Newsdesk Archive
New window screens with pollutant-trapping nanofibers may allow residents of smog-choked cities to breathe easier. The fibers are made of nitrogen-containing polymers and are sprayed onto screens in a technique called blow-spinning, in which a stream of air stretches out droplets of polymer solution in midspray to form an extremely thin layer of nanofibers.
Swarms of cheap “CubeSats” are currently being planned by companies who want to bring wireless internet access to every corner of the globe. But there’s nothing to stop these sprawling “megaconstellations”, which would include thousands of spacecraft, from colliding with other satellites and unleashing hazardous space debris in low Earth orbit.
A squadron of miniature spacecraft has set off on an expedition to a little-known zone of Earth’s atmosphere. Riding an Atlas V rocket, they took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 1111 local time today, headed for the International Space Station.
Some scientists are thinking about what human space travelers will look like in the future. They might be extra-small and radiation-proof.
Forty years ago, Canadian physicist Bill Unruh made a surprising prediction regarding quantum field theory. Known as the Unruh effect, his theory predicted that an accelerating observer would be bathed in blackbody radiation, whereas an inertial observer would be exposed to none.
Related: Life on Earth is used to gravity – so what happens to our cells and tissues in space?
There’s a particular type of lizard that changes the color of its spots as it ages — and researchers have just discovered the mathematical rules that govern this peculiar metamorphosis.
New research from Emory University School of Medicine shows that a chemical in the mucus of South Indian frogs is capable of killing certain strains of the influenza virus.
Komodo dragon blood contains an important compound which scientists think could offer a new treatment for infected wounds.
The reptile's saliva harbours many different types of bacteria, which somehow do not affect the dragon.
For a long time, medieval medicine has been dismissed as irrelevant. This time period is popularly referred to as the “Dark Ages,” which erroneously suggests that it was unenlightened by science or reason. However, some medievalists and scientists are now looking back to history for clues to inform the search for new antibiotics.
Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed several mummies, colourful wooden sarcophagi and more than 1,000 funerary statues in a 3,500-year-old tomb near the city of Luxor, hailing an "important discovery".
One of the world’s first nature pictures was a wild cow. A team of archaeologists found the earliest known depiction of an animal on a slab of rock in Southwestern France. According to a research paper published in the journal, Quaternary International, in January, the artifact was created by the Aurignacians, the first humans to migrate from Africa to Western Eurasia between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago.
Studies of bones from Ice Age megafaunal animals across Eurasia and the Americas have revealed that major increases in environmental moisture occurred just before many species suddenly became extinct around 11-15,000 years ago. The persistent moisture resulting from melting permafrost and glaciers caused widespread glacial-age grasslands to be rapidly replaced by peatlands and bogs, fragmenting populations of large herbivore grazers.
Four hundred and thirty million years ago, long before the evolution of barracudas or sharks, a different kind of predator stalked the primordial seas. The original sea monsters were eurypterids—better known as sea scorpions.
The Red Planet lacks a source of carbon dioxide that could transform its thin, cold atmosphere into something resembling conditions on Earth.
Massive landslides, similar to those found on Earth, are occurring on the asteroid Ceres. That's according to a new study led by the Georgia Institute of Technology, adding to the growing evidence that Ceres retains a significant amount of water ice.
Many physicists delving deep into the heart of matter in recent decades have been lured to the more exotic and unfamiliar subatomic particles: mesons, neutrinos and the famous Higgs boson — not the humble proton.
Proposed elusive subatomic particles that only fleetingly interact with matter through gravity may not exist, at least if new data from a nuclear reactor is any indication.
"The dress" that went viral in 2015 caused a lot of confusion, with some people perceiving the garment as white and gold and others seeing it as black and blue. Now, researchers have found that these differences in perception may be rooted in the fast assumptions that people's brains made about how the dress was illuminated, according to a new study.
Scientists have unpicked the regions of the brain involved in dreaming, in a study with significant implications for our understanding of the purpose of dreams and of consciousness itself. What’s more, changes in brain activity have been found to offer clues as to what the dream is about.
Surprising new research shows that placebos still work even when you know they’re not real
The term “placebo” refers to a dummy pill passed off as a genuine pharmaceutical, or more broadly, any sham treatment presented as a real one. By definition a placebo is a deception, a lie. But doctors have been handing out placebos for centuries, and patients have been taking them and getting better, through the power of belief or suggestion—no one’s exactly sure.
Brain scans have revealed the first evidence for what appears to be a heightened state of consciousness in people who took psychedelic drugs in the name of science.
