Big, Beautiful Bird Brains

Bird brains: How intelligent are birds? Emily Willoughby explains some startling new research findings.

Continue reading...

A neuroscientist explains why artificially intelligent robots will never have consciousness like humans

Some of today’s top techies and scientists are very publicly expressing their concerns over apocalyptic scenarios that are likely to arise as a result of machines with motives. Among the fearful are intellectual heavyweights like Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates, who all believe that advances in the field of machine learning will soon yield self-aware A.I.s that seek to destroy us—or perhaps just dispose of us, much like scum getting obliterated by a windshield wiper.

Continue reading...

The Disappearing Male

‘The disappearing male’ highlights a disturbing trend focusing on how the foundation of human development is threatened by toxic substances found in ...

Continue reading...

3 new projects pave the way for growing human organs from scratch

There are more than seven billion people in the world, and life expectancy keeps growing thanks to the unbelievable advancements in modern medicine. However, the human body can’t outlive its expiration date, and organs often fail and require viable replacements. But because there never seem to be enough donors around, doctors are looking at various ways to create artificial organs that are either built out of human flesh or mechanical parts, and that could...

Continue reading...

Forget Edibles: Getting High on Wearables

There are a lot of tools out there that claim to train—even change—your brain. So do they work? We put them to the test and things get... interesting.

Continue reading...

Wood windows? Swedes develop transparent wood material for buildings and solar cells

Windows and solar panels in the future could be made from one of the best—and cheapest—construction materials known: wood. Researchers at Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed a new transparent wood material that's suitable for mass production. Lars Berglund, a professor at Wallenberg Wood Science Center at KTH, says that while optically transparent wood has been developed for microscopic samples in the study of wood anatomy...

Continue reading...

Does Stress Speed Up Evolution?

n The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams’ comedic sci-fi series from the 1970s, the Haggunenons of Vicissitus Three are one of the most insecure and angry life forms in the galaxy. What’s their problem? They have “impatient chromosomes” that instantly adapt to their surroundings. If they are sitting at a table, for instance, and are unable to reach a coffee spoon, “they are liable without a moment’s consideration to mutate into something with far longer arms.

Continue reading...

Science of Laser Hair Removal in SLOW MOTION

Continue reading...

Scientists are sending fungi into space in the hope of developing new medicines

Scientists are sending four strains of fungi to the International Space Station to see what happens when the tiny organisms contend with the stress of microgravity and space radiation. It's not just for kicks. Researchers say that putting these fungi in an extraterrestrial environment could cause them to produce new medicines for use on Earth and perhaps even on long-term space missions.

Continue reading...

Lost Japanese satellite Hitomi shows unexpected signs of life

Junked? Maybe not. Hitomi, a Japanese astronomy satellite, was thought to be lost after it failed to come online. Now the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency says the satellite has phoned home – but a full recovery will take months. Hitomi launched on 17 February and was due to come online on 26 March, but failed to communicate with Earth. A tweet by the US Joint Space Operations Center reported five pieces of debris around the satellite shortly afterwards.

Continue reading...

Revealed: how Associated Press cooperated with the Nazis

The Associated Press news agency entered a formal cooperation with the Hitler regime in the 1930s, supplying American newspapers with material directly produced and selected by the Nazi propaganda ministry, archive material unearthed by a German historian has revealed. When the Nazi party seized power in Germany in 1933, one of its first objectives was to bring into line not just the national press, but international media too. The Guardian was banned within a year...

Continue reading...

Ancient fossil was 'nearly a spider'

Scientists say a 305 million-year-old fossil is the closest ancient relative to "true spiders" ever discovered.

Continue reading...

Birds inspire radical new NASA wing design

A flying wing about to undergo test flights could dramatically improve fuel efficiency.

Continue reading...

What's Hidden Inside Shopping Carts to Make Them Cost $100 Each.

It’s just a pushable basket you use to store groceries and skate cart ride around the aisles with, so why do grocery carts cost $100 a cart?

Continue reading...

Images From Offworld

Robotic probes launched by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and others are gathering information all across the solar system. We currently have spacecraft in orbit around the Sun, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, a comet, and Saturn; two operational rovers on Mars; and a recent close flyby of Pluto and its moons. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are still performing experiments in low Earth orbit and sending back amazing photos. Here's a sampling of what they're seeing.

Continue reading...

What does the science really say about sea-level rise?

Could sea levels really rise by several metres this century. Probably not, although this century's greenhouse emissions could potentially set the stage for large rises in centuries to come.

Continue reading...

