No, ISS Astronaut Scott Kelly Did Not Take A Picture Of A UFO

The picture is real, but the UFO explanation? Surely we can do better.
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Extreme Weather Kills 10 Across the U.S. ; More Snow, Flooding Expected

It's not even winter yet, but the deadly weather in parts of the U.S. suggests otherwise.
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Where Alice in Wonderland Meets Albert Einstein

The latest results from the “Cheshire Cat” group of galaxies show how manifestations of Einstein’s 100-year-old theory can lead to new discoveries today.
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Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity From Microwave Technology Finally Medically Proven | TheSleuthJournal

Finally, there’s documented medical proof that electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a real-time health issue that actually can be verified using standard medical procedures and testing capabilities. An international group of researchers aced it when they published their findings from the clinical study “Metabolic and Genetic Screening of Electromagnetic Hypersensitive Subjects as a Feasible Tool for Diagnostics and Intervention” in the November 2014 issue of Mediators of Inflammation.
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The Internet Isn't Available in Most Languages

Despite all the hype about how it has connected the world, the web is more insular than you might think.
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The [Ostensive] Birth And Death Of Privacy

3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images. By Greg Ferenstein.
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Brain connections predict how well you can pay attention

During a 1959 television appearance, Jack Kerouac was asked how long it took him to write his novel On The Road. His response – three weeks – amazed the interviewer and ignited an enduring myth that the book was composed in a marathon of nonstop typing. Like the Kerouac of legend, some people possess the incredible ability to focus for long periods of time. Others constantly struggle to keep their minds on task.
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Tesla wants to make fully self-driving cars happen way ahead of schedule

A week and a half ago, we learned that Tesla is on a quest to hire more engineers to accelerate the development of its self-driving car technologies. Tesla was already no slouch in the autonomous-vehicle world, having released its Autopilot feature into the wild just over a month ago. We sampled Autopilot as soon as it hit the streets and were quite impressed, to put it mildly.
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Men’s and Women’s Brains Appear to Age Differently

There’s been a lot of poorly thought-out stuff written about the differences between men’s and women’s brains and minds. In the worst instances, sexist commentators use spurious neuroscience claims to provide “evidence” for gender stereotypes. But if you can get past all of this pseudoscience, there’s some legitimately illuminating, serious medical research on sex-based brain differences — some of which has important health implications.
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Scientists can now mass produce meat without murder​

Those of us who believe in animal rights but enjoy a good steak practice a bizarre cognitive dissonance akin to the twenty-a-day smoker. We know meat is unethical, we’ve seen the gnarly videos online, some of us have even smelled the putrid stench of a slaughterhouse up close. But somehow, our bloodthirsty primitive desire for BBQ ribs and KFC always wins out.
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A Quick History of Hippopotamuses

Hippos are represented today by just two species: the large, strongly amphibious Hippopotamus amphibius and the smaller, more terrestrial Pygmy hippo Hexaprotodon liberiensis As usual, the fossil record reveals a far greater number of species that were distributed over a far larger area than that associated with hippos today.
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Kinsey Was Wrong: Sexuality Isn’t Fluid

We like to think about sexual orientation as a spectrum—but a new study shows it’s far less flexible than sexologists like Alfred Kinsey once claimed. Article by Samantha Allen.
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Scientists have figured out how to shock the salt out of seawater

Researchers have developed a system that uses an electric shockwave to extract salt and other impurities out of salty or contaminated water, and say it could be scaled up for use in desalination or water purification plants, or be used to clean the vast amounts of dirty water produced by fracking. Known as 'shock electrodialysis', the technique applies an electrically driven shockwave to a constant stream of flowing water. The current interacts with the charged salt particles...
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29th November 1929 - Byrd flies over South Pole

American explorer Richard Byrd and three companions make the first flight over the South Pole, flying from their base on the Ross Ice Shelf to the pole and back in 18 hours and 41 minutes.
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The colorful, dark, dynamic art of life: 2015 BioArt winners

From Ebola to cancer and human development, winners capture biological beauty.
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By infusing H2O with ultrasonic bubbles, StarStream gives tap water incredible cleaning power

What if you could wash your hands thoroughly and effectively with nothing more than cold water? What if you could clean countertops, floors, or even medical tools without using any harsh chemicals? how crazy would that be A new device called StarStream creates a whole new kind of cleaning solution by combining ultrasound waves and bubbles with regular cold water. Using a single nozzle, StarStream can load any liquid with ultrasonic cleaning bubbles...
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Advances in Cryopreservation: Thinking About Interstellar Travel

Cryopreservation could extend the shelf life of blood from weeks to years; dramatically smooth out the undependable supplies of blood; and according to recent research, produce cryopreserved red blood cells that have superior biochemical and tissue oxygenation capabilities compared to refrigerated red blood cells.
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Soul Mates: Nutcrackers, Whitebark Pine, and a Bond That Holds an Ecosystem Together

