One of the brightest stars in our sky has been behaving very unusually. Now scientists think they know why

The recent unusual behaviour of the star Betelgeuse could finally have been explained, after new work by astronomers. The star has been dimming strangely in recent months, with scientists speculating that it could be about to explode into a supernova or was otherwise being subject to an unknown process. Now new research has shown that the most likely explanation of the dimming is large star spots on Betelgeuse's surface, which have caused it to dim.

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Oxitec wins approval to release GMO mosquitoes in US

Oxitec has received state and federal approval to release genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in a pilot project planned for the Florida Keys now through 2022. The research is intended to show that GM mosquitoes are a viable alternative to spraying insecticides in a bid to control the invasive Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads Zika, dengue, yellow fever and other diseases.

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Wearable-tech glove translates sign language into speech in real time

The innovative device turns finger movements into electrical signals and ultimately into spoken words through a smartphone app.

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Samsung Reveals Breakthrough: Solid-State EV Battery with 500-Mile Range

Researchers perfect a battery that will let electric vehicles charge faster and drive farther while lasting a lot longer, but don't expect to see it anytime soon.

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Canada is Going to be Building Canadarm3 for the Artemis Missions

When you need a robotic arm in space, you call in the experts. Over the past several decades, the Canadian Space Agency has expertly provided robotic arms for the Space Shuttle and International Space Station. And now it will build the next-generation of robotic systems for going to the Moon, called Canadarm3.

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VW factory produces last ever combustion engine car, shifts to EVs only

Volkswagen’s Zwickau factory produces its last ever combustion engine vehicle, closing a 116-year chapter on fossil-fuelled cars and switching to EV production, only.

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This is what space smells like

Space, the final fragrance.

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The chicken first crossed the road in Southeast Asia, ‘landmark’ gene study finds

Domestication of world's most common farm animal had been debated since Charles Darwin

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The Effect Of Social Media On Mental Health And Well-being

The effect of social media on mental health is complex and it depends a lot on the type of social media activity, real-life conditions, and type of interactions. Here is a summary of research on the psychological effects (positive & negative) of social media use on depression, anxiety, well-being, and social cognition.

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Beyond Pluto: the hunt for our solar system's new ninth planet

Scientists think a planet larger than Earth lurks in the far reaches of the solar system

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The man helping protect against 'extinction event'

Asteroids and comets pose "one of the most significant risks to human civilisation", it is claimed.

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Plastic rain is the new acid rain

Plastic rain could prove to be a more insidious problem than acid rain.

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A Scheme of Heaven is a deep investigation of astrology from a scientist’s perspective

Why is astrology considered unscientific, while economics—which also uses complex mathematical formulas to 'predict' the future—is regarded as a perfectly respectable field of study, despite its many failed forecasts?

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Colliding black holes may have created a surprising flare of light

In spite of their dark reputations, two black holes may have set off a cosmic light show. Subtle gravitational rumbles from a collision of two black holes may have been accompanied by a flare of light about a month later, physicists report June 25 in Physical Review Letters. It’s a surprising conclusion given black holes’ propensity to swallow up light and matter. “The normal expectation has been they just merge and all you would detect is gravitational waves,” says astrophysicist Matthew Graham of Caltech.

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NASA is offering $35,000 in prizes to design a toilet that will work on the moon

NASA wants you to help put the loo in lunar, so it's offering $35,000 in prizes to design a toilet that can be used on the moon.

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Mars mission would put China among space leaders

Tianwen-1, a “quest for heavenly truth,” aims for a orbiter-lander-rover trifecta

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California set to ban all heavy diesel trucks and vans by 2045

Heavy-duty trucks are responsible for 70% of vehicle air pollution in the state.

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The Rocket Motor of the Future Breathes Air Like a Jet Engine

This theoretical engine could drastically reduce the cost of getting to space. Now two companies are trying to make it real.

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New electrolyte design may lead to better batteries for electric vehicles

Stanford researchers have designed a new electrolyte for lithium metal batteries that could increase the driving range of electric cars.

