Deborah Bloomfield

It’s not every day you see the words “beaver” and “legal battle” in the same sentence. Then again, a situation that involves a rescued beaver named Nibi, a court case between a Massachusetts wildlife rescue center and the state’s wildlife division, and intervention from politicians, is far from “every day”. Advertisement The story begins in […]

Evolution is often portrayed as an achingly long process, taking generations upon generations of small changes accumulating over a timeline too long to appreciate in a single, puny human lifetime. In certain extreme circumstances, however, it’s possible to see the impacts of natural selection in just a few years – for example, throughout the 1980s […]

The winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics are John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, with the Nobel Committee awarding them the prestigious prize “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.” Their work has been crucial to the development of artificial intelligence. The prize is worth 11 million Swedish […]

The proliferation of images generated by artificial intelligence (AI) is problematic in multiple ways. AI models have faced allegations of being trained using stolen art, then there is their exorbitant use of water and alarming carbon footprint. There is also the threat – both political and otherwise – of increased misinformation, with the creation of […]

Thunderstorms increased radiation at a mountaintop measuring site far in excess of background levels from cosmic rays. Observations included electrons moving close enough to the speed of light that relativistic effects need to be considered. Peaks in gamma rays and neutrons were also detected. Advertisement Since its foundation, the Space Environmental Center on top of […]

A chance observation has led to an astonishing discovery for a group of scientists studying the comb jelly, Mnemiopsis leidyi. When injured, it appears these curious ctenophores can fuse together to form one individual and even share some bodily functions. Advertisement The team was keeping a population of comb jellies in a seawater tank when […]

Exposure to so called “forever chemicals” may cause sleep disturbances and reduced quality of sleep, new research suggests. Advertisement Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of synthetic chemicals used in various consumer products and industries across the world. Since the 1950s, these chemicals have been exploited for their resistance to water, heat, grease, […]

The spread of highly pathogenic H5 avian influenza (HPAIV) – otherwise known as bird flu – has been closely watched by global health experts since 2021, when the first of two major waves of disease decimated wild and domestic bird populations. Since then, we’ve seen unprecedented spread of the virus into a number of mammals, […]

The year 2023 quickly became an environmental record-breaker in all the worst ways, and now, a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has added yet another one to the list – 2023 was also the driest year for global rivers in 33 years. Advertisement The WMO report, State of Global Water Resources 2023, found […]

Astronomers have found that our galaxy, the Milky Way, may be a tiny part of an even larger local structure than we thought. The research, if confirmed by further observations and studies, may be evidence that we haven’t quite nailed down our model of the evolution of the universe. Advertisement As we study the universe […]

A flood of medical advances has extended the lives of people in most wealthy countries. However, a new paper argues that talk of living forever, or even to 150, is highly improbable, and not consistent with the trends we have seen. Moreover, even if our lives are extended, we cannot assume the past extension of […]

A treasure hunt that began over 30 years ago has now ended, with the buried 10-kilogram (22-pound) diamond-encrusted “Golden Owl” finally being located. Advertisement In 1993, Régis Hauser and Michel Becker created the treasure hunt, burying the owl, estimated to be worth around €150,000 (~164,000 USD) somewhere in France. There are published clues to the […]

Ever wondered what it takes to join the ranks of the rich lists? We don’t need to tell you that it’s a lot of money, nor that Elon Musk definitely qualifies. But, in the case of the list of America’s richest people, it turns out that there’s actually a minimum figure – and it’s gone up […]

Deep in the Arctic Ocean, a portion of seafloor covered in craters larger than football fields is challenging assumptions about the workings of the icy waters of the planet’s far north.  Advertisement In the Canadian Beaufort Sea, scientists have previously discovered the presence of gaping craters on the seabed that are covered in mounds of […]

An incredibly rare ocelot has been caught on camera slinking about a mountain range in southern Arizona. The wild cat was spotted on July 24 by a trail camera belonging to the Center for Biological Diversity located in a Sky Island mountain range – somewhere the species has not recently been found. Advertisement “I shouted […]

A collection of gigantic artworks carved into the Atacama Desert centuries ago has been destroyed by thunderous parades of 4x4s, quadbikes, and all-terrain motorcycles.  Advertisement Located in the Tarapacá region of present-day northern Chile, the geoglyphs of Alto Barranco were made by the region’s Indigenous people along the migration route between the Oasis of Pica […]

Requests for allergy medication in North Carolina have shot up in the wake of Hurricane Helene, after the devastating rains and flooding seen in the state also disturbed the nests of yellowjackets. Advertisement Seeing a few yellowjackets buzzing about in the early fall isn’t necessarily unusual – as their usual sources of food start to […]

The winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine are Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNAs, tiny molecules that help regulate the expression of genes. The prize is worth 11 million Swedish kronor (around $1,060,000 USD at the time of publishing), which will be shared equally between the winners.  […]

Deep beneath the surface of the Earth, there is a massive reservoir of water. It is estimated to contain three times the amount of water of all the oceans on our surface. Advertisement In 2014, a team from the US used 2,000 seismometers to study seismic waves from over 500 earthquakes. By examining the speed of […]

A tool that predicts biological age using epigenetic information from cheek swab samples is also an effective predictor of mortality risk, even when using data from other tissues.  Advertisement CheekAge is an “epigenetic clock” – a tool that monitors minute changes to DNA called methylation markers to predict age. These tags accumulate in our genome […]