Elon Musk’s hyperloop competition brings new mass-transit technology to life in Southern California

A new mass transit system that sounded like a crazy futuristic idea a few years ago was brought to three-dimensional life in Hawthorne on Sunday, as young engineering teams from around the world tested prototype pod-vehicles in the first Hyperloop competition. The technology, introduced to the world in a research paper written by SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk in 2013 that described the basic principles of thrusting a passenger pod through a vacuum-sealed tube at supersonic speeds, was re-imagined by teams who trekked to Hawthorne with their complex homemade vehicles in tow.

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Dogs share food with other dogs even in complex situations

Dogs also share their food, albeit mainly with four-legged friends rather than strangers. A new study has now confirmed this prosocial behavior among canines. The more complex methodology of the study, however, showed that the experimental set-up has an impact on the dogs' behavior and that even the mere presence of another dog makes the animals more generous.

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Crowds are wise enough to know when other people will get it wrong

Unexpected yet popular answers often turn out to be correct. By Cathleen O’grady.

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Scale of the universe in 3 minutes

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How Diversity Makes Us Smarter

Being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-working. By Katherine W. Phillips.

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3 Galaxies That Shouldn't Exist

The universe is a big place full of galaxies that we've only begun to study. SciShow Space presents 3 of the strangest ones we've found so far. Published on Jan 31, 2017 · 49 minutes ago

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How a Scientist Mapped the Entire Peruvian Amazon by Plane

Next stop: space.

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The Making of Future Man

Hugo Gernsback (1884-1967) has mostly vanished from our cultural memory, which is a pity, because he was an extraordinary man, and his influence on our modern age—electrical, science-permeated, and full of wonders—was outsized. By James Gleick.

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Border Tax ideas Roil Oil Markets, Favor Gulf Coast Refiners

As with many industries now fretting over the uncertain future of U.S. trade policy, the oil business is sizing up the potential impact of the various protectionist measures being bandied about Washington - which have sent crude markets into a tizzy.

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A 58-story skyscraper in San Francisco is tilting and sinking — but the city says it's safe to live in

There's good news for the wealthy tenants of Millennium Tower, San Francisco's very own leaning tower. An inspection by the city's Department of Building Inspection concluded that the skyscraper, which has sunk 16 inches and tilted two inches since it opened in 2009, is safe to live in, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. "There was no evidence of life-safety concerns observed during the inspection," the report stated. "The building is safe to occupy at this time."

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Scientists find 'oldest human ancestor' - BBC News

Researchers discover the earliest known ancestor of humans - and many other species.

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30 pounds of cocaine found on American Airlines plane during ‘routine maintenance’

A worker found nearly 30 pounds of cocaine hidden inside an American Airlines plane during a routine maintenance check, according to FOX 23. Workers found seven bricks of cocaine inside an electronics bay near the nose gear of a Boeing 757 parked at the American Airlines Maintenance Base in Tulsa, according to the report. According to the airline, authorities were immediately contacted.

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Alien-like critter forces creation of new insect category

​​There are around one million insects that have been discovered and described by scientists, with every last one slotting into one of 31 categories, known in entomology circles as orders. But the discovery of a new alien-like insect preserved in amber has forced them to revisit the playbook.

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Scientists cook up super-strong material out of soybean oil

Australian scientists use an everyday cooking oil to make graphene, a material hundreds of times stronger than steel.

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The Jellyfish Nebula

Photo by Eric Coles.

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Earth’s Magnetic Poles Are Set to Swap Places - and We're Totally Unprepared

Earth’s magnetic field surrounds our planet like an invisible force field - protecting life from harmful solar radiation by deflecting charged particles away. Far from being constant, this field is continuously changing.

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Halt citizen: beware Trump and his internet killswitch

Be careful what you Tweet, folks, the new US Commander in Chief may just turn off your pesky internet. By Jessica Sier.

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Science Needs You: Volunteer or Sign Up to the Scientists’ March in Washington D.C.

Scientists are planning a Scientists’ March on Washington to protest the Trump administration’s anti-science policies. By Robby Berman.

