Deborah Bloomfield

Last summer, the City of Hope Hospital in California announced that one if its patients had become the fourth person in the world to have gone into long-term remission of HIV. The patient was also suffering from leukemia, and thanks to stem cell donations from a donor with a rare genetic mutation, he no longer […]

Growing burgers and steaks from cultured cells may be seen as the future of the meat industry, but a new analysis indicates that the mass-production of lab-grown meat using current technologies could be considerably worse for the environment than real beef. At present, animal cell-based meat (ACBM) is only produced at a very small scale […]

A jointed robot that moves like a snake has been unveiled by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the makers hope to send it to Enceladus to hunt for life. While it might give ophidiophobes nightmares, if the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) achieves its goal, it could be a giant slither for humankind. If […]

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid satellite completed the first part of its long journey into space on May 1 2023, when it arrived in Florida on a boat from Italy. It is scheduled to lift off on a Falcon 9 rocket, built by SpaceX, from Cape Canaveral in early July. Euclid is designed to […]

A new species of deep-water catshark has been discovered in an unusual way, identified from its egg case by researchers in northwestern Australia. Named Apristurus ovicorrugatus, it has the Western Australian Museum’s collections to thank as it was here that its egg’s true identity was revealed following a decade-long mystery. The mystery egg was unusually […]

Dungeons and Dragons has enjoyed a significant revival in recent years, due in part to popular streaming shows like Stranger Things and Critical Role. Once seen as the pinnacle of geek culture, the role-playing game (RPG) is now a hit with a new generation of players. But while many people may view it as just […]

A personalized mRNA vaccine against an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer has shown early promise in a phase 1 clinical trial, where it was found to induce a significant immune response and potentially delay relapse. When used in combination with chemotherapy and immunotherapy, the individualized vaccine – called adjuvant autogene cevumeran – triggered a substantial […]

Snakeskin on a fishing line was the instrument used to extract elements of what could be a rudimentary language among wild chimpanzees in Uganda. The tricksy experimental design enabled them to see what alarm call combinations chimps made when a “snake” was on the loose, and if the specific order of calls elicited a different […]

With its vibrantly bright water, the Blue Grotto of Capri may look like it’s been backlit with artificial lighting or perhaps even Photoshopped beyond reality. However, rest assured, the radiant waters of this picture-perfect sea cave are totally natural.  Also known as the Grotta Azzurra, it can be found on the island of Capri on […]

It’s no secret that airplane food can be a god-awful box of tasteless slop, but that’s necessarily the fault of the airline’s chef. In actuality, your tastebuds perceive food and drink much differently when they’re cruising at 36,000 feet compared to sea level. Here’s why. Inside a sealed airplane cabin, the re-circulated air becomes very […]

The discovery of a long, thin stream of stars in old Hubble images created a buzz of excitement. The astronomers who found the unusual structure explain it as a supermassive black hole (SMBH) forced out of its galaxy through an encounter with two even larger black holes, and forming stars out of intergalactic gas in […]

Humans (particularly men) have a bit of a tendency to believe they are tougher than they actually are, at least if quick glances at any YouGov poll are to be believed. Take, for example, the 12 percent of men who think they could win a point in a match against Serena Williams, as if when […]

Modern math problems don’t tend to have the kind of answers that trip off the tongue. Perhaps it’s a brand-new proof that takes a few pages’ worth of words and diagrams to explain properly, or an improvement on a previous result that’s so specific as to be virtually invisible. Maybe it’s entirely dependent on a […]

TikTok may be fantastic for some things – discovering how much your dentist knows about your sex life; freaking out Montanans; whale penises, etc – but one thing we’re pretty sure you shouldn’t be doing is relying on it for medical advice. At best, you’re going to get accurate information that you nevertheless wish you […]

In a world-first project, a company is using artificial intelligence (AI) to combine history’s greatest sculptors in a wonderous collaboration project to make one incredible monument – the Impossible Statue. AI is everywhere. On your phone alone there is predictive text, digital voice assistants, and facial recognition software. In the past few years, this technology […]

Languages are fun, and the English language is particularly entertaining. It is not only jam-packed with words and phrases that originate from other languages, but also contains words and idioms, or sayings, that are just downright bizarre. That sentence actually contains two examples: “Jam-packed”, a phrase introduced into common use during the early 20th century, […]

If you somehow haven’t seen the new trailer for what is surely going to be a hit summer blockbuster, The Meg 2 appears to feature a T. rex and megalodon in an extremely unlikely showdown given they lived tens of millions of years apart. But since this also looks like the greatest creature feature since […]

Most diamonds are formed deep inside Earth and brought close to the surface in small yet powerful volcanic eruptions of a kind of rock called “kimberlite”. Our supercomputer modelling, published in Nature Geoscience, shows these eruptions are fuelled by giant “pillars of heat” rooted 2,900 kilometres below ground, just above our planet’s core. Advertisement Understanding […]

It was late October, in 79 CE, when the Apocalypse came to Pompeii. Mount Vesuvius, a major active volcano located just five miles from the flourishing resort town, finally made good on the threats it had been sending out for a decade and a half and erupted, flooding the nearby region with a deadly cloud of […]

A recent Reddit post has drawn our attention to a party that apparently went so hard that the air tested positive for booze on a breathalyzer. The frat party, which took place in Baltimore in 2017, had around 120 underage guests in attendance. According to CBS News, police arrived following a noise complaint. For reasons […]