Related: Cannabis-based medicine may cut seizures in half for those with tough-to-treat epilepsy
Related: Cannabinoids may soothe certain skin diseases, say researchers
Within just a few days, rats isolated in small, nearly empty cages exhibit stress-related symptoms, aggressive behavior and higher incidences of disease, and they begin to lose the ability to recognize other animals. Over time, even their brain cells, synapses, blood flow and nervous systems start to be impaired. Scientists believe this happens to humans in isolation as well
Related: US heroin use has increased almost fivefold in a decade, study shows
Homing pigeons may share the human capacity to build on the knowledge of others, improving their navigational efficiency over time, a new study has found. The ability to gather, pass on and improve on knowledge over generations is known as cumulative culture. Until now humans and, arguably some other primates, were the only species thought to be capable of it.
Fish pool their experience to solve problems collectively, according to new research.
They might only have a little bit of information about their environment, but in a group, different animals might have separate but complementary information about a particular problem.
Asian elephants are able to recognise their bodies as obstacles to success in problem-solving, further strengthening evidence of their intelligence and self-awareness, according to a new study from the University of Cambridge.
What are the odds that Tasmanian tigers still exist? About 1 in 1.6 trillion.
Mathematical models provide yet another good reason to think the fabled Australian species is long gone, despite occasional claims of sightings.
The leopard population in a region of South Africa once thick with the big cats is crashing, and could be wiped out within a few years, scientists warned on Wednesday.
Related: New Maps May Help Chase Down Poachers Before They Strike
Their names were "The Ghost" and "The Darkness," and 119 years ago, these two massive, maneless, man-eating lions hunted railway workers in the Tsavo region of Kenya. During a nine-month period in 1898, the lions killed at least 35 people and as many as 135, according to different accounts. And the question of why the lions developed a taste for human flesh remained a subject of much speculation.
The remains of a medieval priest who died 700 years ago have been uncovered in an elaborate grave.
Archaeologists from the University of Sheffield uncovered the rare find at Thornton Abbey in Lincolnshire, which was founded as a monastery in 1139 and went onto become one of the richest religious houses in England.
The finals of a revived 3,000-year-old ball game have been played in the Mexican city of Teotihuacan
Organisers have been trying to bring back the game, known as Ullamaliztli in Mexico, because of its ancient cultural and religious significance.
Kibyratis in the Turkish mountains was a pastoral retreat for the Roman elite, who didn't miss the opportunity to make money while about it
The pretty face of a woman who lived more than 13,000 years ago in what is now Thailand, and is considered a likely descendant of the first humans to populate Southeast Asia, is seeing the light of day.
From the standpoint of paleoecology, the so-called Paleo diet is a myth
People have been debating the natural human diet for thousands of years, often framed as a question of the morality of eating other animals. The lion has no choice, but we do. Take the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras, for example: “Oh, how wrong it is for flesh to be made from flesh!”
Reduced food consumption extends the lifespan of many organisms, including primates. The biology behind how this is achieved, however, is not yet fully understood. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing and the Cluster of Excellence for Aging Research CECAD, Cologne, Germany, as well as the Babraham Institute in Cambridge have now found that in mice, dietary restriction triggers epigenetic changes in the DNAGenes, for example, which are important for the lipid metabolism, are switched off. Dietary restriction can thus prevent the consequences of age-related changes in the so-called epigemome.
Among an indigenous group of people in the Amazon region of Bolivia, atherosclerosis is practically nonexistent, whereas it’s a common fact of life for most Americans over 60. It’s a complicated comparison, but parasitic worms seem to be part of the equation, say researchers.
The first known living sample of a giant, ancient mollusc that previously was known almost exclusively by its shells has been recovered from the Philippines.
For much of its first two billion years, Earth was a very different place: oxygen was scarce, microbial life ruled, and the sun was significantly dimmer than it is today. Yet the rock record shows that vast seas covered much of the early Earth under the faint young sun.
The hot springs of Yellowstone National Park may be extreme environments, but they are host to a diversity of microbes that could shed light on the evolution of life on Earth and, perhaps, what lurks on distant planets.
Life on an alien planet with two suns in its sky, like Luke Skywalker's home world Tatooine in the "Star Wars" films, may indeed be possible, a new study suggests.
Strange flying-saucer-shaped moons embedded in Saturn's rings have baffled scientists studying images transmitted by the Cassini Spacecraft. Past research suggests that the oddly shaped moons, Pan and Atlas, are born largely from clumps of icy particles in the rings themselves, a discovery that could shed light on how Earth and other planets formed from the disk of matter that once surrounded our newborn sun.
The moon no longer has a magnetic field, but NASA scientists are publishing new research that shows heat from crystallization of the lunar core may have driven its now-defunct magnetic field some 3 billion years ago.
