This fish’s opium-like venom could lead to new pain medications

Fang blennies are a tropical fish that won’t be intimidated, injecting predators and competitors alike with venom released from two long teeth on their lower jaw. New research reveals that rather than stunning foes with a jolt of pain, the venom acts on the bitten fish’s opioid receptors, causing it to become dizzy and lethargic. This offers an entirely new avenue for the development of novel painkillers.

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NASA's $1 billion Jupiter probe just sent back breathtaking new images of the gas giant

A probe the size of a basketball court has taken unprecedented new images of Jupiter. NASA's $1 billion Juno spacecraft, launched in August 2011, took five years to reach and settle into orbit around the gas giant, which is more than 415 million miles from Earth. The probe has so far photographed Jupiter's poles for the first time, detected bizarre cloud formations, recorded mysterious auroras, and scanned deep into the planet's thick cloud tops

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Filming mosquitoes reveals a completely new approach to flight

Mosquitos generate lift via three mechanisms, two of them new to us.

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1,000-Year-Old Toy Viking Boat Unearthed in Norway

A wooden toy discovered during an excavation of an Iron Age site in central Norway hints that 1,000 years ago, a child may have imagined ferocious Viking battles by playing with a carved replica of a ship. Found buried in a dry well at a small farm in the town of Ørland on the coastal tundra, the boat is whittled in a style resembling Viking vessels, with an uplifted prow and a hole in the center that likely held a mast for a sail.

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How people can kill a data strategy

Getting to an enterprise-wide view of an organization's analytics requires a data-driven culture. Business leaders must be clear about what they want, and enlist the support of every employee to get the job done.

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Researchers identify genes that give cannabis its flavour

UBC scientists have scanned the genome of cannabis plants to find the genes responsible for giving various strains their lemony, skunky or earthy flavours, an important step for the budding legal cannabis industry. “The goal is to develop well-defined and highly-reproducible cannabis varieties. This is similar to the wine industry, which depends on defined varieties such as chardonnay or merlot for high value products,” said Jörg Bohlmann, a professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories...

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Coal Mining Jobs Trump Would Bring Back No Longer Exist

The jobs the president alluded to — hardy miners in mazelike tunnels with picks and shovels — have become vestiges of the past.

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The first people who populated the Americas

We are getting closer to understanding who the first Americans really were

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Critical thinking suppressed in brains of people who believe in religion

The opposition between religious beliefs and scientific evidence can be explained by difference in brain structures and cognitive activity. Scientists have found critical thinking is suppressed in the brains of people who believe in the supernatural. Published in PLOS One, their study examines how the parts of the brain responsible for empathy and analytical reasoning are linked to faith and spiritual thinking.

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For the first time, we know what Tyrannosaur faces really looked like

No feathers, but specialized scales on its snout could sense vibration, heat.

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Blind tadpoles learn visually with eye grafted on tail

The strategy uses a drug already approved in humans and could provide a road map for promoting the supply of nerves to new organs in regenerative medicine. In a new study, blind tadpoles were able to process visual information from eyes that were grafted onto their tails after being treated with a neurotransmitter drug. Researchers used a neurotransmitter drug called Zolmitriptan, which is already approved for other uses in humans, to enhance integration and functionality of the grafted eye.

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Baby in a Box

A new US program is giving out cardboard bassinets to new mothers to encourage safe sleeping. Jernica Quiñones, a mother of five, was the first parent in New Jersey to get her free baby box — a portable, low-tech bassinet made of laminated cardboard. But first, she had to take an online course about safe sleeping practices, which experts say can sharply reduce the chances of sudden infant death syndrome. “Basically, you want to have the baby on the mattress, and that’s it,” she said after watching a 20-minute series of videos. The message may not be new. But health officials say it is critical to keeping babies safe.

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SpaceX makes aerospace history with successful landing of a used rocket

After more than two years of landing its rockets after launch, SpaceX finally sent one of its used Falcon 9s back into space. The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening.

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Here Are The Jobs NASA Can't Fill Because of Trump's Stupid Hiring Freeze

One of President Trump’s first actions after taking office was to institute a federal hiring freeze, leaving thousands of jobs vacant across the US government. Many of these jobs are in agencies that Trump supposedly values, like NASA. But when you look at the job vacancies that NASA is forbidden from filling, we see Trump’s “values” are a crock of shit.

