How a 3-Ton Mess of Dead Pigs Transformed This Landscape

The unusual ecological experiment took place in Mississippi, and the scientists were awed by the results—especially the rivers of maggots. By Christie Wilcox.

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Dietary and lifestyle guidelines for the prevention of Alzheimer's disease.

Risk of developing Alzheimer's disease is increased by older age, genetic factors, and several medical risk factors. Studies have also suggested that dietary and lifestyle factors may influence risk, raising the possibility that preventive strategies may be effective. (2014)

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Gamers have an advantage in learning

Video games are apparently better than their reputation.

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Elon Musk’s New Vision: Anywhere on Earth in Under One Hour

Entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has long dreamed of creating a human colony on Mars, is planning to build a new rocket ship code named “BFR” capable of traveling anywhere on Earth in under an hour. If the concept becomes reality, Musk said a journey from New York to Shanghai can be done in about 30 minutes. The surprise announcement means that his Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which has already disrupted the aerospace industry with reusable launches, plans to ferry humans not just to distant planets but across this one as well, setting up a potentially competitive challenge to the commercial airline industry.

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Caffeine and Parkinson’s: One researcher, two studies, and opposite results. What happens?

In August of 2012, Ronald Postuma, MD, a neurologist from McGill University, performed a study along with several coauthors which suggested that caffeine improves debilitating movement symptoms in people with Parkinson’s disease.

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Musk revises Mars ambitions—and they seem a little bit more real

Yes, Elon Musk still absolutely wants to go to Mars. But in a speech delivered Friday in Adelaide, Australia, the founder of SpaceX opened the door to sending humans to the Moon first. "It’s 2017, we should have a lunar base by now," he said, speaking just a couple of years shy of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo landings. "What the hell is going on?"

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Archaeologists Find Lost Ancient Greek Temple Of Goddess Artemis

It took more than 100 years of searching but archaeologists have finally found a lost temple to the ancient Greek goddess Artemis. The Greek Ministry of Culture reported that a team has found the remains of the sanctuary near Amarynthos, a coastal town a couple of dozen miles northeast of Athens on the large Greek island of Euboea. Scientists and historians have spent more than a century looking for what is left of the temple, but an ancient text with inaccurate directions threw them off the trail.

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The US military could soon be flying one of the fastest helicopters ever

The S-97 can fly over 250 mph and still pack some serious firepower.

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Harvard researchers help develop ‘smart’ tattoos

Harvard and MIT researchers have developed smart tattoo ink capable of monitoring health by changing color to tell an athlete if she is dehydrated or a diabetic if his blood sugar rises.

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CRISPR used to peer into human embryos' first days

Gene-edited human embryos have offered a glimpse into the earliest stages of development, while hinting at the role of a pivotal protein that guides embryo growth. The first-of-its-kind study stands in contrast to previous research that attempted to fix disease-causing mutations in human embryos, in the hope of eventually preventing genetic disorders. Whereas those studies raised concerns over potential ‘designer babies’, the latest paper describes basic research that aims to understand human embryo development and causes of miscarriage.

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Ancient boy’s DNA pushes back date of earliest humans

A boy who lived in what’s now South Africa nearly 2,000 years ago has lent a helping genome to science. Using the long-gone youngster’s genetic instruction book, scientists have estimated that humans emerged as a distinct population earlier than typically thought, between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago.

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Passengers face chaos after 'airport check-in systems crash across globe'

Airline customers have been hit with major disruption after computer check-in systems failed across the globe. Frustrated passengers reported problems at London Gatwick, Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle in Paris and Reagan Airport in Washington DC. Travellers in Singapore, Zurich, Melbourne and Johannesburg also appeared to be affected on Thursday morning after firms using Amadeus Altea software were hit with issues. The software is used by 125 airlines across the globe both in airports and online.

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Electric “Mercedes” will be charged in five minutes

The “cargo” division of Daimler AG invested $ 60 million in the Israeli startup StoreDot, which develops “organic” batteries with fast charging. The money will be spent on the introduction of technology into mass production. This is reported on the website Electrek.

