People with a keener sense of smell find sex more pleasant and, if they are female, have more orgasms during sex

Scent plays an often under-appreciated role in sexual attraction, helping to account for why visual attractiveness alone can’t explain just how physically attractive a person is perceived to be. But what role does our ability to smell our partners – or potential partners – play in actual experience? We know from past research that men born without the ability to smell tend to have fewer sexual partners. And about half of people who lose their sense of smell, through infection or injury, report negative impacts on their sexual behaviour.

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First 3D printed human corneas

The first human corneas have been 3D printed by scientists at Newcastle University. It means the technique could be used in the future to ensure an unlimited supply of corneas. As the outermost layer of the human eye, the cornea has an important role in focusing vision.

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Mystery of Earth's Missing Nitrogen Solved

Scientists have discovered a previously unknown environmental source of the element

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10 massive corporations going big on solar power

Sustainable Energy looks at the top 10 corporations in the U.S. by their installed capacity of solar power.

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Halogen light bulbs could disappear from Australian stores within two years

Halogen lights will disappear from Australia within two years, as the industry and federal government pivot towards more efficient and environmentally-friendly LED lighting. A ban on halogen bulbs, which use four times the energy of LED globes, was announced last month at a meeting of state and federal environment ministers. The ban is to come into effect from September 2020 but the bulbs could start disappearing from retail stores in as little as 12 months, according to the industry’s peak body, Lighting Council Australia.

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Which role does the brain play in prosocial behavior?

Helping other people in need is a foundation of our society. It is intuitive to believe that we help others because we empathically share their pain. The Social Brain Lab investigated whether altering activity in these tactile brain regions while witnessing the pain of others would alter people’s willingness to help.

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The Silence of the Bugs

Is an insect Armageddon afoot?

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Lack of Paid Sick Leave Increases Poverty

Research conducted by Florida Atlantic University and Cleveland State University has, for the first time, quantified the relationship between the lack of paid sick leave and poverty in the United States. The data indicates that, even when controlling for education, race, sex, marital status and employment, working adults without paid sick leave are three times more likely to have incomes below the poverty line.

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We Finally Know What The Interior Of Jupiter Looks Like

When you spend almost more than $1 billion on a beautiful spacecraft, it can be a very nervous wait to see if everything actually pays off. But if and when it does, the results can be rather glorious. And NASA’s Juno spacecraft has just paid off in a huge way. One of the major goals of the Juno mission, which began in July 2016 when the probe entered orbit around Jupiter, has been to study the interior of this fascinating gas giant. We can see its amazing cloud tops, sure, but we really didn’t know what’s going on inside.

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Google's city built 'from the internet up'

A disused waterfront in Toronto is being transformed by a firm owned by Google's parent company.

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Global warming linked with rising antibiotic resistance

New research suggests rising temperatures are encouraging antibiotic resistance in cities across the United States. Until now, health researchers assumed antibiotic resistance was primarily the result of overprescription and overuse. But a new study suggests climate change is also to blame. "The effects of climate are increasingly being recognized in a variety of infectious diseases, but so far as we know this is the first time it has been implicated in the distribution of antibiotic resistance over geographies," Derek MacFadden, an infectious disease specialist and...

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Men lose interest in sex during long-term relationships before women, study finds

Men are the first to lose interest in sex during long-term relationships, a study has found. Men are put off of sex because they feel insecure and because they worry about losing their freedom within a relationship. An analysis of 64 studies on sexual desire conducted since the 1950s found that men also have unrealistic expectations of their appetite and their bodies as they get older.

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Bumblebees confused by iridescent colors

Iridescence is a form of structural colour which uses regular repeating nanostructures to reflect light at slightly different angles, causing a colour-change effect.

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Eighties Babies Are Officially the Brokest Generation

A Federal Reserve study shows Americans born between 1980 and 1989 have 34 percent lower net worths than they should for their age.

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Marijuana Compound Removes Toxic Alzheimer's Protein From The Brain

An active compound in marijuana called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has been found to promote the removal of toxic clumps of amyloid beta protein in the brain, which are thought to kickstart the progression of Alzheimer's disease.

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Rich Americans live 15 years longer than poor counterparts: Study

Wealth and health are intrinsically linked in the United States, with rich Americans living between 10 to 15 years longer than their poor counterparts, a study has found. A series of five papers published in the medical journal The Lancet found that a widening income gap, structural racism and mass incarceration are fueling growing health inequalities. “The USA is one of the richest countries in the world, but that reality means very little for most people because so much of that wealth...

