Deborah Bloomfield

Birth control, contraception, family planning – whatever you call it, how long have people been coming up with ways to prevent (or strategically time) a pregnancy? The first oral contraceptive was approved in the US in 1960, but methods of contraception have been around much further back in history than that. In the beginning One […]

The Sun is surrounded by an atmosphere of plasma that we call the corona. It is nearly 1 million degrees Celsius (1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit) of hot plasma stretching far into the Solar System. Black holes also have a corona, but astronomers have struggled to completely understand its shape and how it relates to the […]

Long before the rise of Rome, the Italian peninsula teemed with several different cultures, one of the most intriguing being the Picene. A new genetic analysis has shed light on this often-overlooked civilization, uncovering surprising details about their people. Scientists led by the Sapienza University of Rome analyzed ancient DNA from over 100 skeletons found […]

A test exists for a leading explanation for the nature of dark matter, but it relies on catching a supernova in the moment of explosion. Although we now do that quite frequently, the supernova needs to be closer than any we have seen for decades, and we have to have a gamma-ray telescope pointing in […]

Earlier this year, the number of moons orbiting Earth temporarily doubled, admittedly from the low starting point of “one”. Taking a closer look at the new mini-moon, astronomers have learned more about its origin. On August 7, astronomers discovered a new near-Earth object, dubbed 2024 PT5. Analyzing the object, around 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter, […]

We all know that the animal kingdom is full of creatures doing some pretty remarkable and sometimes downright weird activities. Whales are creating bubble nets to catch krill, while in the insect world, juvenile dragonfly nymphs are breathing through their butts.  Dragonflies are pretty ancient and have been flying about on Earth since the Paleozoic […]

It’s not often that fruit gets you blushing, but might we recommend you don’t watch videos of the squirting cucumber at work. The mechanics behind this suggestively named plant’s bizarre seed distribution have now been revealed in explosive detail, as scientists at the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford have revealed how it […]

A groundbreaking new study has opened the book on chimpanzee culture and its transmission, revealing compelling evidence that it is cumulative and spreads through social groups over generations. Using what they’re calling a “genetic time machine,” scientists have peered back into thousands of years’ worth of gene transfer, and spotted patterns between migrating females and […]

A new astronomical instrument has had its first outing observing the velocities of colliding galaxies in the famous Stephan’s Quintet. It has revealed the rate at which one of these galaxies is crashing through the others, and the consequences, which astronomers have likened to the sonic boom created by a jet fighter exceeding the speed […]

Never mind the birds and the bees, wolves with a sweet tooth may be playing a prominent role in the pollination of a flowering plant native to the highlands of Ethiopia. For the first time, Ethiopian wolves have been documented feeding on the nectar of Ethiopian red hot poker flowers (Kniphofia foliosa).  Up in the […]

Homo sapiens may be the last humans standing, but we weren’t always alone. For much of our history, we coexisted with other members of our genus, and our prehistoric ancestors didn’t waste the opportunity to hook up with their Neanderthal and Denisovan relatives. Many millennia have passed since these inter-hominid affairs, yet we all still […]

A child in California has been infected with H5N1 avian flu, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed. This is the first such case reported in a minor in the US and brings the total number of confirmed human cases in 2024 to 55.  CDC figures as of November 22, 2024, show […]

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has announced a proposal to list three subspecies of giraffe as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and a further two species as threatened. If finalized, this would see all five entitled to federal protections that it’s hoped will help combat their decline. The proposal, which is […]

A man browsing Google Maps of the Nullarbor Plain in Southern Australia stumbled upon a strange “scar” pattern, prompting further investigation by scientists. People have discovered all sorts of oddities while browsing through Google Maps, from “aliens” and camera-hogging cats to the answer to decades-old cold cases and meteor impact sites. In this latest find, […]

Ancient Greek sailors returned home with stories of mermaids and sirens. In the 1960s, a group of submariners returned home from the Southern Ocean with a much odder tale. They had heard the ocean quack. Strange as it might sound, it was not a one-off event and it has even earned itself a quacking name, […]

There’s no getting around it: Earth has a trash problem. Particularly in the West: we throw away more than two billion – with a “b” – tonnes of the stuff every year, and only a tiny proportion of it ever gets recycled. The rest? Eternal garbage.  Of course, nobody likes living surrounded by their own […]

For more than 40 years, scientists have known of the existence of a mysterious “phantom chemical” that lurks in US drinking water. And yet, they have been unable to determine its identity – until now.  A team of researchers from the US and Switzerland have discovered the chemical chloronitramide anion (CI-N-NO2). Chloronitramide anion is a […]

Medical and technological advances have allowed more of us to survive and to live longer, healthier lives. Does this make evolution irrelevant?  In the most basic sense, evolution refers to the process of genetic change in a population over time. It occurs because gene variants are more likely to survive and prosper if they offer […]

Mosquitos get a bad rep – and for good reason. Not only can these flying insects leave a nasty bite, they are responsible for transmitting the parasite that causes malaria. However, if new research is anything to go by, mosquitoes may also provide a creative solution to the disease. By infecting mosquitoes with a genetically […]

The more we learn about planets inside and outside our Solar System, the more difficult the question “Well, where the hell are aliens then?” seems to become. As well as finding a slew of planets in the habitable zones around their stars and locating new classes of exoplanets that may be good candidates for life, […]