A prototype electric passenger aircraft hit the skies for the first time this week, quietly jetting off from Grant County International Airport in Washington state on a short trip with nine passengers onboard. Dubbed Alice, the plane is the brainchild of the Washington-based aerial engineering company Eviation. Powered by two magni650 electric propulsion units, it […]
Bitcoin Is As Environmentally Damaging As The Beef Industry
It’s no secret that Bitcoin is bad for the environment. While some have compared its impact on our planet to that of gold mining, new research has found that it’s more comparable to the beef industry. The impacts of mining for the digital cryptocurrency as a share of the market price point to it as […]
Our Ancestors May Have Used Baby Slings 10,000 Years Ago, Ancient Infant Burial Reveals
As any parent knows, carrying babies in your arms for a long time is exhausting and can be impractical. It must have been more so 10,000 years ago when parents were also hunting and foraging constantly. However, the mechanism of how our early ancestors did this was unknown as there is little hard evidence. Now, […]
Animal Trials And The Elephant That Was Hanged For Murder
Picture the scene: you are a medieval lawyer, getting your client ready for court. Your client has been accused of the most heinous of crimes, witchcraft, after claims that they laid an egg. To complicate matters further, your client is a chicken. This, minus a fancy lawyer for the defense, is what happened in Basel […]
Experience The Eye Of Hurricane Ian Onboard A Flight With The Hurricane Hunters
Hurricane Ian has caused major problems in the southwest of Florida with over 2 million homes left without power after the category 4 storm struck on Wednesday 28 September. With wind speeds of over 241 kilometers per hour (150 miles per hour) recorded, you might think taking to the skies was the last thing you’d […]
Coconut-Headed Sloth In Brazilian Jungle Is Actually Two Distinct Species
The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is home to two separate species of sloth with heads that look just like coconuts, new research reveals. Found in a small region of this coastal forest, maned sloths were previously thought to represent a single species – but it turns out that those in the northern section of this range […]
Doing This Small Movement While Sat At Your Desk Can Boost Your Metabolism And Burn Fat
Desk work can have a devastating impact on our health, encouraging people to sit for hours in a way that puts humans at greater risk of serious disease. However, new research has found that a small movement of the lower legs can mitigate some of the negative effects of sitting still by keeping one muscle’s […]
For First Time, Hubble And JWST Watched The Same Event: DART Slamming Into An Asteroid
The two titans of space observatories – Hubble and JWST – both captured the moment NASA’s DART mission intentionally slammed into an asteroid earlier this week. It’s the first time this pair of iconic telescopes have been used to simultaneously observe the same celestial target and their joint work is already helping to shed light […]
Hubble Finds The Shield That Has Saved Nearby Galaxies From Dissolving
The Milky Way Galaxy may be our precious home, but it can be a bully to smaller collections of stars. The dwarf galaxies it doesn’t consume tend to be ripped apart by the gravitational force of a much larger object. Consequently, the survival of two of our nearest galactic neighbors, the Large and Small Magellanic […]
Deep Brain Stimulation Can Be Life-Altering For OCD Sufferers When Other Treatment Options Fall Short
Imagine growing up tormented by fears and life-consuming rituals that make no sense to you or those around you. Then imagine the shame of being told by mental health providers that, because you understand that your behaviors are illogical but keep doing them anyway, you must want to stay sick. One of my patients, Moksha […]
AI Image Creator Dalle-2 Can Now Be Used By Everyone
Rejoice, fans of typing in a prompt and having artificial intelligence (AI) paint what you wrote, for DALLE-2 is now open to the general public. There has been a lot of excitement recently about image-generating algorithms, particularly Imagen by Google Research, Midjourney, and Open AI’s DALL-E 2. Advertisement All these systems use a blend of […]
Tiny Glass Beads Reveal Timing Of Lunar Craters May Coincide With Major Impacts On Earth
Death from the skies may not come in an isolated event. Instead, major asteroid impacts may be accompanied by smaller objects hitting the Earth – and the Moon too. The ages of lunar glass collected by the Chang’e-5 mission indicate clusters of craters coinciding with the Chicxulub event, plus two other periods associated with large […]
Chernobyl Black Frogs Reveal Evolution In Action
The accident at reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 generated the largest release of radioactive material into the environment in human history. The impact of the acute exposure to high doses of radiation was severe for the environment and the human population. But more than three decades after the accident, Chernobyl […]
Dogs Can Smell When People Are Stressed, New Study Confirms
Your dog can tell when you’re feeling stressed because you smell different, new research has revealed. So strong is the stench of human worry that the dogs in the study could correctly distinguish between relaxed and stressed odors in 93.75 percent of trials, even when the person involved was a complete stranger. Researchers recruited four […]
The COVID-19 Pandemic May Have Changed Our Personalities To An Unusual Extent
Natural disasters can trigger depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, but research has found they barely seem to alter the personality traits psychologists refer to as the “big five”, at least among adults. However, a comparison of these traits conducted before and after the pandemic has shown a noticeable shift in ways usually considered undesirable […]
Satellite Images Of Hurricane Ian Show This Monster Storm’s Ferocious Potential
Hurricane Ian is forecasted to hit the coast of Florida later today, Wednesday, September 28. Following fears of winds of over 250 kilometers per hour (155 miles per hour), the National Weather Service (NWS) has updated its storm warning to a strong category 4. They also warned of life-threatening storm surges, catastrophic floods due to intense […]
Tesla Is About To Unveil Its New Humanoid Robot – For Real This Time
Elon Musk is getting ready to show off a prototype of Tesla’s humanoid robot on Friday, with the company claiming that they will soon set the robots to work on the factory floor. Last time the company unveiled plans for the robot in August 2021, Musk was joined on stage by a strikingly-realistic human-looking robot, […]
Tiny Robots Entirely Clear Pneumonia Infection In Mice In Just 3 Days
Even medicine may be making way for our robot overlords, albeit in a microscopic form, as researchers have demonstrated a swarm of micro-robots clearing mice’s lungs of a pneumonia infection. A form of microscopic cyborg made from algae cells and antibiotic nanoparticles, the microscopic robots swim towards the pneumonia bacterial cells before delivering the drug […]
New JWST Image Captures Deep Hidden Structures Of A Spiral Galaxy
The two big guns of the space telescope world – Hubble and JWST – have both captured a new image of the spiral galaxy IC 5332. While Hubble’s image shows the galaxy’s beautifully glowing spiraling arms, JWST is able to reveal its deeper underlying structure of glowing gas, like staring into another dimension. IC 5332 […]
Beloved Seal Hands Himself In To Police After Evading Capture In Pond For Days
After surprising and delighting the city of Beverly, Massachusetts, a grey seal that took up residence in a pond and evaded capture for days finally handed himself in to the police in the early hours of Friday. No, really – there’s even video evidence. “Over the past couple days the department has received numerous calls […]