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Lab-Grown Meat Is Getting Cheap Enough For Anyone To Buy

In 2013, producing the first lab-grown burger cost $325,000. By 2015, though the cost had dropped to around $11, Mark Post, the Dutch researcher who created the burger, thought that it might take another two or three decades before it was commercially viable. But the first so-called “clean meat,” produced from animal cells without an actual animal, may be in restaurants by the end of 2018.

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The Most Important Inventor You've Never Heard of

Stanford Ovshinsky changed your life, and the full impact of his brilliance may still be to come

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How a Public Suicide Harms the People Who See It

For unwitting bystanders, the experience can be traumatic. 

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Ancient meteorite found in Sahara desert reveals history of Mars

A tiny meteorite from Mars nicknamed “Black Beauty” has provided scientists with an unprecedented insight into ancient processes that shaped the red planet’s surface. Discovered in the Sahara desert and designated Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, the Martian rock weighs no more than 320g – but its extreme age and unusual composition have fascinated researchers since it was unearthed in 2011.

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How Wim Hof, "The Iceman," withstands such extreme temperatures

How Wim Hof, "The Iceman," withstands such extreme temperatures

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Democracy is not a truth machine

"That means for example that if all the climate scientists in the world were wiped out by a freak meteor at a conference, climate science would quickly reappear and say basically the same things again, as more or less happened when the Catholic Church tried to suppress heliocentricism." By Thomas R. Wells.

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Meteor from Mars Shows Planetary Genesis, 4 Billion Years Ago

A Martian meteor found in northwestern Africa that is more than 4 billion years ago came from Mars, and bears the traces of the tumultuous creation of the red planet. The chemical dating and analysis was performed by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and is published in the journal Science Advances.

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Top Climate Scientist: Humans Will Go Extinct if We Don’t Fix Climate Change by 2023

A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years. By Scott Alden.

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U.S. Life Expectancy Will Likely Decline For Third Straight Year

The U.S. death rate rose last year, and 2017 likely will mark the third straight year of decline in American life expectancy, according to preliminary data. Death rates rose for Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, flu and pneumonia, and three other leading causes of death, according to numbers posted online Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Full-year data is not yet available for drug overdoses, suicides or firearm deaths. But partial-year statistics in those categories showed continuing increases.

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If renewable energy can power entire countries, why isn't everyone doing it?

A country getting all its electricity from a combination of wind, solar and hydro sounds like science fiction. It's not.

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American suffers brain injury after 'sound' incident in China

The US embassy in China issued a health alert Wednesday after a US government employee experienced an "abnormal" sound and suffered a mild brain ...

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Dr. Robert Lustig The Hacking of the American Mind at the San Francisco Public Library

A very insightful lecture that will go in a direction you won't expect.

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New soft robotic skin automatically heals itself, even if you shoot it full of holes

If there’s one thing that scientists absolutely should be working on, it’s a self-regenerating robo-Deadpool or the eerily-fluid T-1000 Terminator. Thankfully, a team of scientists just took an important first step towards building a robot that can keep on truckin’ even with a couple of bullet holes improve its ventilation.

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My Own Personal Nothingness

From a childhood hallucination to the halls of theoretical physics. By Alan Lightman.

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Ariane chief seems frustrated with SpaceX for driving down launch costs

“I cannot tell my teams: 'Goodbye, see you next year!'”

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Most common childhood cancer 'partly caused by lack of infection'

Clean modern homes, antiseptic wipes and the understandable desire to protect small babies against any infection are all part of the cause of the most common form of childhood cancer, a leading expert has concluded after more than 30 years of research. Childhood acute leukaemia, says the highly respected Prof Mel Greaves, is nothing to do with power lines or nuclear fuel reprocessing stations. Nor is it to do with hot dogs and hamburgers or the Vatican radio mast, as have also been suggested.

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A couple of boring videos

The Perth Airport tunnel borers have broken through to the site of the planned Airport Central Station.

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Human race just 0.01% of all life but has eradicated most other living things

Groundbreaking assessment of all life on Earth reveals humanity’s surprisingly tiny part in it as well as our disproportionate impact

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Finnish university's online AI course is open to everyone

Helsinki University in Finland has launched a course on artificial intelligence -- one that's completely free and open to everyone around the world. Unlike Carnegie Mellon's new undergrad degree in AI, which the institution created to train future experts in the field, Helsinki's offering is more of a beginner course for those who want to know more about it. A lot of tech giants like Google now have divisions working on artificial intelligence projects, and even whole non-tech industries already depend on AI for various tasks.

