All around the world, scientists are building repositories of everything from seeds to ice to mammal milk — racing to preserve a natural order that is fast disappearing.
Analysis of remains found on Rapa Nui, Chile (Easter Island) provides evidence contrary to the widely-held belief that the ancient civilization recklessly destroyed its environment, according to new research co-conducted by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
A ‘House of the Dead’ has been discovered in Wiltshire dating back 5,000 years by University of Reading archaeologists and students, and could contain the ancestors of those who lived around Stonehenge and Avebury.
DNA in a fossil from a young girl has revealed that a mysterious extinct human lineage occupied the middle of Asia longer than previously thought, allowing more potential interbreeding with Neanderthals, a new study finds.
Metin Eren wasn't satisfied just digging up ancient arrowheads to learn about the past. He wanted to use them for their intended purpose.
But shooting and shattering priceless millennia-old tips is out of the question, so instead, the archaeologist chips replicas of the stone-age weapons by hand.
The fossil of a tiny bird that lived 62 million years ago confirms that birds evolved very rapidly after the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs.
The sparrow-sized tree-dweller lived ''just a geological blink of an eye" after the mass extinction.
Alt: New species of ancient bird discovered in New Mexico
Animals and plants are seemingly disappearing faster than at any time since the dinosaurs died out, 66m years ago. The death knell tolls for life on Earth. Rhinos will soon be gone unless we defend them, Mexico's final few Vaquita porpoises are drowning in fishing nets, and in America, Franklin trees survive only in parks and gardens.
Yet the survivors are taking advantage of new opportunities created by humans. Many are spreading into new parts of the world, adapting to new conditions, and even evolving into new species.
From the common barn swallow to the exotic giraffe, thousands of animal species are in precipitous decline, a sign that an irreversible era of mass extinction is underway, new research finds.
No such thing as a free lunch? Not so for these whales. Humpback whales in south-east Alaska seem to have found their own chain of fast food restaurants: salmon hatcheries
Related: Large carnivores have lost more than 90 per cent of their range
If you’re looking for a rumored “fountain” of youth, you might want to start your search where there’s water, right? While that didn’t help Juan Ponce de León, Norwegian researchers went deep into the Atlantic to search for 400-year-old Greenland sharks whose DNA may hold a secret to their long lives
Some fire ants build towers of their own bodies in an amazing display of acrobatics and collective intelligence. Even more surprisingly, ants circulate through the tower while keeping its overall shape constant, overcoming a tendency for it to sink.
US scientists have amassed "planetary-scale" data from people's smartphones to see how active we really are.
The Stanford University analysis of 68 million days' worth of minute-by-minute data showed the average number of daily steps was 4,961.
Not all of Mitchell Elkind’s stroke patients are on social security. In recent years he has treated devastating attacks in people as young as 18. And he is not alone.
A new kind of cancer treatment that uses genetically engineered cells from a patient's immune system to attack their cancer easily cleared a crucial hurdle Wednesday.
Related: New Evidence Indicates That Human Heart Regeneration May Be Possible
The pigmentlike nanoparticles could protect cells from the sun’s damaging rays
Related: Vitamin D may improve sunburn, according to new clinical trial
Related: Could Vitamin C Be the Cure for Deadly Infections?
A potential cure for Type 1 diabetes looms on the horizon in San Antonio, and the novel approach would also allow Type 2 diabetics to stop insulin shots.
Chemotherapy could allow cancer to spread, and trigger more aggressive tumours, a new study suggests.
Researchers in the US studied the impact of drugs on patients with breast cancer and found medication increases the chance of cancer cells migrating to other parts of the body, where they are almost always lethal.
A new study has investigated what patients themselves prefer when it comes to managing pain – opioids, which are widely distributed for intense pain relief, or medical marijuana.
Related: Low-dose THC can relieve stress; more does just the opposite
Related: With Legal Pot, Fatal Car Crashes Haven't Increased
Doctors in Bristol are set to begin the world’s first clinical study into the use of MDMA to treat alcohol addiction.