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Gruesome Wasp Named After Shape-Shifting 'Star Trek' Character

A group of wasps with a gruesome lifestyle has just gained 15 new members. Like their kin, the newbies make a habit of laying their eggs in developing insects.

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Why You Feel the Urge to Jump

Have you ever stood in a high place and felt the urge to jump?

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Ex-Cyclone Debbie: Australia Floods Force more Evacuations

Ex-Cyclone Debbie brings widespread flash flooding to Queensland's most populous region.

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For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Said.

Garson O’Toole’s new book, "Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations," grew out of a wonderful website O’Toole has been conducting since 2010; the title, Quote Investigator, describes the content. It in turn developed from O’Toole’s realization of a paradoxical truth about the internet. While it has been the prime culprit in the modern-day epidemic of fake quotes, it also offers at the same time tools undreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio, for determining actual quotation provenance.

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These Fighting Fruit Flies Are Superheroes of Brain Science

POW! BAM! Fruit flies battling like martial arts masters are helping scientists map brain circuits. This research could shed light on human aggression and depression.

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Energy Department climate office bans use of phrase ‘climate change’

The Office of International Climate and Clean Energy is the only office at DOE with the words "climate" in its name, and it may be endangered as Trump looks to reorganize government agencies.

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Mosquito Behavior Is Evolving, and Malaria Is Benefitting — NOVA Next | PBS

Bed nets have cut the spread of malaria, but mosquitoes are evolving resistance to them by changing their behavior.

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A world without retirement

The long read: The population is getting older and the welfare state can no longer keep up. After two months talking to people in Britain about retirement, it’s clear that old age is an increasingly scary prospect

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'It's devastating': Documentary reveals 'streams' of water pollution from jean industry

Those jeans you pull on before running out to the corner store were produced by one of the most toxic industries on the planet, according to a new documentary that explores how clothing manufacturers are poisoning the world's water supply. The documentary "RiverBlue" highlights the environmental and human damage caused by the fashion industry, which uses highly toxic chemicals to produce 80 billion garments worldwide each year, while using 3.2 per cent of the world's fresh water.

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Donald Trump declares 'new age of American energy' as he destroys Obama's climate change legacy

US President Donald Trump set out to obliterate his predecessor Barack Obama's legacy on climate change as part of a bid to unleash America's energy potential. Mr Trump last night signed a sweeping executive order slashing measures from the Obama era, a move that was welcomed by the oil and coal industries as a bold step to end regulations that were "choking" the economy. Environmentalists condemned the move, accusing Mr Trump of wanting to "travel back to when smokestacks damaged our health" and said they would take his administration to court.

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In March Mammal Madness, Our Money's On The Giant Pouched Rat

Because what mammal can take down a rodent that sniffs out land mines as well as TB — and jumps 5 feet in the air? Surely not tonight's competitor, the maned wolf.

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Cats Are Actually Nice, Scientists Find

Sorry, haters. Let me tell you about my handsome son, Mizue. He's a cat. He cuddles up beside me and pushes his little furry head against me when he wants to be petted. He purrs and rubs up on everyone he meets. He's the best dude, is what I'm saying here, and I am goddamn sick of people saying that cats aren't nice. Cats are nice.

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India's Cities Have A Honking Big Noise Problem

They're so noisy that the Central Pollution Control Board is urging drivers not to honk needlessly — like that Uber driver who beeps along with the song on the radio.

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Inside the renewed search for a male contraceptive pill

Picking up a quest abandoned by Big Pharma, academic labs are using new disruptive technology to develop contraceptive drugs for men.

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Pushing Boundaries: Plant Hunters are the Pioneers of Colorado Botany

The joys and perils of searching for plants.

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High concentrations of stress hormone affect DNA processes and mental health

High concentrations of the stress hormone, Cortisol, in the body affect important DNA processes and increase the risk of long-term psychological consequences. These relationships are evident in a study from the Sahlgrenska Academy on patients with Cushing's Syndrome, but the findings also open the door for new treatment strategies for other stress-related conditions such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress.

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How Tetris therapy could help patients.

Doctors have been using the 1980s video game in a UK emergency department.

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Native Tongues

The making of the Dictionary of American Regional English, a five-thousand page, five-volume book documenting the history of American slang. By Simon Winchester.

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Improving memory with magnets

The ability to remember sounds, and manipulate them in our minds, is incredibly important to our daily lives -- without it we would not be able to understand a sentence, or do simple arithmetic. New research is shedding light on how sound memory works in the brain, and is even demonstrating a means to improve it. One day this stimulation could compensate for the loss of memory caused by neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.