The sun’s power isn’t limited to lighting and heating our home planet — it could create chaos by way of its coronal mass ejections (CME). These intense releases of magnetic energy can, on rare occasions, cause geomagnetic disturbances on Earth.
Material scientists have predicted and built two new magnetic materials, atom-by-atom, using high-throughput computational models. The success marks a new era for the large-scale design of new magnetic materials at unprecedented speed.
Harvard physicists have created a new form of matter - dubbed a time crystal - which could offer important insights into the mysterious behavior of quantum systems.
Traditionally speaking, crystals - like salt, sugar or even diamonds - are simply periodic arrangements of atoms in a three-dimensional lattice.
As my syringe presses against the skin and muscle surrounding a patient’s knee joint, I feel a brief resistance. A gentle increase in pressure, though, and the needle pops through, ready to inject the drug. But this isn’t a real patient or syringe – they’re both virtual.
Related: Computer game helps scientists understand animal camouflage
Russia’s space-bound humanoid robot FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research) is being trained to shoot guns from both of its hands.
The activity will help improve the android’s motor skills and decision-making, according to its creators, who have also tried to address concerns that they’re developing a real-life Terminator.
If you were monitoring a security camera and saw someone set down a backpack and walk away, you might pay special attention – especially if you had been alerted to watch that particular person. According to Cornell researchers, this might be a job robots could do better than humans, by communicating at the speed of light and sharing images.
Alt: U.S. Navy ploughs $1.7 million into research to create network of spy robots that can snoop on humans 'as a single entity with many eyes'
The Trump administration is reviewing design bids for its proposed wall along the US-Mexico border. But not all plans are interpreting the word "wall" literally.
Alt: Trump Asks For “Border Wall” Designs. Engineers Create Hilarious (And Useful) Alternative
Birds sing differently in response to traffic noise, which potentially affects their ability to attract mates and defend their territory, according to research published in Bioacoustics. The study found that a species of North American flycatcher sings shorter songs at a lower range of frequencies in response to traffic noise levels.
It really is better down where it’s wetter. First it was whale calls and now it’s low ‘foghorns’ from vocal fish.
The incredible discovery by scientists working off the deep blue waters of Australia has set imaginations ablaze.
In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, there’s an enormous patch of seaweed that’s perplexed sailors for centuries: the Sargasso Sea. This strange place is where American and European eels go to breed. Once born, the little eels — called elvers — have to venture toward land.
Ever since explorer William Beebe descended into the depths in a metal sphere in the 1930s, marine biologists have been astounded by the number and diversity of glowing animals in the ocean. Yet few studies have actually documented the numbers of glowing animals at different depths. In a new study in Scientific Reports, MBARI researchers Séverine Martini and Steve Haddock show that three quarters of the animals in Monterey Bay waters between the surface and 4,000 meters deep can produce their own light.
A wildflower super bloom is underway in Southern California after nearly 10 inches of much-needed winter rain. For four years, the state has struggled with a serious drought that drained reservoirs and prompted water bans. But this year’s El Niño-like winter brought the rain and the wildflowers are taking a giant gulp.
The massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet looks stable from above — but it’s a dangerously different story below.
Rignot was one of the first scientists to warn about possible trouble in East Antarctica — a region long neglected by climate researchers. In 2013, his team detailed the behaviour of ice around the margin of Antarctica by combining satellite imagery, airborne surveys and climate models.
An immense river that flowed from one of Canada’s largest glaciers vanished over the course of four days last year, scientists have reported, in an unsettling illustration of how global warming dramatically changes the world’s geography.
Some 8,000 years ago, a tsunami with a run-up height of up to 25m swept Scottish islands and the coastline at 80mph. It may have been caused by climate change. Could it happen again?
In 1848, the Franklin expedition’s two ships, H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror, disappeared with all their crew while searching for the Northwest Passage. Their fate is one of the enduring mysteries of the age of exploration. Numerous expeditions were sent out to find them, numerous theories proposed to explain what happened. Dark rumors of cannibalism only made the mystery more compelling. It wasn’t until 2014 that a Canadian mission, equipped with all the latest marine archaeological equipment, located Erebus. Terror was discovered two years later.
Paul Watson, author of Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition, was on board the lead Canadian vessel when Erebus was found.
The pathways of the "Peter Pan" gardens in front of Kensington Palace in London were designed to align with the rising sun during the summer and winter solstices, a researcher had found.
Black holes are not made up of matter, although they have a large mass. This explains why it has not yet been possible to observe them directly, but only via the effect of their gravity on the surroundings. They distort space and time and have a really irresistible attraction. It is hard to believe that the idea behind such exotic objects is already more than 230 years old.