Researchers are testing whether a few doses of the drug, in conjunction with psychotherapy, could help patients overcome addiction more effectively than conventional treatments.
Related: The ‘Dark Web’ has made sales of recreational drugs safer
Related: Tripping up: The real danger of microdosing with LSD
“Research on the effects of cocoa and chocolate on human cognition, although at its preliminary stage, converges at pointing to cocoa as a new interesting nutraceutical tool to protect human cognition and counteract different types of cognitive decline,” the scientists said.
Soon-to-be mothers have heard the warning - don't drink while pregnant. Experts have issued numerous statements about the dangers of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, as it can lead to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). Now a new study finds that prenatal ethanol exposure (from maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy) causes abnormalities in the brain and behavior that may be passed on for many generations.
Related: Eating lots of sugar when pregnant may raise risk of allergies
As humans transitioned from a relatively sedentary apelike existence to a more physically demanding hunter-gatherer lifestyle, starting around 2 million years ago, we began to engage in complex foraging tasks that were simultaneously physically and mentally demanding, and that may explain how physical activity and the brain came to be so connected.
Related: Sport feels less strenuous if you believe it's doing you good
A new method for assessing patterns of ground-force application suggests the right and left legs of the world's fastest man may perform differently, defying current scientific assumptions about running speed.
World champion sprinter Usain Bolt may have an asymmetrical running gait, according to data recently presented by researchers from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Participants adopted ‘cautious stepping strategy’ while using device for different tasks, say university researchers
Religious participation is linked to lower suicide rates in many parts of the world, including the United States and Russia, but does not protect against the risk of suicide in sections of Europe and Asia, finds new research by a Michigan State University scholar.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore enlists priests, rabbis and a Buddhist to test the effects of psychedelic drugs on religious experience
Dr William Richards, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland who is involved in the work, said: “With psilocybin these profound mystical experiences are quite common. It seemed like a no-brainer that they might be of interest, if not valuable, to clergy.”
Five years ago I blogged about the debate over whether the blue-for-boys, pink-for-girls color convention used to be the other way around. My post focused on a 2012 paper by psychologist Marco Del Giudice arguing that the idea of a cultural “pink–blue reversal” in the English-speaking world in the early 20th century is a myth.
A newly unearthed photo showing blurry figures on a dock may shed light on the 80-year-old mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart.
A new History channel documentary quotes experts who say the image shows the famed pilot survived her 1937 crash in the Pacific.
The ground teems with evidence that John White’s Lost Colony came here.
A few shovelfuls of earth in a school yard or private driveway can uncover relics dating to the late 1500s, when English settlers landed on – and then mysteriously left – Roanoke Island 50 miles to the north.
Hobby Lobby, the US crafts supply company known for its pro-Christian branding, apparently has a side interest in smuggling rare archaeological artifacts.
Tourists left reviews carved into stone in Egypt that have been compared by experts to an ancient version of Trip Advisor.
The marks have been studied by archaeologists working in the Valley of the Kings, where visitors etched their thoughts into artworks and on walls millennia ago.
Ancient stone monuments may have been used for mysterious night-time ceremonies, archaeologists believe, after finding that some rock carvings only appear in moonlight.
Traditionally Neolithic structures were believed to align with the movements of the Sun, with the huge Wiltshire circle of Stonehenge lining up perfectly with the summer solstice.
Alt: Cornish stone monuments have carvings that are only visible in moonlight, investigation reveals
More than 100,000 years ago in a Siberian cave there lived a child with a loose tooth. One day her molar fell out, and fossilized over many millenniums, keeping it safe from the elements and the tooth fairy.
The report found that only 83 of 2,000—or just over four percent—of the museum's pre-Columbian artifacts could be authenticated.
Museums in Canada unveil high-tech facial reconstructions that breath new life into very old bones.