This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they’re free.

Alexandra Elbakyan is challenging the multibillion-dollar academic publishing industry.

Continue reading...

The Birth of G-SHOCK, Casio’s “Revolutionary” Watch

A conversation with legendary engineer Kikuo Ibe

Continue reading...

Italian passenger on hijacked EgyptAir plane tells of 'selfie' disbelief

Maybe they call it English aplomb, says Andrea Banchetti, who was among five Europeans kept on plane along with Ben Innes

Continue reading...

Will capitalism survive the robot revolution?

Economic experts are trying to figure out a question that just two decades ago seemed ridiculous: If 90 percent of human jobs are replaced by robots in the next 50 years — something now considered plausible — is capitalism still the ideal economic system to champion? No one is certain about the answer, but the question is making everyone nervous — and forcing people to dig deep inside themselves to discover the kind of future they want. After America beat Russia in the Cold War...

Continue reading...

Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts solar industry dominance in six years

Futurist Ray Kurzweil made a thought-provoking presentation at a recent trade show for medical device companies, MD&M, in Anaheim, California. At one point during his 45-minute talk he shifted his attention to solar. Explaining the accelerating rate of technical progress, Kurzweil said technical developments form very predictable trajectories, and those trajectories are exponential.

Continue reading...

The time for unmanned ships has arrived

Unmanned ships have received relatively little media attention compared to aerial drones and self-driving cars. Researchers in Korea have been developing technologies to enable and facilitate the realization of unmanned autonomous ships in the near future. Unmanned ships (i.e. robotic ships or drone ships) have received relatively little media attention compared to aerial drones and self-driving cars. However, their potential benefit and impact to scientific...

Continue reading...

New Blood Test Could Reduce Harmful Effects Of Sports Concussions

A concussion can do serious damage — unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more clear that symptoms vary from person to person, so identifying one isn’t easy. Researchers from Orlando Health, however, might have a solution. They have found evidence of concussions in patients who sustained a head injury up to seven days prior using a simple blood test. And it seems to work on people of all ages.

Continue reading...

A Stanford professor thinks we'll stop having sex to make babies in the next 20 years

The majority of humans in developed countries will stop having sex to procreate within decades, a leading academic has predicted.

Continue reading...

Study: Pollution stifles wind, quells rain

Precipitation has been trending downward across most of the mountain ranges in central and eastern China, and many researchers believe pollution is to blame. Hard evidence of this link has been lacking, though new research out of the Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is changing that. Combining data collection and computer modeling, scientists at the national laboratory were able to show that air pollution is slowing valley breezes...

Continue reading...

How Do Bees Make Honey?

Continue reading...

A fossilised skull has revealed when the last 'Siberian unicorn' lived on Earth

For decades, scientists have estimated that the Siberian unicorn - a long-extinct species of mammal that looked more like a rhino than a horse - died out some 350,000 years ago , but a beautifully preserved skull found in Kazakhstan has completely overturned that assumption. Turns out, these incredible creatures were still around as recently as 29,000 years ago.

Continue reading...

The dinky-di Aussie animals that have Asian names

It is hard to get more Australian than the word cockatoo, which makes it surprising the name originates in Asia.

Continue reading...

Urinal Cakes: Why?

If you happen to be a frequenter of urinals, odds are you’ve seen one that has a little block at the bottom of it. But what does it do and why are you peeing on it?!

Continue reading...

Life in a Mars Colony

Could we one day live on Mars? Reid Reimers explains Mars One could help colonize the red planet.

Continue reading...

An Object Just Collided With Jupiter and Astronomers Caught it on Video

Astronomers have captured video evidence of a collision between Jupiter and a small celestial object. Though it looks like a small blip of light, the resulting explosion was unusually powerful.

Continue reading...

The Case for Planet Nine Just Got a Whole Lot Stronger

Evidence for the existence of a “new” Ninth Planet, 10 times the Earth’s mass and lurking on the outer rim of the Solar System, just got a little bit firmer with the announcement of a new KBO.

Continue reading...

Looks aside, NASA’s Orion is “lightyears ahead of what they had in Apollo”

Redundancy is key to travel "farther away than any human spacecraft has ever been.”

Continue reading...

'Blocking-high' pressure systems spawn most of the warming that melts Greenland surface ice, study says

Vanishing Arctic sea ice. Dogged weather systems over Greenland. Far-flung surface ice melting on the massive island. These dramatic trends and global sea-level rise are linked, according to a study coauthored by Jennifer Francis, a research professor in Rutgers University's Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. During Greenland summers, melting Arctic sea ice favors stronger and more frequent "blocking-high" pressure systems, which spin clockwise, stay largely...