39-year-old drawing hints at what the Event Horizon Telescope may have just captured: the true shape of a black hole
Last year, scientists announced that they had finally observed gravitational waves, the elusive and long sought-after ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were first posited by Albert Einstein. The waves came from a catastrophic event — the collision of two black holes located about 1.3 billion light years away from Earth — and the released energy undulated across the universe, much like ripples in a pond.
Researchers have been able to capture the first composite image of a dark matter bridge that connects galaxies together.
Alt: Could we soon know what a black hole looks like? Astronomers may have finally taken the world's first image of a celestial abyss
Researchers in the US say they've created a fluid with negative mass in the lab... which is exactly as mind-bending as it sounds.
What it means is that, unlike pretty much every other known physical object, when you push this fluid, it accelerates backwards instead of moving forwards.
Ancient North Americans hunted with spear points crafted to absorb shock.
Clovis people, who crossed a land bridge from Asia to North America around 13,500 years ago, fashioned stone weapons that slightly crumpled at the base rather than breaking at the tip when thrust into prey
They may now be underwater, but the oldest rock art paintings in southern Africa are about 5,000 years old, far more ancient than previously realized, a new study finds.
Archaeologists working at the Dahshur royal necropolis south of Cairo have discovered the remains of a pyramid built 3,700 years ago – at the time of the 13th dynasty of Egypt.
The Antiquities ministry announced that a long interior corridor and a block engraved with 10 hieroglyphic lines had been found, in a good state of conservation. The inscriptions might shed a light on the story of the pyramid.
According to new research, nomadic horse culture -- famously associated with Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes -- can trace its roots back more than 3,000 years in the eastern Eurasian Steppes, in the territory of modern Mongolia
A new reconfigurable device that emits patterns of thermal infrared light in a fully controllable manner could one day make it possible to collect waste heat at infrared wavelengths and turn it into usable energy.
Imagine a future in which every home has an appliance that pulls all the water the household needs out of the air, even in dry or desert climates, using only the power of the sun.
Pesticides based on fungi are just one example of biopesticides, a group that also includes bacteria and biochemicals derived from plants.
Biopesticides are a tiny segment of the market for now – but their use is projected to grow at a faster rate than traditional synthetic pesticides over the next few years.
A team of researchers at an Israeli university has successfully tested a technology using fluorescent bacteria and lasers that could become a safer system for detecting buried landmines.
An estimated 100m landmines are scattered in some 70 countries, a legacy of often long-past conflict, and the devices injure up to 20,000 people a year.
Getting enough toxic material to the right place in your body for it to kill tumours – while not damaging anything else – has always required thinking outside of the box.
Remember last year when Google released an AI-powered web tool that played Pictionary with your doodles? Well, surprise! Those doodles you drew have now been used to teach Google’s AI how to draw.
In the search for new physics, experiments based on high-energy collisions inside massive atom smashers are coming up empty-handed. So physicists are putting their faith in more-precise methods: less crash-and-grab and more watching-ways-of-wobbling.
High energy, ultraviolet radiation from the sun is a known to hazard to life, yet the energy provided by our star has played an important role as the essential driver of life on Earth.
With two suns in its sky, Luke Skywalker's home planet Tatooine in "Star Wars" looks like a parched, sandy desert world. In real life, thanks to observatories such as NASA's Kepler space telescope, we know that two-star systems can indeed support planets, although planets discovered so far around double-star systems are large and gaseous. Scientists wondered: If an Earth-size planet were orbiting two suns, could it support life?
Another "Great Spot" has been found at Jupiter, this one cold and high up.
Scientists reported Tuesday that the dark expanse is 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometers) across and 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) wide.
Enceladus is ripe for life. In one final pass through the icy moon’s liquid plumes, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft found molecular hydrogen, which indicates favourable conditions for life in Enceladus’s subsurface sea.
Alt: Saturn moon 'able to support life'
What appears to be a huge plume of water vapor has again been spotted emanating from Jupiter's icy moon Europa, boosting scientists' confidence that the phenomenon is real.
Images taken by NASA's New Horizons mission on its way to Pluto, and now the Kuiper Belt, have given scientists an unexpected tool for measuring the brightness of all the galaxies in the universe, said a Rochester Institute of Technology researcher in a paper published this week in Nature Communications.
Children who spend more time social networking online feel less happy with a number of different aspects of their lives, according to new research by the University of Sheffield.
Researchers say traditional education and work start times of 9am mean young adults are likely to underperform as a result of learning at a time which feels unnatural to them
Related: Early school starts pit teens in a conflict between society, biology
Children who witness domestic violence may be more likely to have psychopathic traits in adulthood, according to a new study.