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Self-Blame, Rumination, and the Trauma of Birth

Birth is miraculous, but not always simple. For some, the difficulties of birth last long after the baby is born. Looking at almost 200 first-time moms, new research published in the Journal of Maternal-fetal and Neonatal Medicine (link is external) found that many of them experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)...

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A German Team Is Now Trying to Make the ‘Impossible’ EmDrive Engine

German physicists launched the SpaceDrive project to explore possible sources of error in EmDrive experiments. Their first experiment identified a possible source of false positives in past successful EmDrive tests. Since the beginning of the space race over half-a-century ago, humans have walked on the moon and remotely explored the surface of two other planets in our solar system with robots. But so far, only a single spacecraft has made it to interstellar space: Voyager 1...

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Magic mushroom treatment improves emotional face recognition in depressed patients

Preliminary research suggests that psilocybin-based treatment can improve emotional processing in depressed patients. The new findings are reported in the scientific journal Psychopharmacology. Psilocybin is the primary mind-altering substance in psychedelic “magic” mushrooms. The drug can profoundly alter the way a person experiences the world by producing changes in mood, sensory perception, time perception, and sense of self.

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Was Science Wrong About Being Right?

Handedness is an ancient trait, but researchers are rethinking its roots. By Gemma Tarlach.

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Astronomers Discover Monster Black Hole the Size of 20 Billion Suns

Astronomers using cutting-edge skywatching devices have identified an extremely fast-growing black hole, cataloging it as a ‘monster’ that eats the mass equivalent of our sun every two days.

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Dozens, including Virginia woman, file mass lawsuit against Essure manufacturer

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Want to help your child succeed in school? Add language to the math, reading mix

Research shows that the more skills children bring with them to kindergarten – in basic math, reading, even friendship and cooperation – the more likely they will succeed in those same areas in school. Hence, “kindergarten readiness” is the goal of many preschool programs, and a motivator for many parents.

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Vitamin D3 vital in treating child malnutrition

High doses of vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) were found to be effective in helping treat severe child malnutrition, a new study conducted in Pakistan’s Punjab province suggests. Researchers from the University of the Punjab (PU), Lahore, and the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) said doses of vitamin D3 supplements, alongside regular treatment for malnutrition, significantly helped a group of 185 malnourished children aged 2—58 months to gain weight and height, as well as improve motor skills and learning abilities.

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IBM warns of instant breaking of encryption by quantum computers: 'Move your data today'

Welcome to the future transparency of today as quantum computers reveal all currently encrypted secrets -- a viable scenario within just a few years.

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People in small towns are EIGHT TIMES happier than city-dwellers

People who live in rural areas are happier than city dwellers, new research has found. The study surveyed 400,000 people across Canada using a widely-recognized happiness scale. Cities have higher salaries, higher education levels and lower unemployment rates. However, that meant nothing in terms of joy: people who lived in the countryside were, on average, eight times happier than people in urban areas, the study found.

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Cannabis: it matters how young you start

What a difference a year or two can make: If you started smoking marijuana at the start of your teens, your risk of having a drug abuse problem by age 28 is 68 per cent, but if you started smoking between 15 and 17 your risk drops to 44 per cent, according to a new study by Université de Montréal researchers.

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Single-tablet HIV treatment shows better outcomes over multi-tablet regimen

HIV patients on a single-tablet daily regimen had better outcomes than patients taking multiple pills per day, a new study shows.

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How a Pioneer of Machine Learning Became One of Its Sharpest Critics

He helped artificial intelligence gain a strong grasp on probability, but laments that it still can't compute cause and effect.

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Infinitesimal Odds: A Scientist Finds Her Child’s Rare Illness Stems From the Gene She Studies

When it comes to studying the genetics of the brain, Soo-Kyung Lee is a star, yet she was stunned to discover the cause of her daughter’s devastating disabilities.

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Investigation Reveals Tyson Foods as #1 Culprit in Largest "Dead Zone" on Earth

Nearly 9000 square-miles of ocean along the Gulf Coast is uninhabitable by marine life. Loaded with agricultural toxins and devoid of oxygen, it’s the largest “dead zone” in US history, and last summer it got even bigger. We’ve known the cause of the ecological “dead zone” for decades — fertilizer run-off from Big Agriculture via the Mississippi River — but a new investigative report identifies the number one polluter by name, Tyson Foods.

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