Humpback whales are brilliant communicators. Males use a series of complex sounds to create songs that travel far underwater. But now researchers have discovered that the way they leap out of the ocean is also a form of talk. Migrating humpback whales are lively and can often be seen jumping out of the water and …
Human music has borrowed liberally from the animal kingdom over the years, consciously and otherwise: from cuckoo-impersonating classical composers such as Beethoven; to the rainforest-sampling jungle music producers of the ’90s; to today’s dance music programmers, who use electronic instruments to replicate organically occurring sounds. Our canon is rich with nature-inspired devices, yet there’s still …
City Birds Have Upped the Volume of Their Songs to Compete With Noise Pollution Read More »
Scientists studying the Chicxulub crater in Mexico believe that the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago may also have created habitats for new forms of early life. The impact made rocks more porous, which provided niches in which organisms could thrive. These rocks also contained nutrients from water that had been …
Did the Asteroid that Caused the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico Also Have a Positive Impact? Read More »
As many as 80,000 bats per year are meeting an untimely demise due to wind farms, researchers have found. The results came out in a survey by the University of Exeter of 46 wind farms, 29 of which had undergone ecological impact assessments that had predicted the creatures would be unaffected. It is believed that …
Scientists from Duke University have discovered the Connective Tissue Growth Factor A (CTGFA) protein in zebra fish. Why is this important? Because it helps to heal spinal-cord damage. Tests showed that when the zebra fish’s spinal cord ruptured, a bridge of cells formed, followed by nerve cells and tissue. In about eight weeks, paralysed fish …
The Zebra Fish Brings Scientists One Step Closer to Understanding Regeneration Read More »
On 8 September, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission launched. It will spend a year orbiting the Sun, before travelling towards Earth on 23 September 2017, where it will slingshot around the planet and start heading towards the asteroid Bennu. Bennu measures 500m in diameter and comes close to Earth every six years. OSIRIS-REx’s arrival at Bennu is …
It might not look like the most hospitable place to live, but this strangely shaped depression could have once been home to Martian life. The crater is perched on the rim of the Hellas basin, in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, and was probably formed by a volcano beneath a glacier. It could …
Looking for Signs of Life On Mars in a Funnel-Like Crater Read More »
1. Hypothermia Air temperature drops by 5°C for each 1km you rise. By the edge of the stratosphere (around 15km), it’s below -50°C and the wind blows at over 100km/h. Exposed skin will suffer frostbite in less than five minutes and hypothermia will soon follow. The temperature starts rising again after 20km, but not quickly …
What Would Kill Me First If I Went Up In a Balloon Unprotected? Read More »
Air is 78 per cent nitrogen, and plants need it to grow. Nitrogen gas is chemically very stable because it is made from two atoms that form strong bonds with one another. Breaking these bonds requires lots of energy before they can react. Lightning can provide this energy, breaking the bonds and leaving the free nitrogen …
Why Does Thunderstorm Rain Contain More Nitrogen Than Ordinary Rain? Read More »
Scientists have been reporting strong links between heavy internet use and depression, with a particular focus on social media. This came as no surprise to health education expert Dr Aric Sigman, who says high exposure to social media can leave people feeling inadequate. “There is a relationship between the amount of time you spend on social media …
This year’s CES was positively bursting with gadgetry that works with Amazon’s AI personal assistant Alexa – the Siri/Cortana-like ‘voice’ of Amazon Echo. Ranging from an outright Echo competitor (the Lenovo Smart Assistant) to Ford’s SYNC3 in-car infotainment system, via robot vacuum cleaners, security cameras, Huawei’s Mate 9 phone and ’smart’ light bulbs, plugs and kitchen appliances galore, there were over 30 such products …
Say goodbye to your reading glasses. Researchers at Japan’s RIKEN Centre for Developmental Biology have restored vision in mice with end-stage retinal degeneration – the leading cause of irreversible vision loss and blindness in elderly humans – by transplanting retinal tissue grown using stem cells. Patients with conditions such as age-related macular degeneration and retinitis …
When we read, we construct a mental representation of the text in our minds, much as we do when we look at terrain and create a mental map in our heads. But experts warn that we read text on screens differently, preferring to skim, scan and click hyperlinks, rather than ‘deep reading’ in the old-fashioned …
Is Screen Reading Different From Traditional Reading? Read More »
With phone numbers, routes and facts just a touch away, we’re becoming less reliant on our memory – and German neuroscientist Manfred Spitzer warns this ‘cognitive offloading’ could be leading to a kind of ‘digital dementia’. Studies on internet and gaming addicts has uncovered atrophy (shrinking) in the brain’s grey matter, says the University of …
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