Related: Babies cry most in UK, Canada, Italy & Netherlands
Related: Children have a stable home environment and perform better at school if their biological father lives with them (but the same benefits do not apply when a stepfather moves in)
Those suffering from dysphoria—feeling unhappy and experiencing elevated depressive symptoms—respond to positive experiences with a marked reduction in their depressive mood.
A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Psychology found that experiencing or even just anticipating uplifting events in daily life was related to feeling less depressed that same day.
Related: Want to help your mate beat the blues? Show them the love
Related: How just saying 'thank you' can help you ward off depression: Act of courtesy can keep the blues at bay by raising self-esteem
It tastes foul and makes people vomit. But ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic concoction that has been drunk in South America for centuries in religious rituals, may help people with depression that is resistant to antidepressants.
Residents in San Diego were treated to a surprise light show on Monday night.
Social media lit up in reaction to the bright, pulsing orb that streaked through the sky a little after 9 p.m.
Related: British Tabloids Jump On Reports Of Shape-Shifting UFOs
The number of reported UFO sightings has hit an all time high in 2017. In the 112 years since the National UFO Reporting Center began keeping track, there have been 104,947 reported events (Monfort, 2017). The majority of sightings occur in the United States, though Canada, Australia, and the Nordic countries also have significant numbers of unidentified flying object sightings
The Roman fort and civilian town of Tibiscum, in what is now Romania, was founded around the year 100 CE. It was thought to have been destroyed by the Barbarians around 300 CE. But Polish archaeologists have now discovered evidence that can't be explained by conflict with Barbarians. Much of the settlement appears to have been not just razed to the ground, but entirely gone.
It was the first stop on an extraordinary journey. On a bright but bitterly cold January afternoon earlier this year, I found myself on a small island in the Black Sea, just off Sozopol on the east coast of Bulgaria. Sveti Ivan has long been a destination for travellers: it boasted a temple of Apollo in ancient times. But I was there to speak to an old Bulgarian archaeologist about the most important find of his career.
In Bethlehem, a group of enthusiasts specializing in the sacred craft of iconography work to keep the 2,000-year-old tradition alive
Down a Bethlehem alleyway, sunlight illuminates a golden icon of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, signaling the revival of an ancient art being practiced in the workshop inside.
A silk-covered body inside a coffin and a silver bowl depicting Greek goddesses are among the discoveries at a 1,500-year-old cemetery in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region in China.
The discovery in 2015 that the remains of the teenage Egtved Girl discovered in Denmark were not in fact Danish caused an outcry. Partly because this Danish Bronze Age icon turned out not to be Danish after all, and partly because she demonstrated that Bronze Age people travelled far and wide—including women.
High-tech scans of Viking swords are revealing details of how the weapons were made and how their role changed in Viking society over time.
A new analysis of three Viking swords has found that, as fearsome as these seafaring people were, these specific "weapons" were probably not sturdy enough for battle or raiding, and instead were likely decorative.
Men from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands, Croatia, and Montenegro are, on average, the tallest in the world, according to new research that helps to explain why such individuals often grow to six feet and more in height.
To ancient peoples of the American Southwest, a macaw’s brilliant feathers weren’t just adornments. They were status symbols and spiritual emblems — so precious, in fact, that macaws were kept in captivity and deliberately plucked of their plumage, new evidence suggests.
An ancient village believed to be one of the oldest human settlements ever found in North America has been discovered during an excavation on a remote island in British Columbia.
The oldest known specimens of bedbug relatives have been unearthed in an Oregon cave system where ancient humans once lived. The partial fossils from three different species in the bedbug family date back 5,000 to 11,000 years, predating a previous find from 3,500 years ago
The African Matabele ants (Megaponera analis) are widespread south of the Sahara and are a specialised termite predator. Two to four times a day, the ants set out to hunt prey. Proceeding in long files, they raid termites at their foraging sites, killing many workers and hauling the prey back to their nest.
Millions of years before humans discovered agriculture, ants were farming fungus beneath the surface of the Earth. By tracing their evolutionary history, scientists have learned about a key transition in their agricultural evolution. This transition allowed the ants to achieve higher levels of complexity in farming, rivaling the agricultural practices of humans. Scientists report that this transition likely occurred when farming ants began living in dry climates.
Ardley Island, in the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica, is inhabited by around 5,000 pairs of gentoo penguins. This makes it one of the largest breeding colonies for the penguin species, yet penguins on the island have had a tough time surviving.
The penguin colony was periodically wiped out by three volcanic eruptions