Pilots tend to have less emotional intelligence than the average person, new research suggests

Being emotionally intelligent may be important for a teacher, salesman, or therapist, but what about for a pilot? A study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports suggests that pilots are less likely to be emotionally intelligent compared to the average person.

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Scientists Say They Can Damage Memories of Being Cheated On

We're going on 20 years since "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" devastated film lovers — and now, it seems like something approaching the memory-erasing science it depicted may be close to fruition. New research published in the Journal of Affective Disorders describes how the researchers instructed test subjects to recall traumatic memories of "romantic betrayal" under the influence of the beta-blocker propranolol, which is typically prescribed for high blood pressure, migraines, and anxiety disorders.

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New research suggests that those with bipolar I and a history of migraines should avoid taking lithium

A new study in Brain and Behavior has unraveled the relationship between migraines, bipolar disorder, and patient outcomes. Nicole Sekula and colleagues conducted an 11-year longitudinal study demonstrating that those with bipolar disorder and migraines experienced worse symptoms of depression, mania, and a diminished quality of life on average. In addition, if those individuals were also prescribed lithium, their symptoms of mania were worse than those with migraines not taking lithium.

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Tuna Have Been Seen Rubbing Themselves Against Sharks And We Don't Blame Them

Imagine you're a big yellowfin tuna, miles from shore out in the blue, swimming around carefree, until you start to feel a little itch near your eye.

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‘Dying of boredom’: the fight to release Thailand’s shopping mall gorilla

Bua Noi has spent decades in a cage in a decaying Bangkok shopping mall. Her owner says is she too old to be transferred to a sanctuary but activists disagree

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NASA names 16-person panel tasked with investigating UFOs

Last June, NASA announced that it would convene a panel to study "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP), aka UFOs — while saying it doesn't believe they're "extraterrestrial in origin." Now, the space agency has unveiled the 16-member panel that will focus on "unclassified sightings and other data collected from civilian government and commercial sectors."

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Xbox’s Phil Spencer says the metaverse is a “poorly built video game”

He’s not the only exec to push back on the metaverse this week.

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Controversial new research suggests SARS-CoV-2 bears signs of genetic engineering

A string of about 30,000 genetic letters were all that it took to start the nightmare of covid-19, the death toll from which is likely to be more than 20m. Exactly how this story began has been hotly contested. Many think that covid-19’s emergence was a zoonosis—a spillover, as so many new pathogens are, from wild animals, for it resembles a group of coronaviruses found in bats.

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Mind-reading AI works out what you are thinking from brain scans

A brain decoder can extract words and sentences from the brain recordings of people listening to stories or watching silent films

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Why experts say you shouldn't bag your leaves this fall

It's best to chop up and leave a thin layer of leaves in the grass. Rake excess amounts into a landscape bed or garden.

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Scientists discover six new species of rain frog in Ecuador

Scientists in Ecuador have discovered six new species of rain frog. The new species were all found on the eastern slopes of the Ecuadorean Andes, in two national parks. But the scientists who discovered them have warned that all six Pristimantis species were found within a 20km-radius of deforested areas.

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Why Sugar Might Be More Addictive Than Cocaine

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From E. Coli to Flesh-Eating Bacteria, Floodwaters Are a Health Nightmare

Floodwater often contains pollutants and pathogens that can sicken and kill people in the aftermath of a storm.

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New study links high testosterone levels in women to reduced immune responses

New research has uncovered a relationship between hormone levels in women and the production of antibodies in response to hepatitis B vaccination. The study, recently published in Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, found negative associations between testosterone and immune responses, and positive associations between estradiol and immune responses.

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Only 5% of plastic waste generated by US last year was recycled, report says

Only 5% of the mountains of plastic waste generated by US households last year was recycled, according to new research by Greenpeace. Americans discarded 51m tons of wrappers, bottles and bags in 2021 – about 309lb of plastic per person – of which almost 95% ended up in landfills, oceans or scattered in the atmosphere in tiny toxic particles.

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Manipulating light can induce psychedelic experiences – and scientists aren't quite sure why

For millennia, people have used mind-altering techniques to achieve different states of consciousness, envision spiritual figures, connect with nature, or simply for the fun of it. Psychedelic substances, in particular, have a long and controversial history. But for just as long, people have been having these experiences without drugs too, using rhythmic techniques such as rocking, chanting or drumming.

