Deborah Bloomfield

Just once in a while, zoologists like to combine the names of animals – something like the parrotfish or the dragonfly. This time, they’ve done it for good reason. Meet the owl monkey, also known as the night monkey, the world’s only nocturnal primate species. What is an owl monkey and where do they live? […]

We are used to space missions ending due to the challenging environments of exploration. They run out of fuel or coolant, they are covered in dust and lose power, or they are killed by the cold lunar night. But it feels almost sadder or, at least, less inevitable when the decision to end the mission […]

Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) has no available vaccine or cure – but that may not be the case forever. New research has uncovered some of the virus’s vulnerabilities, opening the door to the possibility of targeted treatment. You are probably infected with EBV. It’s overwhelmingly prevalent in the human population, estimated to have infected around 95 […]

Frank Herbert’s Dune is epic sci-fi storytelling with an environmental message at its heart. The novels and movies are set on the desert planet of Arrakis, which various characters dream of transforming into a greener world – much like some envision for Mars today. We investigated Arrakis using a climate model, a computer program similar […]

The largest city state ever to exist in Mesoamerica may have drawn its power from a spine-chilling lust for shiny objects and human blood, both of which could be satisfied by the razor-sharp volcanic glass known as obsidian. According to a new analysis of a sacrificial temple within the pre-Columbian city of Teotihuacan, the populace’s […]

A huge hoard of dinosaur footprints, which could be up to 100 million years old, has been unearthed in northwestern Alaska.  The tracks were discovered in the Coke Basin of Alaska’s Nanushuk Formation, which dates back roughly 94 million to 113 million years. Approximately 75 track sites were found there, alongside fossilized plants, tree stumps, […]

Imagine you’re in Lisbon, Portugal, on Saturday November 1, 1755. It’s early morning on All Saint’s Day, a feast day that celebrates all the saints of the Catholic Church. The day should have been one of solemn commemoration with church services and visits to cemeteries to offer flowers; a blend of older traditions with standard […]

A decade ago, in April 2014, the source of the water for the town of Flint in Michigan was switched from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River. The move by local and state administration was made to save $5-7 million, but ended up exposing 100,000 people – including up to 12,000 […]

Astronomers are running regular checks on a star system that currently requires a telescope to see because they expect it will soon be bright enough to view with the naked eye. According to one prediction, this could happen any time from now until September, although there’s reason to think we might need to wait another […]

The Stone Age was a tough time to be alive. On top of dealing with ferocious predators, unforgiving weather, and the constant struggle for food, there was the ever-present deadly threat of bacterial poisoning from food, tainted water, and – oddly enough – kissing.  In a new study, scientists at Stockholm University and the Swedish […]

Subterranean salamanders, once thought to dwell exclusively in their underwater caverns, spend a surprising amount of time aboveground, new research has revealed. The blind beasties, called olms, have been spotted venturing out of their underground caves in northern Italy and scoping things out at the surface. The olm (Proteus anguinus) are bizarre creatures, once thought […]

Spelunkers in Oregon risk encountering a group of cave robbers, famous for their hook-like legs used to snatch prey out of the air. Known as Trogloraptor, this genus of cave spiders has only been found deep within caves, where it lies in wait ready to pounce with two sets of teeth. Trogloraptor cave spiders were […]

Medium-sized animals dominate the top places in the running section of the animal Olympics, and now we know why, thanks to a new model of muscle performance. For many important criteria, animals find it’s good to be big. Insects may be able to lift astonishing weights relative to their size, but in absolute terms the […]

For centuries, people living in what is now south-central Connecticut have heard strange noises emanating from underground. Local Native Americans named the area Machimoodus, meaning “the place with bad noises” in Algonquian dialects, a fitting name given the disconcerting sound – like thunder, gunshot, or a crunch – that can ring out in the area […]

The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) has recently been showing off its latest laser directed energy weapon (LDEW) known as DragonFire. At the MOD’s missile range in the Hebrides, a picturesque archipelago off the west coast of the Scottish mainland, DragonFire was recently used on an airborne target. Precise details on the test were not […]

You’ve probably heard at some point in your life – either from a well-meaning trivia fan or a malevolent self-esteem hunter – that our ears and noses are the only two body parts that never stop growing. To be fair, it kind of seems like it’s true, right? If you imagine an old person –perhaps […]

Nikola Tesla, famed for his work on alternating current, was one hell of an inventor, mechanical engineer and physicist. His inventions have been found to work better than expected even 100 years after he noted them down. However, nobody can be right 100 percent of the time, and Nikola Tesla had his fair share of […]

You’ve most likely heard of the placebo effect. In a nutshell, it’s the idea that a treatment with no active ingredients or proven medical benefit can still help your symptoms if you believe it will work. Placebos are probably best known for their use in clinical trial design – something to compare a new drug […]

Primitive stone tools found in Ukraine have been dated to 1.4 million years ago, making them the oldest known human-made artifacts in Europe. Prior to this discovery, the continent’s earliest prehistoric utensils were thought to reside in Spain and France, yet the newly-dated tools from the east radically alter the story of when and how […]

Things in microgravity work differently. Flames are round, your bones lose density, and the calluses on your feet disappear. Liquids also behave weirdly, and a group of forensic scientists wondered how bloodstain patterns would be affected in reduced gravity – so they took a flight to find out. The team performed the microgravity experiment on […]