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Why are plants green?

When sunlight shining on a leaf changes rapidly, plants must protect themselves from the ensuing sudden surges of solar energy. To cope with these changes, photosynthetic organisms have developed numerous tactics. Scientists have been unable, however, to identify the underlying design principle. An international team of scientists, led by a University of California, Riverside, physicist, has now constructed a model that reproduces a general feature of photosynthetic light harvesting, observed across many photosynthetic organisms.

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Satellites reveal major new gas industry methane leaks

Last fall, European Space Agency satellites detected huge plumes of the invisible planet-warming gas methane leaking from the Yamal pipeline that carries natural gas from Siberia to Europe.

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New DNA Analysis Reveals Ancient Scythian Warrior Was a 13-Year-Old Girl

In a time of ancient gods, warriors and kings, the tale of a tribe of warrior women was established in Greek mythology. Said to be daughters of the gods, these fierce female fighters from Asia Minor have caught people's imaginations for centuries and

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Views of Homosexuality Around the World

Despite major changes in LGBT rights around the world, acceptance of homosexuality remains sharply divided by country, region and economic development.

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Cancer drug could work where other treatments fail

The first of a new family of drugs to stop cancer cells from repairing themselves has been trialled.

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NASA Names Headquarters After ‘Hidden Figure’ Mary W. Jackson

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced Wednesday the agency’s headquarters building in Washington, D.C., will be named after Mary W. Jackson, the first African American female engineer at NASA.

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‘Murder hornets’: race to protect North America's honeybees from giant invader

Amateur beekeepers and scientists do ‘the whole CSI thing’ to stem the feared onslaught

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NASA Names Headquarters After ‘Hidden Figure’ Mary W. Jackson

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced Wednesday the agency’s headquarters building in Washington, D.C., will be named after Mary W. Jackson, the first African American female engineer at NASA.

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Pluto Has Likely Maintained an Underground Liquid Ocean for Billions of Years

The discovery hints that subsurface oceans are common in the outer solar system, which is good news for the those seeking extraterrestrial life.

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New research reveals how water in the deep Earth triggers earthquakes and tsunamis

In a new study, published in the journal Nature, an international team of scientists provide the first conclusive evidence directly linking deep Earth’s water cycle with magmatic productivity and earthquake activity.

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Impossible Foods CEO says the meat industry will be obsolete in 15 years — 'That's our mission'

"That transformation is inevitable," Impossible Foods founder and CEO Patrick Brown said after Starbucks launched the Impossible Breakfast Sandwich.

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Murderer solves ancient math problem and finds his mission

A convicted murderer in a US prison has taught himself the basics of higher mathematics, enabling him to solve a complicated arithmetic problem. And he has been passing on his math passion to his fellow inmates.

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The Lonely Social Brain

A new study finds differences in how lonelier people's brains represent others.

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Pluto may have an ocean under its surface

An analysis of images of the dwarf planet's surface and computer simulations of its interior have led researchers to propose a "hot start" scenario for Pluto's formation as the solar system, including Earth, took shape.

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Does intelligent life exist on other planets? Technosignatures may hold new clues

In 1995 a pair of scientists discovered a planet outside our solar system orbiting a solar-type star. Since that finding—which won the scientists a portion of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics—researches have discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets, including some Earth-like planets that may have the potential to harbor life.

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Shares of Virgin Galactic surge after announcement that it will train astronauts for NASA

Shares of Virgin Galactic shares jumped Monday after it signed an agreement with NASA that will allow the space tourism venture to train astronauts for trips to the International Space Station on flights to the edge of space. The company — which is publicly traded but largely owned by founder Richard Branson and chairman Chamath Palihapitiya — announced on Monday that it signed a “Space Act Agreement” with NASA’s Johnson Space Center, which leads the agency’s astronaut program in Houston.