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The Secret History of the First Cat in Space

On October 18th, 1963, the Centre national d’études in France was set to send a small cat named Félix into space. After lagging behind its Soviet and American competitors, France was eager to stake its claim in the space race—with cats, for some reason. But on launch day, the mischievous little beast went missing—and an accidental heroine stepped in to take his place. Her name was Félicette.

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The Stegosaurus Plate Controversy

You live in the Jurassic and you’ve evolved giant, diamond-shaped bone plates that stick out the top of your neck, back and tail. Why, evolution, why? By Darren Naish.

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Doubts Cloud Claims of Metallic Hydrogen

A new study reports the compression of hydrogen gas to a metallic state, but skeptics are unconvinced. By Davide Castelvecchi.

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Pig-Human Organ Farming Doesn’t Look Promising Yet

Effort to grow organs stirs debate over ethics of human-animal chimeras. By Antonio Regalado.

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Trump’s Immigration Ban Is Already Harming American Science

Iranian scientists have been a major boon to everything from Mars exploration to Ebola-fighting to advanced mathematics. By Ed Yong.

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Science off to a rough start in the Trump administration

Every day seems to bring more bad news for science in the US. Websites vanish, funding is cancelled, and scientists are denied the ability to address the public. But each time something terrible happens, we only have to wait a few days before half of these ideas gets changed or completely rescinded. It can be hard to tell what's going on and what that means for the future of science in the world's leading producer of the stuff.

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Why We Hear Voices in Random Noise

You may have once seen a giant face in the clouds. Perhaps it took you aback, amused you, or maybe it prompted an “uncanny valley”…

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Amazon Reef: First images of new coral system

Huge coral system reef where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean was discovered last year.

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There used to be 4 billion American chestnut trees, but they all disappeared

The kings of the Eastern forest now die as shrubs

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Border Tax ideas Roil Oil Markets, Favor Gulf Coast Refiners

As with many industries now fretting over the uncertain future of U.S. trade policy, the oil business is sizing up the potential impact of the various protectionist measures being bandied about Washington - which have sent crude markets into a tizzy.

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An Unexpected Encounter with Set Theory in the Wild

How a routine trip to the art museum became a meditation on the empty set. By Evelyn Lamb.

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Ancient, scary and alien-looking specimen forms a rarity in the insect world – a new order

Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered a 100-million-year-old insect preserved in amber with a triangular head, almost-alien and “E.T.-like” appearance and features so unusual that it has been placed in its own scientific “order” – an incredibly rare event. There are about 1 million described species of insects, and millions more still to be discovered, but every species of insect on Earth has been placed in only 31 existing orders. Now there’s one more.

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America's Long-Overdue Opioid Revolution Is Finally Here

A bunion, you may have the misfortune to know, is a bony growth that forms at the base of your big toe. When that bump begins to irritate the rest of your foot, it has to go. Wincing would be the correct reaction here. On the pain scale, a bunionectomy doesn’t compare to having a limb sawn off; nor is it particularly medically risky. But since it “involves shaving off extra bone and cutting the big toe in half and pinning it back together,” says David Soergel, chief medical officer of the pharmaceutical company Trevena Inc, “it’s actually a very painful surgery.”

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Grass carp have invaded three of the Great Lakes, study says

Grass carp have been found in Lake Erie, Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario, although it’s uncertain how many there are or how widely they have spread. By John Flesher.

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Fossils of giant pterosaurs found in Transylvania

A pair of researchers in the U.K. has identified fossils found in the Transylvania area in Romania as those of a pterosaur they have named Hatzegopteryx—a giant, muscle-bound flying reptile that could eat prey as large as a small horse. By Bob Yirka.

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The confusing, wild world of science under the Trump administration

A revolt among federal scientists reveals the deep distrust Trump sowed in calling climate change a “hoax” and favoring business over environmental stewardship. By Zack Colman.

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This Scary, Alien-Like Specimen Trapped in Amber Represents a Brand New Order of Insect

Researchers have discovered two 100-million-year old insects trapped in amber that are so unusual, they represent an entire new order of insect.

