Deborah Bloomfield

Cats come in a glorious variety of colors and coat patterns, and back in 2007, a brand-new flavor of feline appeared in Finland, looking like the black printer ink had run out. Named after a type of licorice popular in the country, scientists have now figured out the genetic basis for these distinctive and delicious-looking […]

NASA is, as always, looking into the next generation of thrusters to enable ever-more-ambitious space missions. One idea currently moving to phase II of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concept (NIAC) program is a Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR).  The PPR “uses a fission-based nuclear power system to rapidly cause a phase change in a fuel projectile […]

Freezers are important inventions. Whether they are in a domestic environment or a professional scientific laboratory, freezers play a vital role in helping preserve objects and substances that would otherwise perish beyond use. It is no surprise that a faulty freezer can cause catastrophic loss if not caught quickly. As with any technology, freezer failures […]

There is a problem (or not, for fans of being alive) within physics, in that the universe appears finely tuned for life – at least of the kind we find on Earth – to emerge and thrive. If gravity was substantially weaker than it is (and it’s already pretty weak, just ask any magnet), stars […]

Any dog owner will know that when their four legged friend looks up at them with big puppy dog eyes it’s pretty impossible to resist. Research from 2019 suggested that dogs evolved more complex facial muscles compared to wolves and other wild canid species so they could mimic the expression of their humans to encourage […]

Over 200 people, including more than 60 children and infants, have entered a landmark legal battle against the South Korean government over their response (or lack thereof) to climate change. Four cases between 2020 and 2023 were merged and put in front of South Korea’s Constitutional Court last month. As reported by Nature, the South […]

In 1989 and 1990, a pair of 1-million-year-old skulls belonging to an unknown human species were unearthed in Yunyang District of Hubei province, Central China. A third similar skull was found nearby in 2022, but the mystery didn’t become any less hazy; were they Homo erectus or early Homo sapiens? Might they even be related […]

As you read these words, do you hear them being narrated inside your head? If so, whose voice are you listening to? Chances are you probably do experience each word as though it were literally being read to you by some miniature being who lives inside your brain. Research has shown that the majority of […]

General anesthesia has been performed countless times since it was first developed in the late 1840s. Its introduction into medicine was revolutionary, allowing surgeons to perform increasingly complicated procedures on patients who no longer had to endure painful surgery while awake. However, would you believe me if I told you that, 180 or so years […]

Behold, the tiny arms of a new species of abelisaurid dinosaur, Koleken inakayali. Retrieved from La Colonia Formation in Patagonia, it dates back 70 million years and has an impressively miniature set of arms. Think T. rex’s were mini? You ain’t seen nothing yet. The new tiny-armed species looks similar to the iconic “meat bull” […]

At a flashy mall in South Korea’s capital, shoppers can gather round for selfies with a lonely beluga as she swims around her tank. Despite promises the whale will be released as soon as possible, campaigners are continuing to push for her release before she suffers the same ill-fate as her former tankmates. Bella the […]

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The pyramids in Egypt attract a lot of conspiracy theories. We sort of get it – they are ancient structures covered in hieroglyphics, containing the mummified bodies of pharaohs, as well as various long-lost chambers that are only just now being discovered thanks to new imaging techniques. It is perhaps not surprising that there are […]

A major planetary mystery appears to have a solution. The so-called “cotton candy planets” are worlds with such an extremely low density that they were challenging our theories of planet formation. Now astronomers seem to have worked out how they came to be, and it was made possible by observing what goes on inside one […]

In 1936, Albert Einstein published what he described as a “little calculation”, showing how the Sun could one day be used as a gigantic telescope. Incredible as it may sound, the concept is not so far out of our reach, and one idea for how to practically achieve it is at phase III of NASA’s […]

A new fossil of the partially feathered dinosaur Psittacosaurus has revealed that these animals had bizarre skin that included both bird-like feathers and reptile-like scales. The first-of-its-kind fossil provides new insights into the evolution from scales to feathers, demonstrating that these animals exhibited “zoned development” in their skin. The first Psittacosaurus fossil was discovered in 1922, […]

A single brain implant has been used to help recover the speech of a paralyzed man in both his native Spanish and English. Even though he learned English much later in life, the brain-computer interface (BCI) was able to pick up which language he was trying to speak without having to program it in advance […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI has removed a new voice from their latest product, after actor Scarlett Johansson noted it was “eerily similar” to her own. Advertisement Earlier this month, OpenAI announced they were releasing a new model, dubbed GPT-4o. The product allows for text, audio, and image outputs, and can respond using image, text, […]

COVID-19 is very much still with us – and if you’re anything like us, you’ll have noticed more and more people complaining that they’re getting sick over the last couple of weeks. We know that there are some new COVID variants doing the rounds, but what are the symptoms to look out for? Advertisement The […]

The only lungless frog in the world has been exposed as a fraud, in fact being the secret owner of a tiny pair of lungs and glottis – respiratory organs that had previously been declared as absent in the rare Bornean flat-headed frog. New research looked at museum specimens using a high-resolution micro-CT scanner and […]