In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, nutcrackers rely on whitebark pines as a crucial food source, the pines rely on nutcrackers to disperse and plant their seeds, and more than 100 other species of plants and animals benefit from that mutualism between tree and bird.
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Sci-Hub, BookFi and LibGen Resurface After Being Shut Down

A few days ago several large online repositories of free books and academic articles were pulled offline. Sci-Hub, BookFi and LibGen had their domain names taken away after Elsevier beat them in court. However, the site's operators are not planning to cease their activities and are continuing their operations through alternative domains and on the dark web.
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How Humans Ended Up With Freakishly Huge Brains

Scientists have begun to identify the symphony of biological triggers that powered the extraordinary expansion of the human brain. There it was, sitting on the mantelpiece, staring at her with hollow eyes and a naked grin. She could not stop staring back. It looked distinctly like the fossilized skull of an extinct baboon. That was the sort of thing Josephine Salmons was likely to know. At the time—1924—she was one of the only female students of anatomy attending the University of...
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Why does culture sometimes evolve via sudden bursts of innovation?

Not all technologies are created equal. Researchers devised a new model to explain why, after eons of nothing much new, we sometimes see an explosion of innovation in the archaeological record.
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Spiders sprayed with nanotubes have spun the toughest fibre ever measured

Spider silk is already one of the toughest materials around, but scientists have now made it even stronger by spritzing spiders with water containing carbon nanotubes and graphene flakes. In fact, the resulting super silk that the spiders produced in their webs is the toughest material ever measured, demonstrating strength and toughness beyond "anything that has been possible before," as MIT Technology Review reports. It sounds like something out of a Marvel comic...
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U.S. Space Mining Law Is Potentially Dangerous And Illegal: How Asteroid Mining Act May Violate International Treaty

The space mining legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama on Wednesday – which gives U.S. space firms the right to own and sell natural resources mined from asteroids and other space bodies – is considered dangerous and potentially illegal by some experts. Particularly happy with the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act is Planetary Resources, a 2010-founded firm seeking to extract water, important materials, and minerals from asteroids and profit from them.
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The Recent Aspects of Volcanic and Seismic Activity in Japan

Japan is the only major economic power in the world prone to both volcanic and seismic activities. Home to only 0.25% of the world’s land area, Japan has 7% of the world’s active volcanoes. Moreover, about 10% of all earthquakes occur in and around Japan. These are the reasons why Japan is very scenic and has many hot springs.
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Spiders Identified By DNA Extracted From Their Web

Scientists have successfully managed to extract DNA from spider webs, which not only identified a web's architect, but also what insects the spinner was feeding on. The proof-of-concept study, published in PLOS ONE, used captive southern black widow spiders to show that their webs contained enough fragments of DNA to potentially provide a reliable, non-invasive biomonitoring technique. Not only could the researchers identify the inhabitants...
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Geckos have superpowers, starting with running on ceilings

These little lizards can see colour in darkness, detach and re-grow their tails, and of course, they can walk upside-down
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28th November 1954 - Enrico Fermi, architect of the nuclear age, dies

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi, the first man to create and control a nuclear chain reaction, and one of the Manhattan Project scientists, dies in Chicago at the age of 53.
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Where Are All The Aliens? What Is Fermi’s Paradox?

At some point in our lives, we gaze up at the night sky and wonder if we are all alone in the universe. With trillions and trillions of stars up there, most with very their own solar systems, one would think that there is virtually an unlimited number of chances for the spark of life to kick off. We don’t even have to look to the stars to wonder if life originated on another world, we can look in our very own backyard — Mars and Jupiter’s moon Europa both offer a tantalizing chance...
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Interaction between malaria parasites and liver cells uncovered

"This discovery is significant because it reveals a vital interaction between the malaria parasite and the person it infects. Before, we knew little about that interaction. The molecular details of our discovery will facilitate the design of new drugs and new vaccines,"
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Winter Storm Cara a Dangerous Plains Ice Storm

Ice, snow, and a sharp arctic blast is challenging Thanksgiving holiday travel in the Plains.
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Massive 'development corridors' in Africa could spell environmental disaster

"One of the key justifications for these corridors is to ramp up farm and food production, but in fact it appears that massive mining investments--securing access to high-volume minerals such as iron ore and coal--are actually a key driver for a number of the corridors,"
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What Birds Tell Us About Climate Change's Threats

Just in time for COP21, a new international report shows how a warming world harms birds. Birds, it seems, are the mediums of this message; they’re highly reactive to changes in their environment, and are well studied as a result.
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Moon Over McMurdo

The interface between water and ice on the underside of the McMurdo Ice Shelf is where Antarctica and Europa intersect in terms of how conditions at the former may help future exploration of Jupiter’s icy moon nearly 400 million miles away. New AUV represents leap forward in under-ice exploration.
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Sarcophagus of ‘high priest’ unearthed in Luxor

