Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

Iceland’s mother tongue and cultural identity is drowning in an online ocean of English

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Growing Up in Greener Spaces Appears to Have a Positive Impact on Brain Development, Study Says

When I was just three months old, my family made the move from a busy urban area to a quieter, smaller community. Prior to moving, my parents and siblings spent every summer in said neighborhood—there was a lake to swim in, parks to play on, and plenty of greenery to enjoy, all of which was in sharp contrast to home a couple hours away.

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Greenland is Melting

The front lines of climate change run through the rapidly warming Arctic. The changes taking place on this faraway, frozen island will be felt much closer to home, wherever you live. From the top of the world, meet the scientists looking for clues of what to expect from a warming world.

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Schools are safer than they were in the 90s, and school shootings are not more common than they used to be, researchers say

The deadly school shooting this month in Parkland, Florida, has ignited national outrage and calls for action on gun reform. But while certain policies may help decrease gun violence in general, it’s unlikely that any of them will prevent mass school shootings, according to James Alan Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern.

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European Space Agency's ExoMars Orbiter is about to start sniffing the Red Planet for signs of life

In March of 2016 the European Space Agency - in collaboration with Roscosmos - launched The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter sending it on its way to the mysterious red planet that orbits our Sun, Mars. Its mission? To look for signs of life on the Red Giant that has held the interest of astronomers for centuries since first being discovered in the 17th century by Galileo Galilei.

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Scientists Fear for Colombia’s ‘Melted Rainbow’

Ángela Díaz stood on a rock ledge above a creek called Caño Piedras and pointed out an unassuming olive-colored plant growing below. Macarenia clavigera, she said, is the key to the future of this remote region in central Colombia. When the rains come in May, the rivers will rise and the plant will turn a brilliant red. “This plant has the peculiar quality of turning distinct colors,” she said. “You can see it from May to November.”

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Microbes found in one of Earth’s most hostile places, giving hope for life on Mars

A hardy community of bacteria lives in Chile’s Atacama Desert—one of the driest and most inhospitable places on Earth—where it can survive a decade without water, new research confirms. The work should put to rest the doubts of many scientists, who had suggested that previous evidence of microscopic life in this remote region came from transient microbes. And because the soils in this location closely resemble those on Mars, these desert dwellers may give hope to those seeking life on the Red Planet’s similarly hostile surface.

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Arctic Storm Blankets Europe | Pictures

Several trucks and cars stand deserted after a pileup near Sjobo, Sweden.

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Don't Panic, but Researchers Have Discovered That Stress is Contagious

Researchers have discovered brain cells change following close contact with a stressed individual. Simply put, stress is contagious. Stress can be brought on by big things like existential crises. More commonly, stress comes from trivial, every-day things like walking into a meeting that’s already started. Living in a world dominated by social media, we are constantly forced to compare our lives to those of others. Life is, by nature, unstable and uncertain, which can make stress inevitable. Therefore, it is unsurprising that we find ourselves in the midst of an anxiety epidemic.

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Chimps and bonobos speak the same 'language', and we might too

A significant number of gestures made by chimps and bonobos mean the same thing.

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Baidu's voice cloning AI adds gender swapping and accent removal

China's tech titan Baidu just upgraded Deep Voice. The voice-cloning AI now works faster than ever and can swap a speaker's gender or change their accent.

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Study in mice suggests personalised stem cell treatment may offer relief for progressive MS

Scientists have shown in mice that skin cells re-programmed into brain stem cells, transplanted into the central nervous system, help reduce inflammation and may be able to help repair damage caused by multiple sclerosis (MS).

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Automated Vehicles Can’t Save Cities

They could actually make cities much worse.

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MIT Engineers Have Built a Device That Pulls Electricity Out of Thin Air

Temperature changes large and small are happening around us all the time, and scientists have come up with a machine that can convert those fluctuations into electricity, potentially powering sensors and communication devices almost out of thin air.

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Up to 60 per cent of prisoners have head injuries, as experts warn brain damage may fuel crime

More than half of criminals may have suffered a head injury which could be fuelling their offending, a new review by British brain experts suggests. Specialists from the universities of Oxford, Exeter, Manchester, Glasgow and Sheffield, and the Centre for Mental Health, are calling for all prisoners to be routinely checked for signs of traumatic brain injuries.

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German court rules cities can ban diesel cars to tackle pollution

One of Germany’s top courts has ruled that heavily polluting vehicles can be banned from the urban centres of Stuttgart and Düsseldorf, a landmark ruling that could dramatically hit the value of diesel cars. Environmental campaigners had sued dozens of German cities, arguing they have a duty to cut air pollution to protect people’s health.