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Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality over the millennia

Professor Walter Scheidel examines the history of peace and economic inequality over the past 10,000 years.

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Ancient Mayan Superhighways Found in the Guatemala Jungle

An ancient network of roads that stretched over 150 miles has been discovered in the jungle of Guatemala, according to high-tech scanning carried out in the area. Used by the Maya for travel and transporting goods, the causeways were identified in the Mirador Basin, which lies in the far northern Petén region of Guatemala, within the largest tract of virgin tropical forest remaining in Central America.

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Feed a cold, starve a fever? Not so fast, according to Salk research - Salk Institute for Biological Studies

LA JOLLA—The last time you had a stomach bug, you probably didn’t feel much like eating. This loss of appetite is part of your body’s normal response to an illness but is not well understood. Sometimes eating less during illness promotes a faster recovery, but other times—such as when cancer patients experience wasting—the loss of appetite can be deadly.

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What If Everybody Lived In Just One Building?

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Bertha's Two-Mile Subterranean Journey Is Almost Over

Get an inside look at how the machine is maintained, and how its cutter tools up front are replaced in a subterranean hyperbaric chamber.

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First Cell Culture of Live Adult Human Neurons Shows Potential of Brain Cell Types

Studying brain disorders in people and developing drugs to treat them has been slowed by the inability to investigate single living cells from adult patients. In a first-of-its-kind study published in Cell Reports this week, a team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania led by James Eberwine, PhD, a professor of Pharmacology, Sean Grady, MD, chair of Neurosurgery, and Junhyong Kim, PhD, a professor of Biology in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences, was able to grow adult human neurons donated from patients...

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TSRI Scientists Find Brain Hormone that Triggers Fat Burning

Biologists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified a brain hormone that appears to trigger fat burning in the gut. Their findings in animal models could have implications for future pharmaceutical development. “This was basic science that unlocked an interesting mystery,” said TSRI Assistant Professor Supriya Srinivasan, senior author of the new study, published today in the journal Nature Communications.

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Claim made for Hydrogen 'Wonder Material'

US scientists draw controversy as they claim to have fulfilled the decades-long quest to turn hydrogen into a state where it behaves like a metal.

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Two of Nation's Worst Droughts See Significant Improvement

Southern California and parts of the South both saw improvement in drought conditions this week.

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Manufacturing jobs are finally returning to North America...for robots

With emerging-market wages catching up fast, the advantage to offshore manufacturing is dwindling. But automation threatens jobs on every continent.

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Scientists unveil new form of matter: Time crystals

To most people, crystals mean diamond bling, semiprecious gems or perhaps the jagged amethyst or quartz crystals beloved by collectors. To Norman Yao, these inert crystals are the tip of the iceberg. If crystals have an atomic structure that repeats in space, like the carbon lattice of a diamond, why can't crystals also have a structure that repeats in time? That is, a time crystal?

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After the Oxbow: Mississippi River Backwaters Are Disappearing. Why?

Along the Mississippi River, largely beyond our notice, an essential wildlife habitat is beginning to disappear. Can it be saved?

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We now have the genetic recipe for making tomatoes taste like tomatoes again

Remember when tomatoes didn’t just taste like water? Well, scientists have mapped the entire genome of hundreds of varieties of tomatoes, and identified the genetic traits that make them yummy....

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Canadian scientists lend support to muzzled US counterparts

Canadian scientists – who were muzzled for nearly a decade by the country’s previous Conservative government – have been making contact with their counterparts in the US to offer their support and solidarity amid mounting fears that Donald Trump’s presidency will seek to suppress climate science.

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Artificial intelligence 'as good as cancer doctors'

Artificial intelligence can identify skin cancer in photographs with the same accuracy as trained doctors, say scientists. The Stanford University team said the findings were "incredibly exciting" and would now be tested in clinics. Eventually, they believe using AI could revolutionise healthcare by turning anyone's smartphone into a cancer scanner.

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