A Brain Implant Restored This Man's Motion and Sense of Touch

After his accident, Ian Burkhart didn’t think he’d ever be able to move or feel his hand again. A small chip in his brain changed everything.

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Psychologist John Gartner: Trump is a "sexual sadist" who is "actively engaging in sabotage"

Leading psychotherapist and author on Trump's worsening sadistic "addiction" to causing harm, pain and death

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Mile-wide asteroid set to pass within 3.9m miles of Earth

The rock known as (52768) 1998 OR2 was first spotted in 1998 and will pass by the planet on Wednesday

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“Believe Science” Is a Bad Response to Denialism

Scientists saw it coming well in advance: a crisis that, left unaddressed, could kill hundreds of thousands of people. The White House ignored it, telling the public the problem was already contained. Maybe, senior officials speculated, it wasn’t a problem at all but another hoax cooked up by the president’s enemies in Congress, or by the Chinese government.

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Palaeontologists reveal 'the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth'

100 million years ago, ferocious predators, including flying reptiles and crocodile-like hunters, made the Sahara the most dangerous place on Earth.

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‘Ethnic spaces’ make minority students feel at home on campus

New research by the University of Washington and the University of Exeter in the U.K., examined the value that college students — of many races — place on ethnic cultural centers.

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Pentagon formally releases 3 Navy videos showing "unidentified aerial phenomena"

"The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as 'unidentified,'" a spokeswoman said.

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Pompeii ruins show that the Romans invented recycling

Excavations reveal that rubbish left outside the city walls wasn’t just dumped. It was being collected, sorted and resold

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Endless palimpsest: Wikipedia and the future’s historian

In spite of the project being very new, the number and variety of its authors and the ambivalence of academia towards it, Wikipedians have created an encyclopedia that upholds high standards of scholarship and encyclopedism.

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Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal

In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the U.S. was wrong.

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This Black-Hole Collision Just Made Gravitational Waves Even More Interesting

An unprecedented signal from unevenly sized objects gives astronomers rare insight into how black holes spin

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What if Covid-19 isn't our biggest threat?

Experts who assess global peril saw a pandemic coming, but they have worse worries for humanity

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Alarm Bells Over Rise of Antimicrobial Resistance in Aquaculture

Spain's daily coronavirus death toll dropped to 288 on Sunday, the lowest since March 20, as the country eased its lockdown to allow children outside for the first time in six weeks. The health ministry said the figure dropped from 378 on Saturday and brought Spain's total toll to 23,190, the third highest number of deaths after the United States and Italy. In total, nearly 100,000 people have recovered. Spain has confirmed, via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, a total of more than 207,000 cases.

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10 Popular Scientific Discoveries from 2019

Celebrate the new year with some of our most popular scientific discoveries from 2019.

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That's the way the comet crumbles: Hubble image shows remains of Comet ATLAS

Skywatchers had high hopes that a comet called ATLAS would light up the night sky this spring, with forecasts suggesting it could become bright enough to see with the unaided eye. Instead, the icy object crumbled to pieces — but it's still putting on a spectacular show for scientists. Ye Quanzhi, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, snagged some time with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to take a look at Comet ATLAS on Monday (April 20) and caught a stunning image of its fragments that he shared on Twitter as a preview of his research.

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‘Zoom fatigue’ is taxing the brain. Here's why that happens.

Video calls seemed an elegant solution to remote work, but they wear on the psyche in complicated ways.

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Right-Wing Responsible For Pushing Coronavirus Disinformation On Twitter Worldwide, New Report Says

Right-wing voices play an outsized role in spreading mis- and disinformation online about the coronavirus pandemic worldwide, a new report from Graphika claims.

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Archaeologists Had a Sword Fight for Science, Also Because Sword Fights Are Fun

Could ancient bronze weapons really hack it in combat?

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Of Two Minds - What's Collapsing Can't Be Saved: Our Fraudulent Economy

The moneyed elephant in the room.

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Unpicking Donald Trump’s psychopathology helps explain the toxic reality facing America ǀ View

If there is hope in our present situation, it lies in the fact that the current occupant of the White House is opening our eyes to the reality that individuals with dangerous personalities can plunge entire societies into division and moral confusion.