Continue reading...

Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

It is very common when I first encounter a client struggling with mental health issues that they report their problem is that they feel anxious or depressed. Here is a typical exchange: Me: So, can you share with me what brings you in? Client: Well, I have not been feeling good. I have these low moods that I can’t shake off. I want to stop feeling depressed. Me: What is it that gets you feeling depressed? Client: I don’t know. Nothing really. It just comes out of the blue...

Continue reading...

Genes and the American Dream

Ironically, the American dream is more of a reality for other countries than it is for America: genetic influences on IQ were uniform across levels of SES in Western Europe and Australia, but, in the United States, were much higher for the rich than for the poor.

Continue reading...

Researchers turn to tick spit to shut down our immune systems

Researchers may soon be employing a substance in tick saliva to help people battle damaging, and potentially deadly, autoimmune diseases.

Continue reading...

Enceladus' plumbing explains 'tiger stripe' geysers

Modelling scratches on the bottom of Saturn's sixth largest moon.

Continue reading...

Mountain lake of frozen nitrogen spotted on Pluto's surface

Former planet Pluto has turned out to be much more weird and wonderful than many would have guessed. The latest find from NASA observations shows what appears to be a lake of frozen liquid nitrogen on its surface.

Continue reading...

Woodpeckers carry wood-eating fungi that may help them dig holes

Red-cockaded woodpeckers carry spores of wood-decaying fungi on their beaks, wings and feet, which could make it easier for them to excavate cavities. By Sam Wong.

Continue reading...

Here’s why the next SpaceX launch isn’t just about the booster landing

It's a big idea. It's a bold idea. And at first blush, it seems a bit of a daft idea. A company called Bigelow Aerospace wants to build space stations for the government and hotels for private customers that will inflate like balloons once they reach outer space. Bigelow’s inflatables have the potential to revolutionize spaceflight by providing lighter, and much larger, places to live in space. But the big question remains: Does anyone really want to live in a space balloon?

Continue reading...

Hail Cannons, the Devices That Supposedly Blast Away Bad Weather

They're startlingly loud and scientifically unproven.

Continue reading...

Study finds a quarter of Canadian adults believe a computer program would be more trustworthy and ethical than their boss

A new study by Intensions Consulting and Nikolas Badminton has examined the future of work across Canada – and the findings suggest some challenges ahead. The study, which surveyed 2299 adults across Canada, found that a quarter (26%) of Canadian adults believe an unbiased computer program would be more trustworthy and ethical than their workplace leaders and managers. Among younger adults (those aged 20-39) that number was significantly higher...

Continue reading...

Antarctic Birds can Recognize Individual People, and Attack Intruders

The birds often chase intruders and claw their heads.

Continue reading...

The Beauty of the Northern Lights

5-minute music video featuring the Northern Lights – the aurora borealis – captured in still images, panoramas, all-sky images, time-lapse videos, and ... in real-time videos! All are from early February and early March of 2016.

Continue reading...

Deploying mosquitoes against Zika

Flaminia Catteruccia, an associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, speaks about using genetically modified mosquitoes to combat the Zika virus and other diseases.

Continue reading...

EgyptAir Plane Hijacked While Flying To Cairo

The plane was diverted while flying from the Egyptian Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria to the capital, Cairo, and later landed in Cyprus. The hijacker reportedly has an estranged Cypriot wife.

Continue reading...

Exercise might slow rate of mental decline by 10 years for older people

Mentally, we all slow down a little bit as we age. It gets harder to recall names, or we forget where we put our keys, or the car for that matter. Physically, an older brain doesn’t work as fast as it used to. But scientists think there might be one thing that could help slow down this natural aging process. A study published online this week in Neurology found that older people who exercised regularly experienced a slower rate of mental decline.

Continue reading...

Ace pilots belly land passenger jet in Kazakhstan, all 116 passengers safe (VIDEOS)

Kazakh pilots safely landed a passenger plane without the use of its front wheels after a malfunction in the aircraft’s front landing gear on Sunday. Video of the miraculous landing immediately emerged online. The incident took place when the Fokker 100 aircraft operated by Kazakh airline ‘Bek Air’, which had departed from Kyzylorda, was landing at Astana International Airport on Sunday morning.

Continue reading...

Unlocking the Mechanics of the Urinary Tract Infection

New research helps explain how bacteria send their victims running to the bathroom. By Lina Zeldovich.

Continue reading...