At a remote site overlooking the Salish Sea in British Columbia, archaeologists made the discovery of a lifetime in 2010...
“These are some of the most elaborate burials in North America before European contact,”
Researchers who have analyzed the Y chromosomes of more than 50 horses representing 21 breeds have found that the paternal lines of nearly all modern horses trace to stallions brought to Europe from the Orient over the last 700 years. The findings reveal the overwhelming influence of breeding schemes driven by strong selection on males.
A federal grant has enabled researchers to investigate what makes the Brangus cow so effective at body temperature regulation. Due to climate change, high temperatures have made trouble for cows, leading to decreased efficiency and quality in agriculture.
Billions of pieces of plastic are floating in the oceans. Their effects are also sufficiently well-known: marine animals swallow them or get tangled up in them, which can cause them to die in agony. On the other hand, we know less about the consequences of the smallest pieces of plastic, known as microplastics. Researchers have now started to investigate how microplastics are generated and where they actually come from.
Oklahoma has become one of the world’s most notorious earthquake hubs. In fact, in 2014 for the first time, the number of magnitude 3 or greater quakes in the state surpassed California’s total.
A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge have developed a new way of measuring the pressure inside volcanoes, and found that it can be a reliable indicator of future eruptions.
Earth is estimated to be around 4.5 billion years old, with life first appearing around 3 billion years ago.
To unravel this incredible history, scientists use a range of different techniques to determine when and where continents moved, how life evolved, how climate changed over time, when our oceans rose and fell, and how land was shaped.
The billionaire founder of Paypal has funded an ambitious project to resurrect the woolly mammoth, reports suggest.
Peter Thiel, who is worth $2.7billion (£2.1 billion), has reportedly put $100,000 (£77,000) of his own funds into a scheme that will modify elephant cells using DNA recovered from the bodies of frozen mammoths.
Alt: We Could Resurrect the Woolly Mammoth. Here's How.
Feathered dinosaurs that walked on two legs and had parrot-like beaks shared another characteristic with modern birds—they brooded clutches of eggs at a temperature similar to chickens, a study showed Wednesday.
Little is known about the origin and early evolution of the Notosuchia, hitherto unknown in the Jurassic period. New research on fossils from Madagascar, published in the peer-reviewed journal PeerJ by Italian and French paleontologists, begin to fill the gap in a million-year-long ghost lineage.
How did the largest creatures ever to live on Earth evolve to feed on minuscule ones? A fossil skull belonging to a whale that could both filter feed and catch large prey reveals the first step in this process.
Frogs leaped to take advantage of the global catastrophe that killed off the dinosaurs.
New research shows that 88 per cent of frog species alive today owe their existence to the meteor impact that wiped the planet clean of most terrestrial life 66 million years ago.
Archaeologists at Mexico's Teotihuacan ruins site say they have found evidence that the city's builders may have dug a secret tunnel under the Pyramid of the Moon.
It goes from the Pyramid to the central square, which it is believed was used for human sacrifices and other rituals in front of an estimated 100,000 people.
A tower of human skulls unearthed beneath the heart of Mexico City has raised new questions about the culture of sacrifice in the Aztec Empire after crania of women and children surfaced among the hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure.
Three people in New Mexico caught the plague, according to health officials there, who reported the two most recent cases this week.
Yes, this is the same illness that killed an estimated 50 million people across three continents in the 1300s, though these days common antibiotics will get rid of it.
Scientists have discovered a link between a major mechanism of antibiotic resistance and resistance to the disinfectant triclosan which is commonly found in domestic products.
Professor Charles Tyler of the University of Exeter in Britain (and colleagues) has conducted a study of the impact of chemicals from human waste treatment plants in rivers and streams on the fish that live in them. He has told the press before presenting the findings formally that they have found a very large number of male fish exhibiting female characteristics.