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Rice genetically engineered to resist heat waves can also produce up to 20% more grain

A simple genetic change appears to help plants repair heat-damaged photosynthetic machinery

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Nineteen mysterious invaders from another Solar System spotted hanging around the outside edge of ours

Astronomers have discovered a new population of foreign asteroids that have been quietly orbiting the Sun on the outskirts of our Solar System. These 19 space rocks have been right under our noses the entire time, almost since the Solar System formed some 4.5 billion years ago. But they were hidden amongst all the other objects part of a group known as the Centaurs, according to a research paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on Thursday.

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Why are Venus’ clouds so weird?

Our sister world’s rapidly moving clouds have long fascinated astronomers. And in the last few decades, we’ve learned quite a bit about them.

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The pandemic is bringing us closer to our robot takeout future

“We saw that business double overnight,” startup says of UK grocery deliveries.

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New Dual-Action Coating Keeps Bacteria From Cross-Contaminating Fresh Produce

Over the course of their journey from the open fields to the produce displays at grocery stores, fresh vegetables and fruits can sometimes become contaminated by microorganisms. These items can then spoil other produce, spreading the contamination further and increasing the number of food items that can cause illnesses.

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Americans spend more on wasted food than on gasoline

A new study by Zach Conrad, assistant professor in William & Mary's Department of Kinesiology & Health Sciences, finds that the average American consumer spends roughly $1,300 per year on food that ends up being wasted.

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Insect numbers down 25% since 1990, global study finds

Scientists say insects are vital and the losses worrying, with accelerating declines in Europe called ‘shocking’

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Natural mood regulation low or even absent in people with depression

Mood varies from hour-to-hour, day-to-day and healthy mood regulation involves choosing activities that help settle one’s mood. However, in situations where personal choices of activities are constrained, such as during periods of social isolation and lockdown, this natural mood regulation is impaired which might result in depression. New research, published today in JAMA Psychiatry, from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford suggests a new target for treating and reducing depression is supporting natural mood regulation.

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Boeing is sued for $336M over canceled 737 Max order

Boeing Co was sued for $336 million on Wednesday by a Kuwaiti leasing company that accused it of wrongly refusing to return advance payments on a now-canceled order for 40 of its troubled 737 Max planes.

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Coronavirus shutdowns are making it clear how toxic our car culture is

There is no herd immunity from the damage caused by millions of personal automobiles roaming city streets at all hours.

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Job stressors more likely to cause declines in mental health and death when workers have less control

Individuals in highly demanding jobs who have little control over their workflow tend to have worse mental health and are at increased risk of death compared to those with more autonomy, according to new research in the Journal of Applied Psychology. “This study was a follow-up to a study we did in 2017, where we examined how job demands, or the amount of stressors — like concentration demands, time pressure, and workload — relate to death,” explained study author Erik Gonzalez-Mulé, an assistant professor at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

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Scientists Discover a New Compound in Medieval Ink That Was Once Lost to Time

Across the Mediterranean region, in fields and on roadsides, thrives a small plant with silvery leaves. It doesn't look like much, and in many cases it's an annoying weed. But in the Middle Ages, Chrozophora tinctoria was highly prized.

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When U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages

In the early 1950s, a young lieutenant realized the fatal flaw in the cockpit design of U.S. air force jets.

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Advancing high temperature electrolysis: Splitting water to store energy as hydrogen

While energy sources such as wind and solar are great at producing emissions-free electricity, they depend on the sun and the wind, so supply doesn’t always meet the demand. Likewise, nuclear power plants operate more efficiently at maximum capacity so that electricity generation can’t be easily ramped up or down to match demand.

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U.S. Oil Prices Fall To $11 Per Barrel In Historic Crash

The front-month WTI crude contract crashed by 37 percent early on Monday as the May contract expires on Tuesday and the market fears there is not much storage left in the United States amid collapsing demand in the coronavirus pandemic. At 8:54 a.m. EDT on Monday, the front-month WTI Crude price was plummeting by 37.22 percent at $11.47. The Brent Crude front-month contract was also under pressure, trading down 6.02 percent at $26.39.