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After rising for 100 years, electricity demand is flat. Utilities are freaking out.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is the latest to be caught short.

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What would happen if humans tried to land on Jupiter

Explore the beautiful yet deadly layers of Jupiter's atmosphere.

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Behavior in High School Predicts Income and Occupational Success Later in Life

Being a responsible student, maintaining an interest in school and having good reading and writing skills will not only help a teenager get good grades in high school but could also be predictors of educational and occupational success decades later, regardless of IQ, parental socioeconomic status or other personality factors, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

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Mining for asteroids will be the next gold rush

Forget cryptocurrency — the next big “gold rush” isn’t even on Earth. Physicist Michio Kaku, writing in his new book “The Future of Humanity” (Doubleday), believes a bonanza is coming from mining asteroids, which he calls “flying gold mine[s] in outer space.”

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Scientifically Speaking Which Is Better, Male or Female Orgasms?

For most of us, how the opposite sex experiences an orgasm is one of life's great mysteries.

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An AI just beat top lawyers at their own game

Don't worry: It's not going to take their jobs.

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The dangerous downsides of perfectionism

Many of us believe perfectionism is a positive. But researchers are finding that it could be dangerous, leading to a long list of health problems – and that it’s on the rise.

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Lost Art Of Bending Over: How Other Cultures Spare Their Spines

No, we're not talking about squatting. We're talking about a way to bend over that has nearly disappeared in our culture. And it could be one reason why back pain is so common in the U.S.

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California sets wind+solar record, 38% of US electricity from rooftops, polysilicon efficiency up, more

Estimating rooftop solar technical potential across the US using a combination of GIS-based methods, lidar data, and statistical modeling – 38% of US electricity could come from rooftops and solar power only. There is no longer a sound argument that intermittent energy sources – wind+solar – can’t power the country. An aside, as a commercial sales guy, I’d love to get a hold of these databases of nationwide rooftop viability scans and turn them into a lead database. Gold mine.

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Egypt Constructs World’s Largest Solar Park

Egypt currently constructs what is set to be the world’s largest solar park, Benban Solar Park, near the southern city of Aswan that aims to reach between 1.6-2.0 GW by the middle of 2019, according to Electrek.

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Polar bear hair inspires stealth fabric

Hide your lettuce and lock up the carrots: Stealth rabbits are on the prowl. Researchers have woven a cloak that makes a bunny almost invisible to infrared cameras, thanks to fibers that mimic the structure of polar bear hairs.

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Brazilians create model to evaluate possibility of life on Jupiter’s icy moon

Europa has an enormous ocean of warm liquid water under its frozen crust. The bottom of this ocean could be a similar environment to primitive Earth, potentially hosting microorganisms.

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This Roman ‘gate to hell’ killed its victims with a cloud of deadly carbon dioxide

Priests survived because they were taller than their animal sacrifices

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Plastic Additive BPA Not Much Of A Threat, Government Study Finds

The chemical BPA isn't living up to its nasty reputation. A two-year government study of rats found that even high doses of the plastic additive produced only "minimal effects," and that these effects could have occurred by chance. The finding bolsters the Food and Drug Administration's 2014 assessment that water bottles and other products containing BPA are not making people sick.

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Microsoft: “Five years from now, we will have a commercial quantum computer”

Microsoft executives Todd Holmdahl and Dr. Julie Love, who help run the company's quantum computing effort, describe progress in their plan to bring a real, commercial quantum computer, for "solving real business problems," to market in five years. One of Microsoft's key advantages, they believe, is having the best qubits, the fundamental building block, of anyone in the industry.

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Quantum Information for Babies : Chris Ferrie

Quantum Information for Babies is a colorful and simple introduction to one of newest ideas in physics: qubits! Qubits are quantum bits, the carriers of information about quantum mechanical things. Baby will learn why qubits are so different from, and more useful than, the regular bits of information stored on our computers today.

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Having kids may literally shave years off your life

As any mother will tell you, having kids does a lot to a person’s body—and new research suggests it may even change a woman on a cellular level. Sections of genetic material associated with lifespan called telomeres are shorter in women who have given birth, according to a paper published February 14 in Human Reproduction. Specifically, the telomeres of women who have had children are as short as if they were childless and 11 years older.

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George Washington's hair discovered in book

Historians in New York made an amazing discovery when they found a lock of George Washington's hair tucked away inside an old book.