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Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’

Glacier cores reveal Icelandic volcano that plunged Europe into darkness

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Why NASA Designed a New $23 Million Space Toilet

Later this year, astronauts on the American module of the ISS will be able to test out the toilet before NASA puts it on crewed vehicles for deep-space missions.

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Blackballed by PayPal, Scientific-Paper Pirate Takes Bitcoin Donations

Bitcoin as a censorship-free money has been used by outlaws of all sorts, but this time the outlaw is a young scientist from Kazakhstan breaking through the paywalls of academic journals. Alexandra Elbakyan, a 31-year-old freelance coder, neurobiologist and phylologist, is running a database of over 80 million articles from academic journals that are normally available only through subscriptions.

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Architects have designed a Martian city for the desert outside Dubai

Architects Bjarke Ingels Group have designed a prototype of a city suitable for sustaining life on Mars -- and then adapted it for use in the Emirati desert.

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Here’s why so many physicists are wrong about free will

A crude understanding of physics sees determinism at work in the Universe. Luckily, molecular uncertainty ensures this isn’t so

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Antidepressants use during development linked to reduced sexual desire in women

Taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants during during childhood or adolescence is linked to lower sexual desire in adult women, according to a new study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

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COVID-19 lockdowns helped people get more, but not necessarily better, sleep

Lockdowns haven’t just curbed coronavirus transmission — they’ve also helped people get more sleep. Two studies, both published June 10 in Current Biology, report that people began sleeping more and more regularly every night after countries imposed stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the coronavirus. But that sleep may not have been of the best quality, one of those studies finds.

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Loneliness Reflected in Neural Mapping of Relationships

Even before the COVID pandemic, many experts posited that loneliness was itself an American epidemic. Now, many fear the reduction in social contact may especially affect those populations most vulnerable to isolation and loneliness. Now, emerging research explores the manner in which the brain maps relationships with other people in relation to one’s self.

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Astronomers spot the universe’s biggest known explosion

A black hole about 390 million light-years away has caused the biggest eruption ever seen in the universe. The supermassive black hole sits at the center of a galaxy located in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster. Its eruption was about five times greater than the last record-holder.

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New open source software empowers scientists to uncover immune secrets

Cancer is maddeningly complex, and its interplay with the immune system involves a huge cast of cells and much chemical chatter. Scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center want to make studying that complex network significantly easier and cheaper.

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Discovery of New Novel Molecule Sparks Hope for Pain and Depression Treatment

Researchers from the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) have developed a new molecule called LIH383. In a press release, they claim that this new novel molecule binds to and blocks specific opioid peptides in the brain, thus regulating the levels of opioid peptides in the entire central nervous system.

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Seafood helped prehistoric people migrate out of Africa, study reveals

A study, led by the University of York, has examined fossil reefs near to the now-submerged Red Sea shorelines that marked prehistoric migratory routes from Africa to Arabia. The findings suggest this coast offered the resources necessary to act as a gateway out of Africa during periods of little rainfall when other food sources were scarce.

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Link between sleep and depression in adolescents

Self‐reported sleep patterns and quality amongst adolescents: cross‐sectional and prospective associations with anxiety and depression. A mere 30 minutes extra sleep a day can make all the difference to a teenager’s lifelong mental health and wellbeing. A new international study of almost 5000 adolescents found those who generally slept 30 minutes less per night reported feeling anxious or depressed compared to other groups.

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The deleterious effects of cannabis during pregnancy on neonatal outcomes

Cannabis is the most frequently used illicit drug in Australia, probably because of its increasing social and medical acceptance, as well as the recent legalisation of cannabis use in many parts of the world.

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Genes, Blood Type Tied to Risk of Severe COVID-19

Many people who contract COVID-19 have only a mild illness, or sometimes no symptoms at all. But others develop respiratory failure that requires oxygen support or even a ventilator to help them recover. It’s clear that this happens more often in men than in women, as well as in people who are older or who have chronic health conditions. But why does respiratory failure also sometimes occur in people who are young and seemingly healthy?

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