Deborah Bloomfield

The 35th Ig Nobel prizes honor (or dishonor) research on the pizza preferences of lizards, the effect of garlic consumption on breast milk, and Teflon’s place in a weight loss program. Two studies on the effects of alcohol – on bats’ flying capacity and humans speaking a second language – have won aviation and peace […]

Most people consider the Italian polymath Galileo Galilei to be the father of telescopic astronomy, although a lesser-known English physicist named Thomas Harriot may actually have been the first to observe the Moon through a lens. Despite not publishing a single word of his scientific output, Harriot was a prolific scholar who discovered numerous laws […]

For every job, there is an appropriate tool. If you want to weigh yourself, you hop on the bathroom scales; if you’re looking to measure out some flour or sugar, you use a smaller version from the kitchen. Scientists in the lab have their own, hypersensitive scales, capable of measuring down to an individual thousandth-of-a-gram […]

Few feelings can top getting into a bed with fresh sheets and laying your weary head down on the cool side of the pillow, but are we getting bedtime all wrong? There was a time it wasn’t so comfy, back when we were living in the great outdoors rather than tucked away in houses, and […]

On Thursday, September 18, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) – which advises the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccines – met to vote on updates to guidance for three vaccines. With some of the discussions postponed to Friday, September 19, scientists from around the world have been explaining what […]

This week on Break It Down: Homo habilis might not have been the apex predator we thought it was, the oldest and most complete pachycephalosaur reveals why they were so weirdly dome-headed, we’ve been able to track an asteroid’s full life story for the first time, nobody knows what these mysterious larvae grow up to […]

Half of the wildebeests in the Serengeti are seemingly “missing” in the latest survey of the region. An AI-driven model has unexpectedly shown there are fewer than 600,000 wildebeests in this part of East Africa – less than half the previous estimate of 1.3 million.  This raises some big questions: has the wildebeest population collapsed? […]

Star Wars has reached the deep sea as a new-to-science species has been named in honor of Chewbacca, everyone’s favourite Wookiee. A type of coral, it was first discovered on the seabed in Hawaiʻi and then seen again near the Mariana Trench. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

For nearly a century, one color has ruled America’s roads every school morning: that unmistakable glossy yellow. It’s not by chance – it’s all thanks to one determined educator called Frank W. Cyr. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Cyr, a professor […]

Class is back in session for another year, and that means new stationery, pumpkin spice everything in stores, and – albeit less welcome – the spread of respiratory viruses.  Only a few months ago, we introduced you to the Nimbus variant of COVID-19; but, there’s yet another new variant we think you should know about. […]

Big cats have all manner of impressive skills, from being the apex predator to the ancestor of modern humans, to surviving in all manner of habitats. Now a jaguar has broken a record by swimming six times the previous distance thought to be possible for the species. The rest of this article is behind a […]

In a major breakthrough for pregnancy research, scientists have 3D bioprinted “mini placentas”. The miniature organs, or “organoids”, closely resemble human placental tissue, providing an accurate model for studying the early placenta – something that has been sorely lacking until now.  The placenta plays a vital role in supporting fetal development, and its dysfunction is […]

As temperatures continue to creep upward in Texas, an unusual visitor has appeared in local backyards: a striking bird with the brilliant plumage of a blue jay and the body shape of its tropical cousin, the green jay. Scientists say the “grue jay” is the first known wild hybrid of the two species, born as […]

In 1907, Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Massachusetts, decided to try and prove the existence of the soul. All he needed was some people willing to die under his supervision, and some dogs. The Scottish doctor, for reasons he didn’t take time to note down, believed that the soul had physical mass and thus it should be […]

Forget the wheel, the printing press, or the Internet – cake is quite possibly one of humanity’s greatest ever inventions. Case in point: it’s been around for thousands of years, so there must be something about it that we like. And by “thousands of years” we don’t just mean people have been making and eating […]

A cloudy haze of volcanic ash is looming over Mount St Helens in Washington State, evoking memories of its notorious 1980 explosion, the deadliest eruption in US history. But fear not, scientific authorities have said that a major upset is not likely and the volcano is calm – truth be told, you’d know if this […]

After the successful collection of material from asteroid Ryugu, Hayabusa2 flew back to Earth to drop it off. But the spacecraft’s journey is not ending there. It is now traveling to perform a high-speed flyby of asteroid Torifune next July, and in 2031 will rendezvous with asteroid 1998 KY26. When this target was selected, it […]

Would you do anything for love? It’s a claim that Meatloaf made quite passionately, but who among us can really say we’d walk 1,000 miles simply on the off chance of finding love? Even The Proclaimers could only last 500, but I can tell you of at least one individual: Slavc, the Eurasian wolf. In […]

Meet the Facetotectans, a group of tiny crustaceans that have been raising big questions among biologists. These are the larvae, the juvenile form of this organism. We know how this story goes: larvae metamorphose into adults, sometimes undergoing spectacular changes – tadpoles into frogs, caterpillars into butterflies. The only problem with Facetotectans is that we […]

If you have binoculars and dark skies, right now you might be able to catch two comets. Better still, one is brightening enough that it may be visible to the naked eye within a few weeks. The history of comet watching offers plenty of warnings, but there are also reasons for optimism. At the same […]