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This new farming robot uses lasers to kill 200,000 weeds per hour

In February, agricultural robotics company Carbon Robotics unveiled its 2022 LaserWeeder implement, a cost-effective weed control solution for large-scale specialty row crops.

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Why do teachers give girls higher marks than boys? Italian researchers have the answer

Girls are routinely being given more generous grades than boys with the same academic competences, a new study of tens of thousands of pupils and their teachers concludes.

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Space Force to award up to $50 million in contracts for Space Test Program experiments

The Space Force is changing its approach to buying satellites for the Space Test Program, which for decades has launched experiments for the U.S. government and allies. Instead of awarding separate contracts for STP missions, the Space Force will select a group of vendors that will compete for $50 million worth of task orders under a five-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract.

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How Can Virtual Reality Evolve Beyond Escapism?

A future dominated by virtual/augmented realities seems an inevitability. CEO Herman Narula speaks to Gizmodo about a future when the “metaverse” serves all.

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Radioactive implant wipes tumors in unprecedented pre-clinical success

Engineers at Duke University have developed a novel delivery system for cancer treatment and demonstrated its potential against one of the disease’s most troublesome forms. In newly published research in mice with pancreatic cancer, the scientists showed how a radioactive implant could completely eliminate tumors in the majority of the rodents, demonstrating what they say is the most effective treatment ever studied in these pre-clinical models.

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SpaceX replaces Russia on 2 European launches after Ukraine invasion

The launches include the Euclid space telescope and the Hera probe.

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How robotic honeybees and hives could help the species fight back

Robots that can monitor conditions in a hive, do a waggle dance, or even infiltrate the queen’s court could help scientists influence the health of a colony.

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Why Some People Conjure Terrifying ‘Sleep Paralysis Demons,’ According to a Neuroscientist

Neuroscientist Ben Rein explains the strange phenomenon of hallucinating while on the edge of consciousness.

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Pornography is not to blame for erectile dysfunction, according to new research

Can watching porn give men erectile dysfunction? A study published in the International Journal of Impotence Research suggests that pornography use does not predict problems in erectile functioning or sexual satisfaction. ...

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Posing smiles can brighten our mood

Can posing a smile brighten our mood? According to an international collaboration of researchers, the answer is yes.

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Portugal bets all on renewables after abandoning coal

As the UN steps up calls to make the switch to renewable energy to fight the global climate emergency, Portugal is among the first European Union countries to abandon coal.

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The most precise accounting yet of dark energy and dark matter

Astrophysicists have performed a powerful new analysis that places the most precise limits yet on the composition and evolution of the universe. With this analysis, dubbed Pantheon+, cosmologists find themselves at a crossroads.

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Five Things Google’s AI Bot Wrote That Convinced Engineer It Was Sentient

Known as LaMDA, here are five things the bot has said that made an engineer think it experienced feelings

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SpaceX's Starlink launches internet service for planes to finally fix crappy in-flight WiFi

Speedier in-flight WiFi may finally be on the way. Starlink, the satellite-internet service from SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, announced a new service for airplanes on Wednesday. Starlink Aviation promises to bring impressive speeds, up to 350 megabytes-per-second, to the skies starting in 2023. It will cost $12,500-$25,000 per month on top of an initial hardware fee of $150,000.

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Jupiter’s Ocean Moon Europa Is Ready for Its Close-up

Fresh data from the Juno probe’s flyby of Europa could help scientists learn whether this icy moon of Jupiter is habitable—or even inhabited

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Webb Telescope Shows the Pillars of Creation Like You’ve Never Seen Them Before

The famous clouds of gas and dust are dazzling in the state-of-the-art instrument’s eye.