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Major breakthrough could lead to mass-produced artificial blood

Researchers have created a method that allows them to manufacture red blood cells in a more efficient way. In a news release on Friday, the University of Bristol said that the team, from the university and NHS Blood and Transplant, had developed a "robust and reproducible technique" which enabled them to generate "immortalized erythroid cell lines from adult stem cells."

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Training Your Brain So That You Don’t Need Reading Glasses

By middle age, the lenses in your eyes harden, becoming less flexible. Your eye muscles increasingly struggle to bend them to focus on this print. But a new form of training — brain retraining, really — may delay the inevitable age-related loss of close-range visual focus so that you won’t need reading glasses. Various studies say it works, though no treatment of any kind works for everybody.

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I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations.

These politically motivated data deletions come at a time when the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average...

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The Largest Dinosaur Footprint Ever Has Been Found in Australia's 'Jurassic Park'

On a 25 kilometre (15.5 mile) stretch of coastline in Western Australia, there lies a prehistoric treasure trove.

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California solar + wind record high at 49.2%, renewable electricity peaks above 56%

Solar power in California started setting production records on February 24th – production peaks have continued to occur since then. On Thursday of last week renewables broke 56% of total demand. This record is partially the result of a national 2016 installation boom of greater than 14GW of solar power that California took 35% of. According to the daily report on March 23rd, solar peaked around 11.16 AM – three minutes before the solar + wind peak of 49.2% and nine minutes before renewables peaked 56.7%.

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Can science rob snakes of their deadliest weapon?

A new breed of obsessive scientists is trying to engineer better antidotes to snakebites, which kill 100,000 people a year. But venom is a wily target.

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Cyclone Debbie: Thousands evacuate in Queensland, Australia

Australian leaders plead for people to stay safe as Cyclone Debbie intensifies off Queensland.

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Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to boost the brain to keep up with AI

Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk has a new company – yes, another one – focused on developing the capabilities of the brain through technological..

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You're treating jellyfish stings all wrong

So you've been stung by a jellyfish. The good news: there's no need to get your friend to pee on you. The bad news: all the other solutions you've heard of will probably only make it worse.

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X-Rays Of The Earliest Stage Of Alzheimer's Offer Critical Clue About How It Starts

Scientists peered into the brains of mice and saw something about Alzheimer's they hadn't seen before.

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NASA Satellite Catches Star’s Death by Black Hole

The Swift telescope has charted a star’s plunge into a supermassive black hole at the core of a distant galaxy. By Elizabeth Howell.

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How One Of The World’s Toughest Creatures Can Bring Itself Back To Life

The tardigrade, a strange animal smaller than a grain of sand and with hooks for feet, can survive in a dried-up state for a decade. Its secret might help improve how drugs are shipped and stored. By Madeline K. Sofia.

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Best evidence yet that hypnotised people aren’t faking it

It’s hard to tell whether hypnotism is real. Now researchers have used a trick of the mind to show that hypnotised people’s actions really do feel involuntary

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Silicon Valley’s Quest to Live Forever

Can billions of dollars’ worth of high-tech research succeed in making death optional? The National Academy of Medicine’s Grand Challenge in Healthy Longevity will award at least twenty-five million dollars for breakthroughs in the field.

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Why Power Brings Out Your True Self

Are you a tyrant or a servant? By Matthew Hutson.

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‘Your animal life is over. Machine life has begun.’ The road to immortality

In California, radical scientists and billionaire backers think the technology to extend life – by uploading minds to exist separately from the body – is only a few years away. Here’s what happens. You are lying on an operating table, fully conscious, but rendered otherwise insensible, otherwise incapable of movement. A humanoid machine appears at your side, bowing to its task with ceremonial formality. With a brisk sequence of motions, the machine removes a large panel of bone from the rear...

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Scientists issue ‘apocalyptic’ warning about climate change

Researchers studying the largest-ever mass extinction in Earth’s history claim to have found evidence that it was caused by runaway global warming – and that the “apocalyptic” events of 250 million years ago could happen again. About 90 per cent of all the living things on the planet were wiped out in the Permian mass extinction – described in a 2005 book called When Life Nearly Died – for reasons that have been long debated by scientists. Competing theories have been put forward, including meteor strikes, huge volcanic eruptions and climate change.

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