A flexible flagella “tail” allows bacteria to thin the liquid in which they’re swimming and free themselves when trapped along walls or obstacles, new research suggests.
This finding could influence the control of bacterial growth on medical, industrial, and agricultural surfaces.
Researchers at the University of Manchester have discovered a new species of yeast that could help brewers create better lager.
Working in collaboration with the National Collection of Yeast Cultures (NCYC), the team say it is a new of member of the Saccharomyces family and is closely related to the familiar brewers' and bakers' yeast.
Bring in the big guns. Magpies are being lured in to help ward off smaller birds that feast on grapes.
Fruit-eating birds like starlings, rosellas and thrushes cause substantial damage to Australian vineyards, in some cases munching through 80 per cent of the fruit.
Researchers have captured the first footage of cockatoos bashing out drum solos with little sticks and seedpods in what are believed to be musical displays to impress the opposite sex.
Praying mantises are carnivorous insects with powerful raptorial front legs that usually depend on arthropods such as insects or spiders as their primary prey. Now new research indicates that praying mantises all over the globe include birds in their diet.
t’s no secret that in our decades of space travel, we haven’t always cleaned up after ourselves. Space debris—like dead satellites, empty rocket fuel containers, and shrapnel from past collisions like the 2009 Russian satellite crash—is gradually building up in the Earth's orbit.
Canadian researchers are leading an effort to grow crops in space, paving the way for humanity to live on other worlds and push the frontiers on Earth.
Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have designed a new nano material that can reflect or transmit light on demand with temperature control, opening the door to technology that protects astronauts in space from harmful radiation.
NASA is moving forward with a plan to develop a refrigerator-sized spacecraft capable of deflecting asteroids and preventing them from colliding with Earth.
Mars experienced a single colossal impact during its first 130 million years, the equivalent to the largest body in the today’s asteroid belt slamming into the red planet.
The chances of anything coming from Mars have taken a downward turn with the finding that the surface of the red planet contains a “toxic cocktail” of chemicals that can wipe out living organisms.
Once held to be the outermost planet of the Solar System, Pluto‘s designation was changed by the International Astronomical Union in 2006, owing to the discovery of many new Kuiper Belt Objects that were comparable in size. In spite of this, Pluto remains a source of fascination and a focal point of much scientific interest. And even after the historic flyby conducted by the New Horizons probe in July of 2015, many mysteries remain.
High up in the clear blue noontime sky, the sun appears to be much the same day-in, day-out, year after year.
But astronomers have long known that this is not true. The sun does change. Properly-filtered telescopes reveal a fiery disk often speckled with dark sunspots. Sunspots are strongly magnetized, and they crackle with solar flares—magnetic explosions that illuminate Earth with flashes of X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation. The sun is a seething mass of activity.
Right now, the Sun is stirring up violent eruptions capable of wiping out the technology we are so dependent on, and new research has found that these blasts are even harder to predict than scientists first thought.
A study of the Sun using sound waves suggests that the layer in which the significant magnetic activity is located has grown thinner in recent years.
Under a thin atmosphere made mostly of sodium, supersonic winds roil a magma ocean. No, this isn’t some strange, distant exoplanet – it’s our moon about 4.5 billion years ago, according to a new mathematical model of the moon’s extreme past.
Alt: Scientists Think Our Moon Used to Be Home to a Molten Metal Ocean and Supersonic Winds
The basic creed of amortalist theology seems to be that all our organs are simply machines that, like car parts, start to malfunction with use and age, and that, to continue the analogy, can be either repaired or replaced. The idea is that we report in every few years for a service that not only keeps the motor running but, with progress, will positively enhance its performance.
A LACK of sleep doesn’t just turn children into a grumpy handful, it may also accelerate their cellular ageing – a process that could have long-term health effects.
People with higher IQs are less likely to die before the age of 79. That’s according to a study of over 65,000 people born in Scotland in 1936.
