Deborah Bloomfield

Legend has it that seven Persian princes fleeing persecution once escaped across the Arabian Sea before landing in East Africa and establishing a trading dynasty that dominated the Swahili coast for centuries. Known as the Kilwa Chronicle, this ancient oral tradition had until now been dismissed as fiction, yet a new genetic study suggests that […]

Italy is eyeing up the prospect of banning lab-grown meat in a bid to safeguard the country’s rich food heritage and, in their words, protect their citizen’s health. However, the proposal has already generated some criticism from folks concerned with sustainability and food security.  Italy’s Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, led the call this week, […]

Last week, asteroid 2023 DZ2 flew by Earth at a distance of 168,300 kilometers (104,600 miles), roughly two-fifths of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Asteroids often get close to our planet, but what was significant about this passage was its size. With a diameter between 40 and 90 meters (130 to 295 […]

Researchers have created the “lightest paint in the world”, but not in the way you might expect. While others battle for brighter and more reflective colors, this paint takes inspiration from nature to be incredibly lightweight, needing just a fraction of the normal amount of paint to cover the same area.  The new paint doesn’t […]

Around Antarctica, 250 trillion tons of cold water sink to the bottom of the ocean each year, but global warming is starting to affect that astonishing figure. The downward conveyor sets in train a process that affects every part of the oceans, to our immense benefit, so evidence the rate could almost halve in three […]

A term you must add to your mental encyclopedia of strange medical conditions is foot orgasm syndrome. It needs little introduction as it is pretty much exactly as it first sounds: the sensation of a sexual orgasm in the foot. Interestingly, however, the rare condition may perhaps explain how foot fetishes are the result of […]

Mountain lions (Puma concolor), aka pumas, might have a reputation for a lot of things, but gardening isn’t typically one of them. Now, new research has revealed that nutrients deposited in the soil from mountain lion kills may help improve plant quality and therefore attract ungulates to feed in these areas, helping the mountain lions […]

Why do some memories stay with us while others drift away? New research decided to explore the neuroscience that underpins this concept in a study that got mice playing virtual reality (VR) games while they observed their brain activity. It revealed a region of the brain not typically linked to memory retention can play a […]

In the 1970s and 80s, geologists noticed unusual layers deposited in ancient rocks, dating to around 232-4 million years ago. In the Eastern Alps, one team investigated a layer of siliclastic sedimentation deposited in carbonate. Meanwhile, in the UK, geologist and forensic scientist Alastair Ruffell examined a layer of gray rock found inside the famous […]

A federal judge has left little unsaid in her ruling that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) acted unlawfully when it denied a petition to improve the treatment of primates used in research. The ruling indicates that increased regulatory attention may now be given to laboratories using non-human primates, and may possibly extend to […]

A team of researchers from Japan has found that children exposed to pet cats or indoor dogs during fetal development or early infancy appear to develop fewer food allergies, compared to other children.  Food allergies have been on the rise over the last few decades, with over 32 million Americans having a life-threatening food allergy, […]

An open letter signed by artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, directors of institutes, and CEOs of social media sites, including Elon Musk, has asked for all AI experiments to be paused, immediately, given the “profound risks to society and humanity” if an advanced AI was created without proper management and planning.  Meanwhile, another researcher writing in […]

In the late evening of March 28, 2023, the Sun emitted a strong solar flare. This event caused some limited and temporary radio interference – and, in some cases, blackouts – on the Sunlit part of the planet. At the time, the area included Asia and Oceania. The flares were an X-class: the strongest class […]

A lot of science is about classification, but sometimes you encounter things that push the limits of those categories, displaying multiple distinctive characteristics at once. This is the case of Z 229-15, a galaxy that couldn’t just embody one of our arbitrary classifications, it had to do three in one. The European Space Agency does […]

Greenland has just changed its clocks for the last time. Having just put its clocks forward one hour last weekend, instead of going back to its winter time this October, it will remain in a perennial Daylight Saving Time, permanently changing its time zone.  After consultation with the people of Greenland – an autonomous territory […]

If you look at where wombats deposit their poo, you realise they must be able to perform some surprising acrobatics. It has always amazed me to see wombat scats on top of grass tussocks or logs, because I’ve always wondered how the stocky creatures must have manoeuvred themselves to put it there. It turns out […]

One Twitter user has posted a video of a strawberry under a microscope, in case anybody was having a good day that needs ruining.  Why, you ask? Well, we don’t want to spoil the surprise, but it’s because of all the tiny bugs crawling around on there. Advertisement One user responded “can’t trust fruit who’s […]

They’re two words you might never think to put together, but the sad truth is that childhood dementia affects an estimated 700,000 young people across the world. In many ways, the condition mirrors the various types of dementia that we’re familiar with in adults; but the unusual causes, not to mention the age of the […]

Years of human-imposed selection, such as the use of insecticide baits, have led some cockroaches to develop an aversion to glucose – which has had an unusual impact on their sex life. Recent research has shown that male cockroaches have adapted their mating strategies to compensate, demonstrating a link between behavioral evolution and sexual selection.  […]

Over 140 years after piezoelectricity was discovered, the first piezoelectric liquids have now been found by chance. Not only could they outperform solid piezoelectric materials in some existing uses, but they may also open up entirely new applications we’re yet to imagine. Some crystals and other materials accumulate electric charge when pushed, a phenomenon known […]