Science and Technolgy blog
Enlarge / Crew Dragon enters Earth’s atmosphere on Sunday morning as recovery boats await. (credit: SpaceX) A white spacecraft, lightly toasted like a marshmallow and smelling of singed metal, fell out of the night sky early on Sunday morning and…
When the brain “juggles” information, things can fall through the cracks.
Elon Musk recently pronounced that the next Neuralink project will be a “Blindsight” cortical implant to restore vision: “Resolution will be low at first, like early Nintendo graphics, but ultimately may exceed normal human vision.” Unfortunately, this claim rests on…
A new study provides a rare glimpse into the experiences of children growing up with polyamorous parents. The research, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, found that many of these children feel positively toward their parents’ romantic…
Seeing the world with a restricted color palate seems to tone down an emotion-based resistance to new foods.
A new study published in Psychological Science reveals that loneliness tends to follow a U-shaped curve across adulthood, decreasing from young adulthood to midlife and increasing in older adulthood. Loneliness, defined as a subjective feeling of lacking meaningful social connections,…
In a recent study published in Scientific Reports, researchers explored the link between past psychedelic use, metaphysical beliefs, and well-being. The findings suggest that people who have used psychedelics tend to adopt metaphysical idealism—a belief that consciousness is fundamental to…
Enlarge (credit: Jason Edwards via Getty) Earthquake scientists detected an unusual signal on monitoring stations used to detect seismic activity during September 2023. We saw it on sensors everywhere, from the Arctic to Antarctica. We were baffled—the signal was unlike…
An angular roughshark pulled from the water near Elba, an Italian island near Tuscany.
A study of young men in China found that administering a single dose of testosterone made participants less sensitive to angry faces, but it had no effect on their sensitivity to fearful expressions. The research was published in Psychoneuroendocrinology. Testosterone…
Enlarge (credit: Hal Beral) For many creatures, having a limb caught in a predator’s mouth is usually a death sentence. Not starfish, though—they can detach the limb and leave the predator something to chew on while they crawl away. But…
China’s Chang’e 5 mission brought back evidence that the moon had erupting volcanoes just 120 million years ago.
A new study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry has revealed that women may be at a higher genetic risk for developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compared to men. This study, led by researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University and…
“Human evolution has occurred both due to, and in spite of, the placenta. Every pregnancy, unthinkingly, must navigate a careful path through it. Every menstruation is testament to it. It is partly why menopause exists, to give individuals an escape…
Soap has a pretty simple formula and a long history.
The Earth’s core may be much younger than previously thought.
Sept. 14, 2024: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend.
Enlarge / NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams wave to their families, friends, and NASA officials on their way to the launch pad June 5 to board Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. (credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images) NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and…
A new study suggests that mindfulness meditation influences how the brain perceives pain in ways that are distinct from the placebo effect.
Giving children saline nose drops at the start of a cold may shorten its duration and reduce the likelihood that they will pass the illness to others, a study hints. But it has some caveats.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Researchers still don’t know the cause of a recently discovered malware infection affecting almost 1.3 million streaming devices running an open source version of Android in almost 200 countries. Security firm Doctor Web reported Thursday that…
Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto) The Biden administration has proposed rules that could make it more costly for Chinese e-commerce platforms like Shein and Temu to ship goods into the US. In his announcement proposing to crack down…
Enlarge / Cinnamon buns. (credit: Getty | Christoph Schmidt) Consumer Reports on Thursday reported the concentration of lead it found in 36 ground cinnamon products, leading to a round of startling headlines. The testing is particularly nerve-racking given that it…
Tom Hardy returns for one more round as host of an alien symbiote, in Venom: The Last Dance. Tom Hardy is back for one last hurrah as investigative journalist Eddie Brock, host of an alien symbiote that imparts superhuman powers…
Racism steals time from people’s lives – possibly because of the space it occupies in the mind. In a new study published in the journal JAMA Network Open, our team showed that the toll of racism on the brain was…
Enlarge / The Google Gemini logo. (credit: Google) On Thursday, Google made Gemini Live, its voice-based AI chatbot feature, available for free to all Android users. The feature allows users to interact with Gemini through voice commands on their Android…
A recent study published in The Lancet Psychiatry indicates that many individuals who were hospitalized with COVID-19 continue to experience cognitive and psychiatric issues two to three years after their infection. The study sheds light on the long-term effects of…
Enlarge / Union members cheer during a news conference following a vote count on the union contract at the IAM District 751 Main Union Hall in Seattle, Washington, US, on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)…
Enlarge / According to the state of New York, this guy is the “assman,” not me. (credit: Seinfeld) According to my research, everyone has a butt. But that doesn’t mean, when I’m imbibing my morning cuppa and reading up on…
Enlarge / Artist’s conception of the state of the Earth during its global glaciations. (credit: NASA) Earth has gone through many geologic phases, but it did have one striking period of stasis: Our planet experienced a tropical environment where algae…
Researchers working in the field of agrivoltaics are studying how to combine solar farming with grazing, crop production or ecological restoration.
