Deborah Bloomfield

Early data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest that the latest round of COVID-19 shots are 54 percent effective at preventing symptomatic disease. The updated vaccines offer protection against the JN.1 variant that’s currently dominating worldwide, and yet uptake continues to be low. “Everything from this study is reassuring that the […]

After its brief resurrection, the upside-down SLIM Japanese lander has shut down for the lunar night, since it lacks the battery power to last long without refreshment from its solar panels. This raises the question, just how long is the lunar night? Also, does it matter whether you’re near the lunar equator or the poles? […]

Biologically speaking, hybridization is defined as the breeding of two organisms from different species. This process creates a hybrid, an organism that’s a genetic mix of two different species. There are countless examples of hybrids in both the wild and captivity. A study from University College London suggested that up to 25 percent of plant […]

While fossilized plants turn up fairly often in the fossil record, they are usually preserved as a trunk or the odd leaf, giving little idea of what the whole tree might have looked like. Newly discovered fossilized trees from New Brunswick, Canada however have enough in the record to reveal that they had a very […]

Archaeologists have discovered a complete mosaic Maya jade mask bearing an uncanny resemblance to the one Jim Carrey sported in the 1994 film, The Mask. This ancient version, however, was found in the tomb of a Maya king who once ruled from Chochkitam, a lesser-known Maya polity in Guatemala near the borders of modern Mexico […]

Light, as we perceive it, is an illusion. Without even considering all the light we cannot see, the white light we experience is a combination of endless shades that we categorize as seven colors. Occasionally, atmospheric phenomena can help free the colors, giving blue skies, red sunsets, and rainbows. And, occasionally, a green flash. This […]

A female North Atlantic right whale has been found dead off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, with a rope wrapped around it, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced on Sunday. “On the afternoon of January 28, 2024, NOAA Fisheries was notified of a deceased female North Atlantic right whale near Joseph Sylvia […]

Crystals are regular arrangements of atoms that repeat in space. But what if you had an arrangement of particles that repeat in time? Spontaneously coming together with a certain period over and over again, even though the properties might change? Theoretically, this was defined by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek in 2012, and over the last […]

A pig brain has been kept alive outside of its body for five hours using a new machine developed by scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center. The newly developed system allows the brain to be isolated from the rest of the body using a super-smart artificial pump that takes care of its blood supply. Advertisement […]

It’s rare to catch a supernova as it explodes, and it is even rarer to see stars just going boom. This has nothing to do with astronomers’ abilities, and more to do with the fact that we don’t really know when a star will go supernova – and there are a lot of stars out […]

A 3-month-old puppy has surprised vets by unexpectedly regrowing his jawbone after it had been surgically removed because of a tumor. Tyson the French bulldog had to have the majority of his lower left mandible cut away, yet enters the history books as the first reported dog ever to regenerate a lost jaw. Vets first […]

It’s been a rocky road for Japan’s SLIM lunar lander ever since it touched down on the Moon’s surface. Having made a record-breaking landing with a bump that jeopardized its entire mission, it made a comeback, rejuvenated by the Sun’s rays. But now, it faces its toughest challenge yet: surviving the freezing lunar night. This […]

The next time you sit down to tackle a jigsaw puzzle, bring your calculator – you just might need it. Math kind of has a reputation for being a dry topic, suitable only for boffins and… uh… FBI agents? But the truth is, mathematicians are fun, cool people, who enjoy maximally efficient parties and humorous […]

The waters of the St. Lawrence River are flowing with antidepressants, simulants, painkillers, and many other kinds of drugs, according to a new study. Scientists have recently studied the pharmaceutical pollution of the river and concluded that some of the compounds could pose a threat to the aquatic organisms living in the environment.  The entire […]

One of the most notorious “forever chemicals” is perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA. By their very design, these substances are extremely difficult to degrade, which makes them very useful in industrial applications but also bad for our health and the environment as they tend to accumulate. A couple of years ago, researchers worked out that using […]

This week the first cases of penguins dying from bird flu were observed in Antarctica, a new “blood battery” powered by haemoglobin can run for 20 to 30 days, and world-first footage shows a parrot swinging from its beak like a monkey. Finally, we ask why some champagne bottles on the Titanic never imploded. Subscribe […]

Most of us think we know what a “midlife crisis” is. It’s the shiny new sports car, the questionable combover, and all those other barely-concealed penis metaphors, all culminating in one big “I only get to see the kids every other week now.” But hang on. Time and time again, science has shown us that […]

When searching for alien civilizations in the universe, we often look at the development of life on Earth for clues as to what to look for.  It makes sense to do so. We have only found intelligent life (ish) life on this planet, so it’s sensible to look for the sort of signatures emitted from […]

Maritime archaeologists have recently returned to the site of a sunken medieval shipwreck to carry out a new geophysical survey, hoping to uncover more of the vessel’s long-lost story. Known as the Avaldsnes ship, the 600-year-old wreck is found in a shallow body of water less than 1 meter (3 feet) deep in an intertidal […]

In 2010, researchers at Google estimated that a total of 1,022,000 words existed in the English language and that the number grows by around 8,500 every single year. It all seems a bit much. Could it be possible to communicate effectively with, let’s say, just 120 or so words? That’s the idea behind Toki Pona, […]