Deborah Bloomfield

Take a look at any overhead power lines in the US and you’ll perhaps see a number of big yellow, orange, red, or white balls gripping the wires. Some people have speculated that they are weights for the lines, weather sensors, or even surveillance systems. However, none of these guesses are correct.  Along with jazzing […]

Last month, we discovered that a bunch of people were convinced of time travel due to a 1937 painting appearing to depict a man holding a cell phone, and reacting like he’d seen a really bad tweet. This month is following in a similar fashion, with people convinced that a 1938 video shows a woman […]

Worldwide, cases of cholera, the deadly but treatable disease that kills its victims in a particularly messy way – to put it bluntly, you vomit and diarrhea yourself to death – have soared this year, leaving health agencies across the globe scrambling to cope with the increased demand for vaccines.  The disease is being reported […]

For the fourth time in two years, a giant piece of a Long March 5B rocket is descending to Earth in an uncontrolled fashion. Parts of the rocket could land over much of the planet, with only high latitudes truly safe. Although the chance of debris hitting humans, or even valuable infrastructure, is small for […]

WhatsApp has had a major update with the ability to bring multiple groups into a larger community, allowing for individual discussions to be had within groups but updates to be shared with ease across every group at once.   Meta claim they have made the communities feature with neighborhoods and schools in mind; so, a […]

A computer model successfully simulated a clinical trial, testing two Alzheimer’s drugs head-to-head in a first-of-its kind study. “We’re calling this a virtual clinical trial, because we used real, de-identified patient data to simulate health outcomes,” said lead author Dr Wenrui Hao, of Penn State University, in a statement. “What we found aligns almost exactly […]

A common bacterium that lingers on many people’s skin appears to flare up the autoimmune condition lupus, according to new research. The idea has only been proven in mice so far, but the study offers some much-needed insight into this chronic condition. Lupus, aka systemic lupus erythematosus, is a long-term condition that causes joint pain, […]

A rare type of leukemia can evade current treatments and remain harmful while others can benefit from therapies, and scientists now believe they know why. Dubbed “chameleon cancer”, the cancerous cells are thought to be able to change their appearance to evade immune responses, lying low in the body and becoming a different type of […]

A new function of the cerebellum has been discovered by researchers at the University of Basel, Switzerland. This region at the back of the brain, near where the spinal cord attaches, is usually known for its involvement in regulating movement – but new findings show that it plays an important role in the storage of […]

Dr Emma Yhnell is a senior lecturer at Cardiff University. With a PhD in neuroscience, she is an expert on all things neurons and takes great pride in sharing this knowledge with her students. There are many strings to Yhnell’s bow: when not busy teaching, she is a passionate science communicator, writing and talking about […]

While technology has many quirks, it’s improved our lives in some surprising ways. One of those is active noise cancellation, and right now you can put some amazing science in your ears with these JBL earbuds, part of our Every Day is Black Friday sale. We’re taking Black Friday deals out of the day after […]

PDFs are highly useful, as fans of CURIOUS know, yet we often need to do more with PDFs than just read them. UPDF Pro offers a huge suite of features to make PDFs easier to work with, and right now it’s available at the price on the web! Rated 4.2 out of 5 stars on […]

Vegan diets have become increasingly popular over the years, especially among people looking to improve their health. Indeed, a growing body of evidence shows that plant-based diets (including vegan diets) can have many benefits for health, and have been linked to lower heart disease risk alongside decreased body weight and cholesterol levels. However, some people […]

It’s a paradox: Life needs water to survive, but a world full of water can’t generate the biomolecules that would have been essential for early life. Or so researchers thought. Water is everywhere. Most of the human body is made of it, much of planet Earth is covered by it and humans can’t survive more […]

When it comes to dealing with stress, we’re often told the best things we can do are exercise, make time for our favourite activities or try meditation or mindfulness. But the kinds of foods we eat may also be an effective way of dealing with stress, according to research published by me and other members […]

A new study has uncovered how one subclass of marine mollusks, Heterobranchia, may have been able to survive and bounce back after a mass extinction event. The end-Triassic mass extinction event happened around 201 million years ago and marked the beginning of the Jurassic period and the dominance of dinosaurs on Earth. Although less devastating […]

After the very pretty partial Solar Eclipse last week, we are getting a total lunar eclipse, as the eclipses come in pairs. Our natural satellite will cross into the shadow of the Earth, darkening it first before assuming the characteristic crimson color of this type of eclipse. Billions of people will be able to see […]

A man from the UK has grown one of the world’s most dangerous plants in his house. Botanist Daniel Emlyn-Jones cultivated the plant inside a cage, and for good reason: even a slight touch of the leaves can lead to agonizing pain, so much so that the plant has become the stuff of legend. “I’ve […]

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 1 at 9:41 am local time. This is the first time since June 2019 that the rocket has taken to the sky. And it did so for a secret mission on behalf of the US Space System Command, part of the […]