Enlarge / Sorry about all the black space in the lower-right corner. Nerdfetch does not make good use of the space it’s given—unlike the Asahi install on this MacBook. (credit: Kevin Purdy) Almost nobody truly needed Neofetch, but the people…
The Celestron Origin will have you taking crystal clear stunning pictures of deep sky objects in minutes.
Satellite data suggest a volcano in Tanzania that expels extremely runny lava could be creeping toward an eruption.
The world’s largest hot desert, the Sahara, is being hit with unusually heavy rain. Scientists are unclear why, but it may be linked to a subdued Atlantic hurricane season.
A recent neuroimaging study in China had romantic couples and pairs of strangers play a simple card game while undergoing functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) scans. The results showed that romantic couples achieved higher brain synchronization and used less deception (to…
Ashwagandha is all over TikTok. Some studies report benefits, but more research is needed.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Dan Kitwood ) Elon Musk has lambasted Australia’s government as “fascists” over proposed laws that could levy substantial fines on social media companies if they fail to comply with rules to combat the spread of…
Enlarge / Soon you’ll be able to stream games and video for free on United flights. (credit: United) United Airlines announced this morning that it is giving its in-flight Internet access an upgrade. It has signed a deal with Starlink…
A recent study published in Social Neuroscience has provided new insights into how alcohol use disorder (also known as alcoholism) interferes with the brain’s ability to process moral cues. The researchers found that when individuals with alcohol use disorder were…
Enlarge (credit: BirdImages) It seems like common sense that being smart should increase the chances of survival in wild animals. Yet for a long time, scientists couldn’t demonstrate that because it was unclear how to tell exactly if a lion…
Long-lasting, widespread heat and weather extremes may have caused the Great Dying extinction event 252 million years ago.
The Earth’s ambipolar electric field is weak but strong enough to control the shape and evolution of the upper atmosphere.
The growing “gateway to the underworld,” officially known as the Batagay megaslump, is the largest megaslump in the world and exposes permafrost layers that are 650,000 years old.
New research published in The Journal of Neuroscience demonstrates that the cognitive benefits of physical exercise can be transmitted transgenerationally from grandfathers to grandsons, suggesting that exercise-induced cognitive improvements may persist across multiple generations. Exercise has been shown to enhance…
Enlarge / Landspace’s reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (credit: Landspace) Welcome to Edition 7.11 of the Rocket Report! Outside of companies owned by American billionaires, the most imminent…
In a darkened room in Rochester, N.Y., a baby girl in a pink onesie watches a computer screen. Wherever she looks, an eye tracker follows. It records what she looks at and for how long. The baby, about 6 months…
Scientists accidentally discover new species of wasp that lays eggs inside living, adult fruit flies, which then burst from the hosts’ abdomens while they’re still alive.
When exposed to terms common in different racial dialects, large language models make inherently racist assumptions about people from particular racial groups, even without explicitly knowing their race.
With Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is safely back on Earth, NASA says Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams could have returned onboard.
