Deborah Bloomfield

2023 was the year of “phubbing”. It’s the hot topic that causes irritation for many people in intimate (or not so intimate) situations. And now research suggests the phubbed among us may also experience greater loneliness and mental stress. It’s seriously time to put it down and stop playing with it – your phone, that […]

Snowflakes can be any old fleck that falls from a winter cloud, but when we talk about the individual structure that gets slapped all over festive decorations, we’re talking about snow crystals. Their growth pattern is dictated by environmental conditions, typically branching out with six-fold symmetry, but is there a limit to how big they […]

A group of tourists traveling through Yellowstone National Park’s Lamar Valley were met with an unfortunate reminder of the importance of car insurance during this year’s bison rut, after one bull decided to redesign their bonnet with its horns. In a video posted to Instagram account TouronsofYellowstone – an account that often highlights the bad […]

JWST’s gift to us all this holiday season: an even better view of Uranus. Following a spectacular image taken earlier this year, the space telescope has been taking many observations of the distant ice giant planet. A new image released to mark the winter holidays reveals many previously unseen details. JWST has snapped details of […]

Off the coast of Greece, an individual striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba) has been spotted. While this is not unusual in itself, the reason this dolphin is making waves (pun intended) is due to a rather strange variation in the appearance of its flippers. The flippers on both sides of the animal look hooked, giving the […]

Little is known about the customs and daily life of the ancient Scythians, yet their reputation as fearsome warriors has endured for over 2,000 years. Confirming the nomadic culture’s place among the most terrifying historical badasses, researchers have now discovered that Scythian warriors carried their arrows around in leather quivers made from the skin of […]

Everybody’s talking about “shallowing”, the new sex act guaranteed to increase Pleasure For Her! But what is this technique? Is it really as orgasmic as they say? Should we be worried? Or is this just another “fluid bonding” situation? Don’t worry you crazy kids; we’ve got your answers. The term “shallowing” doesn’t have a long […]

Inscriptions on Mesopotamian bricks promoting the king when they were fired have helped reveal the details of a curious strengthening of the Earth’s magnetic field. Traces of this puzzling strength have been found from China to the Atlantic Ocean, and they stand out more the closer they are to what is now Iraq over a […]

Ever been watching a scary movie and wished you could shield your eyes from what’s on the Big Screen without the shame of actually having to shield your eyes? For some people, not seeing what’s in front of them is a simple case of relaxing the ciliary muscle, but not everyone can blur their vision […]

Archaeologists from Jagiellonian University, Kraków, have discovered astronomical carvings and paintings made by the Pueblo culture, one of the most advanced pre-Columbian societies in America. The ancient Puebloans, also known as the Ancestral Pueblos, first emerged at the beginning of the cultivation era and lasted until around 1600 CE in the region that spans modern […]

In the realm of human imagination, the boundaries between fiction and reality have often blurred, giving rise to remarkable technological leaps. From the futuristic visions of video calls in Star Trek becoming the cornerstone of modern communication, to the notion of voice-activated assistants akin to science fiction’s digital companions, our world has consistently drawn inspiration […]

Scientists have discovered new vulnerabilities in a protein that’s often called the “Death Star” of cancer, opening up the possibility of new drugs to target it. This could be a game-changer, as the protein – KRAS – is one of the most frequently mutated cancer proteins, often found in the deadliest cancer types. KRAS mutations […]

In the southern hemisphere, looking up to the night sky, you can see two nearby galaxies. The two fuzzy splotches of light have been called, by Western scientists, the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud. But what you are not seeing is that the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) looks like it is made of two smaller […]

How and when humans arrived in North America has been hotly contested. The latest study to throw its hat into the ring suggests that the first settlers to arrive on the continent may have done so via a “sea ice highway”, which allowed them to traverse the frozen winter coast from Beringia, up to 24,000 […]

Dogs are not called our best friends for no reason. Throughout human history, our lives have been intertwined with those of our canine companions – they protect us, work for us, and just keep us company. By combining modern genomics techniques with the knowledge of Indigenous communities, science just gained a new insight into a […]

What’s the opposite of a night owl? According to new research, it’s not a morning lark, but a Neanderthal. “By analyzing the bits of Neanderthal DNA that remain in modern human genomes we discovered a striking trend,” said John Capra, associate professor in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, and lead […]

“Mind reading” may be about to become a reality – and in the most literal sense possible, as a new breakthrough from researchers at the University of Technology Sydney’s GrapheneX-UTS Human-centric Artificial Intelligence Centre sees thoughts transformed into words on a screen. “This research represents a pioneering effort in translating raw EEG waves directly into […]

The JWST has confirmed the results of lesser telescopes as to how fast the universe is expanding. Instead of settling physics debates, this makes things worse, because the previous measurements contradict what astronomers think should be happening, based on the echoes of the Big Bang. This (probably) doesn’t mean we need to throw out most of […]

Around 600,000 years ago, humanity split in two. One group stayed in Africa, evolving into us. The other struck out overland, into Asia, then Europe, becoming Homo neanderthalensis – the Neanderthals. They weren’t our ancestors, but a sister species, evolving in parallel. Neanderthals fascinate us because of what they tell us about ourselves – who […]

Extinction is becoming a real threat faced by countless creatures across the animal kingdom. Famously, there are an estimated just 10 vaquitas remaining in the Gulf of California, Mexico. Now, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has issued the first-ever extinction alert in its 70-year history, to spur action to help the world’s tiniest and most endangered marine […]