Egypt's Antiquities Minister Dr. Eldamaty announced today the discovery of the intact burial place with a coffin of a (Priest) of Amun-Re, King of the Gods who carried the name " Ankhef in Khunsu", inside the tomb of the Vizier Amenhotep, Huy number 28 in Asasif (Luxor).
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Tarantulas evolved blue colour 'at least eight times'

A study finds that tarantulas evolved almost exactly the same shade of vibrant blue at least eight separate times.
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Alzheimer's: newly identified molecular mechanism could lead to treatment

During the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, when individuals appear to be free of symptoms, toxic changes are nevertheless taking place in the brain - including synapse loss. Though scientists do not yet fully know what causes this form of dementia, researchers have found how brain cell connections are destroyed in early stages of the disease.
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The vanishing words we need to save

Robert Macfarlane collects words that describe nature – and which are dying out. On the eve of the Paris climate talks, he explains how saving this language could save us all.
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WTO Ruling on Dolphin-Safe Tuna Labeling Illustrates Supremacy of Trade Agreements

International trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership need to be carefully examined piece by piece because they can take precedence over a country's own laws.
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Smoking high strength cannabis may damage nerve fibres in brain

High-strength cannabis may damage nerve fibres that handle the flow of messages across the two halves of the brain, scientists claim. Brain scans of people who regularly smoked strong skunk-like cannabis revealed subtle differences in the white matter that connects the left and right hemispheres and carries signals from one side of the brain to the other. The changes were not seen in those who never used cannabis or smoked only the less potent forms of the drug, the researchers found.
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21 technology tipping points we will reach by 2030

From driverless cars to robotic workers, the future is going to be here before you know it. Many emerging technologies that you hear about today will reach a tipping point by 2025, according to a recent report from The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Software & Society. The council surveyed more than 800 executives and experts from the technology sector to share their timeline for when technologies would become mainstream.
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Silicon Valley professionals are taking LSD at work to increase productivity

An increasing number of twenty-somethings are reportedly 'micro-dosing' on psychedelic drugs - and they say it's making them better workers
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Inside Story - Who is buying ISIL's oil?

Who are the individuals and groups involved in refining and selling ISIL's oil? And where does that oil end up? Presenter Hazem SikaGuests talks to Shwan Zulal, managing Director of Carduchi Consulting; Carole Nakhle, Director of Crystol Energy; and Afshin Shahi, director of the Centre for the Study of Political Islam.
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India's Quandary: Climate Change And Coal

Coal is king in India. Some say there's little alternative. So how can this country, the world's third-largest polluter, provide energy and lift millions from poverty while trying to become "greener"?
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Airbus wants to build 'shipping container' cabins that detach from planes

Airbus could be set to create the next-generation of planes after filing a patent featuring detachable cabins. The proposal would see passengers "board" the cabin and take their seats, before it is lifted like a shipping container onto the back of the plane. It is then fixed into place and the plane operates as normal.
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Chief Coca-Cola scientist leaves amid criticism over obesity research

Rhona Applebaum, Coca-Cola’s chief scientist and health officer, is stepping down from the company. The news follows reports that Applebaum helped set up a nonprofit research group tasked with downplaying the role of sugary drinks in the obesity epidemic and highlighting the benefits of exercise. In August, The New York Times reported that the company had financial ties to the research group—the Global Energy Balance Network...
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Moonlighting molecules: finding new uses for old enzymes

A collaboration has led researchers to identify a potentially significant new application for a well-known human enzyme, which may have implications for treating respiratory diseases such as asthma. “MMP8 is well-known, we all thought we understood its function, but it’s clear that this, and probably many other enzymes, ‘moonlight’ and have several functions within the body,”
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Coming to a monitor near you: A defect-free, molecule-thick film

An emerging class of atomically thin materials known as monolayer semiconductors has generated a great deal of buzz in the world of materials science. Monolayers hold promise in the development of transparent LED displays, ultra-high efficiency solar cells, photo detectors and nanoscale transistors. Their downside? The films are notoriously riddled with defects, killing their performance.
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New strategy for treating arthritis discovered

Arthritis patients could one day benefit from a novel form of medicine, according to researchers. Their early study indicates that arthritic cartilage, previously thought to be impenetrable to therapies, could be treated by a patient's own 'microvesicles' that are able to travel into cartilage cells and deliver therapeutic agents.
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We Just Discovered 6 New Kinds of Brain Cells

The map of the human brain gets a little more complete.
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Is it possible to build 'meat' out of plant protein?

Americans eat three times the world average of beef each year. However, with each pound requiring more than 50 gallons of water, producers in drought-stricken California are looking to find other ways to get protein into our diets. Dr. James Hamblin, a senior editor at The Atlantic Magazine, reports.
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