At a time when the Trump administration is moving to delay and dismantle air quality regulations, a new study suggests that air pollution continues to cut Americans’ lives short, even at levels well below the legal limits set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Mounting evidence suggests that the richer and more diverse the community of microbes in your gut the lower your risk of disease. Diet is key to maintaining diversity and was strikingly demonstrated when an undergrad student went on a McDonald’s diet for ten days and after just four days experienced a significant drop in the number of beneficial microbes.
Antibacterial soaps are useless at killing germs and may be harmful to pregnant women, experts have warned.
A report published by more than 200 scientists has warned that antibacterial chemicals found in soap, lunchboxes and exercise mats could be causing 'more harm than good'.
Related: When you’re washing your hands, water temperature doesn’t matter as much as scrubbing time
Microbes are everywhere—in your gut, on your skin, even in the sky. Along with water vapor and particles, clouds also contain living bacteria. And certain airborne species have a superpower: They can cause water to freeze into ice, which in turn prompts the heavens to open.
Related: Fungal Toxins Easily Become Airborne, Creating Potential Indoor Health Risk - implications for “sick building syndrome”
As Canada's vast boreal and tundra ecosystems experience dramatic warming due to climate change, trees are rapidly spreading north. New research suggests some of these trees could be getting help from a surprising source: fungi that have lain dormant underground for thousands of years.
More than 50,000 tonnes of mushroom waste are generated in Europe each week, posing an environmental challenge for the main industries that market this product worldwide.
Ancient Romans built concrete sea walls that have withstood pounding ocean waves for more than 2,000 years. Now, an international team has discovered a clue to the concrete’s longevity: a rare mineral forms during chemical reactions between the concrete and seawater that strengthen the material.
Alt: Ancient Roman concrete outperforms our own, and science only just worked out why
For centuries, the bloody gladiator conflicts that the Romans staged in amphitheatres throughout the empire have engrossed and repelled us. When it comes to gladiators, it is almost impossible to look away. But the arena is also the place where the Romans feel most foreign to us.
The Shroud of Turin remains one of the most controversial and debated archaeological artifacts. It is claimed that the shroud was used to wrap Jesus of Nazareth after his crucifixion, but its origin remains a mystery. Several religious organizations have preserved historical documents dating as far back the 14th century which mention the shroud, but its history prior to that – if there is any – remains unknown.
Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered treasure and 3,200 year-old bodies at what is said to be the site of the Biblical city of Gezer, believed to have been destroyed in a devastating raid by the ancient Egyptians.
One of the discoveries made in 1752 in Herculaneum was of an intact library. This contained large numbers of papyrus scrolls of philosophical texts, many associated with the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara.
It is not every day that a new and unique language is discovered, but this finding really has anthropologists stumped. In a tiny, remote Aboriginal community in outback Australia, an American linguist discovered that a new language emerged among the young people in the community and is now spoken by around 350 individuals, all under the age of 35
It's already taking over our jobs, beating us at strategy games and creating 'art'.
Now artificial intelligence is set to conquer the world of music.
Swiss researchers say they have developed a computer algorithm that can generate new tunes in various musical genres after listening to more than 2,000 songs.
Though many fear the unemployment that could follow the widespread adoption of automated systems, they could be a welcome addition to the construction industry, which currently suffers from a lack of workers and stagnant productivity levels.
Although the term “quantum computer” might suggest a miniature, sleek device, the latest incarnations are a far cry from anything available in the Apple Store.
One of the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics could be explained by an equally weird idea – that causation can run backwards in time as well as forwards.
New paper suggests that the hotly contested physics thesis, which involves the existence of six ‘extra dimensions’, may be settled by cutting-edge laser detectors
For the first time ever, scientists have directly spotted a pair of supermassive black holes orbiting each other, a new study suggests.
A pair of researchers, one with the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel the other with Princeton University in the U.S. has come up with a possible explanation for the inability of space scientists to find any intermediate-sized black holes.