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Some People Really Are Mosquito Magnets, and They’re Stuck That Way

Certain compounds in our skin determine how much we attract mosquitoes, new research suggests—and those compounds don’t change much over time

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Artificial intelligence is being asked to predict the future of AI

Artificial intelligence model predictions from historical data on how AI research would develop over five years matched reality with more than 99 per cent accuracy – soon they will be asked what comes next

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AI Can Offer Insight into Who Responds to Anti-Depressants

A new algorithm predicts response to Sertraline with 83 percent accuracy

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Astronaut James McDivitt, commander of Apollo 9, dies at age 93

Former NASA astronaut James A. McDivitt, who commanded the Apollo 9 mission, died on Thursday in Tucson, Arizona, surrounded by his family and friends, NASA said in a statement. He was 93. McDivitt spent 14 days in space over the course of his career. He was selected to be a member of NASA's second astronaut class in September 1962 after graduating from the Air Force Experimental Test Pilot School and serving as an experimental test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

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New tool allows scientists to peer inside neutron stars

Imagine taking a star twice the mass of the sun and crushing it to the size of Manhattan. The result would be a neutron star—one of the densest objects found anywhere in the universe, exceeding the density of any material found naturally on Earth by a factor of tens of trillions.

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This Is Your Brain On Drug Ads

Apologies to listeners who received two episodes in their feed today. The U.S. is one of two countries in the world that allows pharmaceutical companies to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers. Why? And what does that do to us Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

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Radio tunes and space junk collide in surprise discovery that raises defence force eyebrows

A radio telescope used to look back 13 billion years stumbled over signals that may change the way ever-increasing space junk can be safely managed.

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Personal lubricant made from cow mucus may protect against HIV

In a laboratory study, human epithelial cells were treated with the lubricant before being exposed to HIV or a herpes virus, with subsequent infection rates being as low as 20 per cent.

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Young LGBTQ+ people more than twice as likely to experience hate speech online

Young LGBTQ+ people are more than twice as likely to experience hate speech online compared with those who identify as heterosexual, according to a new report on how young people use the internet.

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Climate diet: What to eat to ensure we all live longer

Listener: If we want to tackle climate change, most of us need to eat less meat.

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This 33-year-old made more than 1,000 Wikipedia bios for unknown women scientists

When Jessica Wade was invited to Buckingham Palace to receive the prestigious British Empire Medal, she stood out for being a young woman honored for her contributions to science. Ironically, she was being honored for trying to change that. The 33-year-old London-based physicist has become something of a phenomenon herself — both an irresistible force and immoveable object — in her very personal campaign to bring more girls to study and work in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

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Human brain cells transplanted onto rat brain can influence its behavior, Stanford study suggests

Researchers were able to confirm that sensations from the rat's whiskers were being processed by the human brain cells. They also engineered cells that were sensitive to a colored light, then taught the rat to associate the light with a reward.

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Fast food fever: how ultra-processed meals are unhealthier than you think

UPFs form 50% of Britons’ calorie intake. Now food scientists are learning more about what makes them so damaging. For a long time it has been known that diets dominated by ultra-processed food (UPF) are more likely to lead to obesity. But recent research suggests that high UPF consumption also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia and, according to a recent American study involving 50,000 health professionals, of developing colon cancer.

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There’s a Damn Good Chance AI Will Destroy Humanity, Researchers Say

On the bright side, there are some things we can do to prevent that outcome ... maybe.

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740,000km of fishing line and 14 billion hooks: we reveal just how much fishing gear is lost at sea each year

Each year, enough fishing line to circle the Earth 18 times is lost at sea. This not only harms marine life, but also the livelihoods of fishers worldwide.

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Sleep Simulation: The Future of Sleep?

What if I told you that in the future, you could choose how long you wanted to sleep? And not only that, but you could also choose what kind of sleep you wanted! Wouldn’t that be amazing? We currently sleep almost 8 hours a day, and it is necessary. According to the National Sleep Foundation, more than one-third of Americans don’t get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep each night.

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Schools are harnessing solar power in record numbers

In 2014, two solar energy groups published a report finding that only about 3,750 U.S. schools — out of a total of roughly 130,000 — were generating electricity from solar panels. But that number is on the rise. According to the fourth edition of the “Brighter Future” report, released last week by the clean energy nonprofit Generation180, the number of U.S. schools using solar power has more than doubled in the last seven years, reaching roughly 8,400 by the end of 2021.

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Why Chimps and Gorillas Form Rainforest Friendships

In a Congolese national park, great apes of different species interact socially, with individuals clearly recognizing one another.

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