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DNA surgery on embryos removes disease

Precise "chemical surgery" has been performed on human embryos to remove disease in a world first, Chinese researchers have told the BBC. The team at Sun Yat-sen University used a technique called base editing to correct a single error out of the three billion "letters" of our genetic code. They altered lab-made embryos to remove the disease beta-thalassemia. The embryos were not implanted.

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Lockheed Martin unveils fully reusable crewed Martian lander

NASA's goal to reach Mars is just over a decade away, and Lockheed Martin revealed Thursday how humans might soon walk upon the red planet's surface. Lockheed Martin gave CNBC a first look at its new spacecraft prototype, which the company will unveil Thursday at this year's International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia.

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Millennials Aren't Killing Industries. We're Just Broke and Your Business Sucks

You've heard it before: Millennials are killing businesses. However, if you think about it for more than a few seconds, it's pretty obvious to see why.

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Move towards 'holy grail' of computing by creation of brain-like photonic microchips

Scientists have made a crucial step towards unlocking the "holy grail" of computing - microchips that mimic the way the human brain works to store and process information. A research team, including Professor C. David Wright from the University of Exeter, have made a pioneering breakthrough by developing photonic computer chips - that use light rather than electricity - that imitate the way the brain's synapses operate.

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CONFIRMED: A Huge Gravitational Wave Announcement Is About to Happen

It's happening! We have confirmation that the LIGO team will go ahead with the rumoured announcement today at 6:30pm Italian time. We'll be doing a live blog when that happens so stay tuned for a link to that right here! Time to keep a close eye on the LIGO announcement schedule, folks, because if rumours are to be believed, we might be in for a big gravitational wave announcement very soon.

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Why octopuses are building small “cities” off the coast of Australia

Divers found octopuses building structures out of shells, socializing with neighbors.

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Self-driving cars are coming faster than you think. What will that mean for public radio?

Picture this: Your car is driving you to work. What do you do? Pull out your phone and start checking emails? Get a novel and start reading? Do you bother to turn on the radio and listen to Morning Edition? When you tell your grandkids one day that back in the day, in the twenty-oughts, you used to listen to the radio on the work, will it seem as archaic to them as the idea of a family gathering around a radio to listen at night does now? Why would you listen to a radio in the car if you could have a screen instead?

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Researchers identify marker for CTE in living football players

"Not only did this research show the potential for CTE diagnosis during life, but it also offers a possible mechanism for distinguishing between CTE and other diseases," said Jonathan Cherry, a postdoctoral fellow in neurology at Boston University Medical Center.

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The Dying Art of Disagreement

To disagree well you must first understand well. You have to read deeply, listen carefully, watch closely. Proper disagreements arise from perfect comprehension; from having chewed over the ideas of your intellectual opponent so thoroughly that you can properly spit them out.

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Psychedelic brew called ayahuasca shows promise in the treatment of eating disorders

Scientists in Canada have found preliminary evidence that a psychedelic drink known as ayahuasca can help people overcome eating disorders. “I was a psychologist working in eating disorders and colleagues and I were witnessing first-hand the drop-out rates, the relapse rates, even deaths, when I watched a documentary on ayahuasca in the context of addictions,” said Dr. Adèle Lafrance, lead author of the study and a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Laurentian University.

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UAE Announces $140 Million BIG-Designed Mars Science City

The UAE has launched the Mars Science City project, a city that will serve as a “viable and realistic model” for studying the human occupation of Mars.

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Earth Had Life From Its Infancy

Canadian rocks that are almost 4 billion years old contain clues that organisms were already around on the young planet.