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Denton aims to become second 'all renewable' city in Texas by 2020

Denton is set to become the second city in Texas to use 100 percent renewable energy. Denton’s City Council voted 6-1 on Feb. 6 to approve an amendment to the Renewable Denton Plan which institutes the new goal with a target year of 2020. The plan’s original goal was to use 70 percent renewable energy by then. The city’s utility company, Denton Municipal Electric, has determined that solar power is the city's best option for renewable energy, followed by coastal wind and then other wind energy. The city currently purchases 44 percent renewable energy.

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New firefighting robot gets put to the test

​SAFFiR, the US Navy's experimental firefighting robot, may be in for some competition. That's because researchers at IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia have successfully tested a new-and-improved version of the WALK-MAN humanoid robot, which is designed to support firefighters.

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China announces 'hypersonic jet that would reach New York in two hours'

A team of Chinese researchers has claimed to have designed a hypersonic jet that could travel at 6,000km/h, five times faster than the speed of sound. The team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said the plane would be able to transport passengers and cargo from Beijing to New York in two hours – the journey currently takes an average of 13 and a half hours.

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Your orange juice exists because of climate change in the Himalayas millions of years ago

According to a genetic analysis of almost 60 varieties of citrus fruits

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You could stay in a space hotel pod by 2021

Earthlings may soon be able to book reservations at an inflatable space hotel by 2021. According to a conference call on Tuesday, billionaire hotel mogul Robert Bigelow—who made his fortune through the hotel chain Budget Suites of America—is planning the hotel to be part of a larger, fully autonomous standalone space station. The ambitious goal is the work of Bigelow Space Operations, which was founded in 1999. Two space stations are currently being built and are “very far along in fabrication,” reports the Daily Mail.

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Legalizing Medical Marijuana Doesn’t Prompt Teens To Start Using It, New Research Suggests

Legalizing medical marijuana doesn’t increase recreational use of the substance among teens, according to a new study carried out by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of ...

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Tears may be the key to early Parkinson's diagnosis

​As is the case with so many other maladies, the sooner that Parkinson's disease is definitively diagnosed, the better. With that in mind, scientists from UCLA now believe that it may be possible to detect the disease earlier than ever, via analysis of the patient's tears.

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New shark species discovered in the Atlantic Ocean had ancestors older than dinosaurs

Scientists have discovered a new species of shark which makes its home in the Atlantic Ocean. This particular family of the deep-sea predators was so elusive that it took scientists decades to identify that a new species exists in the Atlantic Ocean. The species belongs to the sixgill sharks family and has been named the Atlantic sixgill shark. Unlike the sixgill sharks residing in the Indian and Pacific oceans, who share similarities with each other, the Atlantic sixgill sharks are different, although the differences are not easy to spot for the naked eye.

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Supplements are a $30 billion racket—here’s what experts actually recommend

From nutrients, delusions, and deadly scams, let's sort it out.

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Ancient DNA upends the horse family tree

New study shows the world’s only “wild” horses have domesticated ancestors

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Sex and drugs and self-control: how the teen brain navigates risk

It’s not just about rebellion. Neuroscience is revealing adolescents’ rich and nuanced relationship with risky behaviour.

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Inside the fight over the sugar conspiracy

In a paper published in 2016, researchers suggested that in the 1960s, the sugar industry paid scientists to obscure the relationship between sugar and heart disease, derailing the course of nutrition science and policy for years to come. Two researchers at Columbia University say that those claims are not backed by the historical evidence.

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Dog Injures Child Boarding Southwest Flight, Airline Says

Southwest Airlines said Thursday that a dog injured a child as passengers boarded a flight in Phoenix, an event likely to fuel the debate over the growing number of emotional-support animals on planes. A passenger on Wednesday’s Phoenix-to-Portland, Oregon, flight tweeted that a dog bit a girl as she approached it, and that she screamed and cried. The man, Todd Rice, did not immediately respond to a Twitter message seeking further comment.

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Criminals beware! Google's AI can now identify faces from heavily pixellated images

Two Google Brain neural networks were combined to create the enhanced images and the system could one day be used to identify faces in CCTV

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Tracking Atmospheric “Rivers” Could Help Us Predict Extreme Weather

Current models can only predict atmospheric river activity 1-2 weeks in advance, but a new method allowed researchers to predict activity up to five weeks ahead of time. This could give communities more time to prepare for a natural disaster the weather event can bring about.

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The mighty bin chicken is helping scientists predict how T-rex walked

The humble Australian white ibis, notoriously referred to as the bin chicken, helps scientists gain insight into how dinosaurs would have walked.

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