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New research: space travel causes astronauts' brains to expand

A new study suggests that spending a long time in space is causing the volume of astronauts’ brains to expand. A majority of crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) seem to experience swelling of the optic nerve, along with a surplus of fluid that expands the actual volume of their brains. “When you’re in microgravity, fluid such as your venous blood no longer pools toward your lower extremities but redistributes headward,” Larry Kramer, professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and lead author of the study published in the journal Radiology this week, said in a statement.

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Researchers unveil electronics that mimic the human brain in efficient learning

Only 10 years ago, scientists working on what they hoped would open a new frontier of neuromorphic computing could only dream of a device using miniature tools called memristors that would function/operate like real brain synapses.

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Piper Cherokee lands in the middle of Quebec highway

Motorists in Quebec City were surprised to see a private Piper Cherokee plane make a perfect landing in the middle lane of a relatively busy highway.

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The Workplace of 2050, According to Experts

Chef Christina Tosi, Roblox CEO David Baszucki and others predict what’s next for the way their industries work.

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Here's What It Really Costs To Own Or Charter A Private Jet

One of the ultimate symbols of luxury and affluence is private jet travel. From the dawn of the Learjet-era to today’s ultra-long-range large-cabin jets, the most wealthy people in the world enjoy the unparalleled freedom and privilege that private jets provide. For such an intriguing and vaunted domain, there are a lot of misconceptions about it and the finances required to play within it. With this in mind, we dive into what traveling on and even owning one of these flying 'time machines' really costs and why they are so popular.

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New study shows frequent pornography use may not always be problematic

New research suggests that people who frequently use pornography might not necessarily be problematic users. In fact, the number of people with non-problematic high-frequency pornography use was 3-6 times higher than the number of people with problematic high-frequency use. This study appeared in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

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A star orbiting the Milky Way’s giant black hole confirms Einstein was right

The first sign that Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity was correct has made a repeat appearance, this time near a supermassive black hole. In 1915, Einstein realized that his newly formulated general theory of relativity explained a weird quirk in the orbit of Mercury. Now, that same effect has been found in a star’s orbit of the enormous black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, researchers with the GRAVITY collaboration report April 16 in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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Aspirin linked to reduction in risk of several cancers

Aspirin is associated with a reduction in the risk of developing several cancers of the digestive tract, including some that are almost invariably fatal, such as pancreatic and liver cancers. The largest and most comprehensive analysis to date of the link between aspirin and digestive tract cancers found reductions in the risk of these cancers of between 22% and 38%.

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Scientists use AI system to translate brain activity into text

A new AI system that converts brain activity into text could transform communication for people who can’t speak or type. The mind-reading machine uses brain implants to track what neurons do when someone speaks.

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Constructing the universe: An interview with Chiara Marletto

Constructor theory is a relatively nascent idea in fundamental physics that proposes to underlie all other currently known theories, not to mention those yet to be known, and to solve problems across a host of fields in science and beyond. Logan Chipkin joins Oxford physicist and constructor theorist Chiara Marletto to discuss what constructor theory is, how it might point the way to a successor to quantum theory, and how it might allow physics to tackle some of philosophy’s most perplexing puzzles.

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The Far Side of the Moon May Someday Have Its Own Telescope, Thanks to NASA Funding

The project hasn’t yet been greenlit, but a proposal just got major funding to explore the potential for the lunar observatory

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Cheops telescope begins study of far-off worlds

Europe's newest space telescope starts its study and characterisation of distant planets.

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Starving, angry and cannibalistic: America's rats are getting desperate amid coronavirus pandemic

America's rats are being hit hard by the coronavirus. As millions of Americans shelter indoors to combat the deadly virus, which has claimed over 21,000 U.S. lives, many businesses — including restaurants and grocery stores — have closed or limited operations, cutting off many rodents' main sources for food. On deserted streets across the country, rats are in dire survival mode, experts say.

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It's Possible To Cut Cropland Use in Half and Produce the Same Amount of Food, Says New Study

Restoring up to 2.2 million square miles to nature

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New Earth-sized planet found in habitable sweet-spot orbit around a distant star

Researchers have discovered a new Earth-sized planet orbiting a star outside our solar system. The planet, called Kepler-1649c, is only around 1.06 times larger than Earth, making it very similar to our own planet in terms of physical dimensions. It’s also quite close to its star, orbiting at a distance that means it gets around 75% of the light we do from the Sun.

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