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A brain-system that builds confidence in what we see, hear and touch

A series of experiments at EPFL provide conclusive evidence that the brain uses a single mechanism (supramodality) to estimate confidence in different senses such as audition, touch, or vision. The study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

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What a 2050 Population Prediction Says About the Future of America

For the better part of a decade, various forecasts from the United Nations and U.S. Census Bureau, among other data-analyzing organizations, have been predicting that if trends continue, nearly three-quarters of the world’s population will live in urban areas by the year 2050. The statistic could signal a myriad of changes for the country, from transportation to healthcare to security to pollution, but the election of Donald Trump has the authors of a new book viewing the stat squarely from a political point of view.

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Gravity may be created by strange flashes in the quantum realm

A model of how wave forms of quantum systems collapse reveals a way they could create gravitational fields, and perhaps even reconcile two pillars of physics

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BHP: 2017 The Year Of 'Electric Vehicle Revolution'

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - This year looks set to be the “tipping point” for electric cars, Arnoud Balhuizen, chief commercial officer at global miner BHP (BLT.L) said on Tuesday, with the impact for raw materials producers to be felt first in the metals market, and only later in oil.

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Ontario girl who was teased for love of bugs gets name in science journal

Sophia Spencer hated it when classmates taunted her for her love of insects, but seeing them kill her pet grasshoppers for fun was even worse. Her first-grade peers couldn’t understand what she found so fascinating about bugs of all sorts or why she’d devote spare time to catching them, reading about them, and generally carrying on like a budding entomologist. As Sophia listened to schoolyard jeers that called her weird, or was forced to watch as her much-loved bugs were taken from her hands and stepped on for sport, she felt her confidence begin to wane.

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Scientists spent a month terrifying guppies to prove that fish have personalities

Five minutes in the life of a guppy in the terrible spring of 2015: You’re swimming around with your friends in a tank. You’ve been here for days. Food falls from the sky. Everything is fine. Then suddenly, you’re netted up and dropped into an alien world, all alone, just you and the glass. You panic at first, but in time your courage returns and you investigate. Glass wall; glass wall; glass wall; glass wall. A scrap of plastic on the aquarium floor provides the only scant shelter. Hmm …

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Is this the lost city of Alexander the Great?

Alexander the Great's 'lost city' was a magical place where people drank wine and naked philosophers imparted wisdom, ancient accounts claim. Now, nearly 2,000 years after the great warrior's death, archaeologists believe the city may have finally been discovered in Iraq. Experts first noticed ancient remains in the Iraqi settlement, known as Qalatga Darband, after looking at declassified American spy footage from the 1960s.

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Wireless Food Stamp Transactions Tied to Healthier Shopping

New research links the equipping of mobile fruit and vegetable stands with wireless banking devices programmed to accept food stamps to the buying of more healthy foods by people with low incomes. This is the finding of a survey of 779 shoppers in the Bronx—a New York City borough with many low-income communities—who bought food at 4 of the city’s nearly 500 mobile sellers of fresh produce, known as Green Carts. Some of these food carts were licensed to handle electronic bank transfers (EBTs), the technical term for the transactions, while others were not.

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GM, not Tesla, is a better bet on the autonomous vehicle future right now, Deutsche Bank says

General Motors' strong competitive position in autonomous vehicle (AV) technology is widely underestimated by investors, according to a Wall Street firm. Deutsche Bank raised its rating on the automaker's shares to buy from hold, saying the company will attain a large market share of the new AV market.

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The Future Will Be Decentralized

Some people live their existence in a great state of dread, convinced a totalitarian, centralized world government of sorts is in our future. Not only do I not think this is going to happen, but I predict the exact opposite will occur. I believe the world has already hit “peak centralization” and decentralization will be the defining trend of human existence on this planet going forward.

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Fish have complex personalities, study suggests

Fish appear to be individuals with complex personalities, according to new research. Researchers tested the idea that Trinidadian guppies all had a fairly standard response to potential dangers. The theory went that they had a “simple spectrum” of reactions to danger – some things were more frightening than others but the fish basically all responded in the same way.

