Deborah Bloomfield

There’s no denying that some species are impressive thanks to certain body parts (behave). From the long neck of a giraffe to the impressive (albeit creepy) finger of an aye-aye, to simply having a very tiny body in general, the animal world covers pretty much any kind of adaptation you can think of. This makes […]

Every now and then, one of the robots on Mars sends back a picture of an unusual rock it has found on its journeys. After all, that’s one of the reasons we sent them there. These can range from the interesting (such as the donut-shaped rock which may not be from the planet) to the […]

We’ve heard it all before: getting more sleep is good for us in all sorts of ways. It’s not always easy to hit the magic eight hours that everyone seems to be striving for – but what if we told you that just 46 extra minutes could be enough to make a difference? A new […]

A robot has delved into the radioactive ruins of Fukushima to retrieve a tiny chunk of spent nuclear fuel. It’s the first time solid fuel debris has been removed from the plant – but they’ve still got a hell of a long way to go: 880 tons of the stuff to be precise.  The remotely […]

A series of ancient drawings at a Palaeolithic site in Germany appear to show fish caught in nets, suggesting that the use of this fishing technology may go back further than previously thought. Etched into stone plaquettes, the engravings have been dated to 15,800 years ago and form part of a large body of artworks […]

The undeniable face of Andean bears is the one and only Paddington, but while everyone’s favorite fictional marmalade fiend thrives, the number of his real-life counterparts remaining in the wild is on the decline. A recent conservation project taking place in Ecuador hopes to turn the tide. Classified on the IUCN Red List as a […]

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In 1987, a terrible accident unfolded in Goiânia, Brazil, where a radioactive capsule had been abandoned. People later found what they believed to be scrap metal and sold it on, beginning a sequence of events that would lead to the screening of over 112,000 residents for radioactive contamination, and the deaths of four people. The […]

Gender stereotypes can be conveyed in ways that go beyond visual and linguistic expressions, new research has shown. It seems that sound and music play a role too, as the music and soundscapes used in toy commercials can influence how children perceive masculinity and femininity. The advertising industry is extremely powerful when it comes to […]

Vampire bats might have developed a creepy reputation with all the eating blood and flapping about at night, but their ability to survive off an entirely blood-based diet is part of what makes them so remarkable. Now, new research has taken a look at just how this diet can power vampire bats, and set them […]

Who said watching movies all day can’t be educational? Scientists have just unveiled the most detailed functional map of the brain we’ve seen yet, and they got there using scans of people’s brain activity taken while they watched clips from Hollywood blockbusters and independent films. “Our work is the first attempt to get a layout […]

Have you ever noticed that new car tires are covered in rubbery, stubbly hairs? Don’t believe the rumors: they’re not for noise reduction or indicating tire wear, they are simply a by-product of the manufacturing process.  The small rubber prongs are technically known as vent spews, although they’re also called sprue nubs, tire nibs, gate […]

We tend to think of prehistoric life as hard. Brutal, even. Devoid of pleasure, outside of the odd mammoth steak or math class. But that dour picture tends to be missing something big – or rather, something small: kids. And, a recent study seems to suggest, they were having quite a bit of fun. The […]

A new satellite imagery technique allows scientists to see plastic on beaches from space. The technique can identify differences in how sand, water, and plastic reflect light, enabling researchers to spot debris on shorelines from over 600 km (372 miles) overhead. Plastic is a massive issue in many environmental contexts, but it is an increasingly […]

NASA’s planetary defense telescope Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) has burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere, ending 10 years of searching for and monitoring potential threats to Earth. NEOWISE began its mission as plain old WISE in December 2009, when it was launched to scan the entire sky in infrared. It completed this […]

The chemical properties of two of the heaviest synthetic elements, moscovium and nihonium, have been established for the first time. Moscovium is now the heaviest element whose chemical properties we know something about. Both elements have been shown to be modestly reactive, but making any useful compounds still runs up against their incredibly short half-lives. […]

In 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster led to the largest release of radioactive material into the environment in human history. It was a disaster for all forms of life, but how that accident is affecting wildlife in Ukraine today wasn’t entirely clear. Now, new research has shown that for the Eastern tree frog (Hyla orientalis), […]

Contrary to what some may assume, ancient peoples were just as capable as modern people of using unconventional methods in warfare. Rather than always being driven by ideas about honorable combat, people of the past exploited various ways to achieve their goals, including resorting to biological warfare. The proof of such a tactic has recently […]

An old mystery involving the tape recording of an unknown song has finally been solved by internet sleuths, nearly four decades after it began. The mystery began for one family in the 1980s, when a family member recorded a song off the radio onto a cassette tape. The family clearly liked the song, but were […]

A serendipitous discovery may lead to a new way of fighting cancer – even tumors that are resistant to immunotherapy – by suppressing a mechanism that cancer cells use to evade the body’s immune system. “It all happened by coincidence,” explained study lead Professor Carmit Levy of Tel Aviv University, in a statement. “My lab […]