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Russia Will Team Up with NASA to Build a Lunar Space Station

In a major space policy decision, Russia will promise to join a NASA-led effort to build an international human outpost in the vicinity of the Moon. Russian industry sources told Popular Mechanics that the head of Roscosmos State Corporation, Igor Komarov, is expected to announce the news next week during a meeting with other space agencies at the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia.

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University of Tokyo pair invent loop-based quantum computing technique

Japanese scientists have invented an approach to quantum computing that renders a far larger number of calculations more efficiently than existing quantum computers. Under the new method, many pulses of light, each carrying information, are allowed to go around in a loop circuit indefinitely. The circuit performs multiple tasks, switching from one task to another rapidly through instant manipulations of the pulses.

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Expressive Writing Liberates the Mind from Chronic Worrying

Taking a few minutes to jot down your thoughts and feelings using a technique called “expressive writing” can free up brain space and helps the mind function more efficiently, according to a new study led by psychology researcher Hans Schroder. These findings were published online September 8 in the journal Psychophysiology.

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Mind-reading technology should not be used to solve crime

Most people would agree they have a right to privacy, a right not to incriminate themselves, and a right to freedom of thought. Brain fingerprinting threatens all three.

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Ultra-Light Aluminum: USU Chemist Reports Material Design Breakthrough

If you drop an aluminum spoon in a sink full of water, the spoon will sink to the bottom. That’s because aluminum, in its conventional form, is denser than water says Utah State University chemist Alexander Boldyrev. But if you restructure the common household metal at the molecular level, as Boldyrev and colleagues did using computational modeling, you could produce an ultra-light crystalline form of aluminum that’s lighter than water.

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A New Push for the Male "Pill"

An international clinical trial will give a contraceptive gel a test drive

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Air travel is better than ever. So why do we feel like it sucks?

At some point, we were socialized to hate flying.

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The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life: the new sleep science

Leading neuroscientist Matthew Walker on why sleep deprivation is increasing our risk of cancer, heart attack and Alzheimer’s – and what you can do about it

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Birds Beware: The Praying Mantis Wants Your Brain

Tom Vaughan, a photographer then living in Colorado’s Mancos Valley, kept a hummingbird feeder outside his house. One morning, he stepped through the portico door and noticed a black-chinned hummingbird dangling from the side of the red plastic feeder like a stray Christmas ornament.

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Ancient Papyrus Reveals How The Great Pyramid Of Giza Was Built

In a new documentary, aired by Channel 4 on British television last week, archaeologists presented new evidence describing how the Great Pyramid was constructed. The new insight comes from papyrus discovered in the ancient port of Wadi al-Jarf, on the Red Sea. Among the documents discovered there over the last six years, a joint French-Egyptian team unearthed the diary of Merer, an official involved in the construction of the Great Pyramid.

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Nerve implant 'restores consciousness' to man in vegetative state

Stimulation of the vagus nerve allows patient who has been in a vegetative state for 15 years to track objects with his eyes and respond to simple requests.

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Google and Levi's tech-enabled Jacquard jacket feels like the future

Jacquard is part jacket, part wearable tech.

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Parents: How You Manage Conflict Has an Impact on Your Kids

Few parents want their children to hear them arguing, but since conflict is a normal part of any relationship, it can be hard to shield little ones from every spat. That's OK, as long as parents handle disagreements in a constructive way, says University of Arizona researcher Olena Kopystynska. Kopystynska, a graduate student in the UA's Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, studies conflict and conflict resolution. In a new paper, forthcoming in the Journal of Family Psychology, she looks at how the way parents handle conflict...

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Walking to work or doing the vacuuming can extend your life

One in 12 deaths could be prevented with 30 minutes of physical activity five days a week. That’s the conclusion from the world’s largest study of physical activity, which analysed data from more than 130,000 people across 17 countries. At the start of the study, participants provided information on their socioeconomic status, lifestyle behaviours and medical history. They also answered a questionnaire about the physical activity they complete over a typical week. Participants were followed-up at least every three years to record information about cardiovascular disease and death for almost seven years.

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