Deborah Bloomfield

If you’ve been on the Internet and you aren’t a robot, you’ve probably taken and passed a classic “are you a robot” Captcha test. In “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”, or CAPTCHAs, users are given a task to complete that separates them from bots. They range from irritating (“please […]

The story of Watson and Crick, and the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, has become the stuff of scientific legend in the 70 years since their seminal paper detailing the result – and it’s probably not for the reasons they would have hoped. Despite the undeniable importance of the discovery, it’s today more […]

Finding gold is notoriously difficult with a surprisingly small amount discovered in Earth’s history. While some may discover exceptionally large nuggets, most go home empty-handed. In New Zealand however, one group of researchers had a brainwave: by combining the unusual mixture of geology and the genetics of fish populations they have quite literally struck gold. New […]

A new COVID-19 strain is spreading rapidly across the world and has already caused five deaths in the UK, according to a new UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) report.   Variant XBB.1.16, nicknamed Arcturus, has been reported in 34 countries as of April 17 and has been isolated from 3,715 global cases, the UKHSA said […]

A new study on 45 human cadavers has discovered significant differences in the gut anatomy between bodies, concluding that females have “consistently and significantly longer small intestines than males”. They say the discovery, though based on a small sample, could support the hypothesis that the energetic demands of pregnancy and breastfeeding have led to females […]

Studies of ancient diets have overlooked what was sometimes an important source of carbohydrates during the Ice Age, a new paper argues: partially digested grass and leaves in the stomachs of prey. The work could fill a gap that has previously been difficult to explain, perhaps because people didn’t want to think about it too […]

Netflix has announced when its plan to stop password sharing will roll out around the world. The video streaming giant has already launched measures to stop password sharing in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain, and will move ahead with the scheme in more countries this year. “We learn more with each rollout and we’ve incorporated […]

Existing around 34 million years ago, the Paratethys Sea was once the largest lake to ever exist on Earth. This large epicontinental stretch of water reached from today’s Austria to Turkmenistan, along the southern margin of Eurasia, covering an enormous 2.8 million square kilometers (1 million square miles). The sea was formed through the uplift […]

Elon Musk seems to have accidentally revealed his secret second Twitter account, which appears to be an account pretending to be a 3-year-old who desperately wants to be followed on the site and even sends replies to… Elon Musk. Musk tweeted out instructions yesterday for creators to turn on monetization, leading to the discovery. Advertisement […]

Exciting news out of Chad this week, as conservationists at the Sena Oura National Park report the first sighting of a wild lion in the area in nearly two decades. Even better, the big cat appears to be thriving. Caught on remote camera back in February, a statement from the New-York based Wildlife Conservation Society […]

Imagine this, you’re investigating an ancient bear bone found in an Alaskan cave only to realize that what you have in your hands will shine more light on human history. That’s the experience a team of researchers from the University of Buffalo recently had.  Charlotte Lindqvist, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences in the College of […]

In 2022, the first fully complete human genome with no gaps was revealed, marking a huge moment for human genetics. On release to the public, scientists described the painstaking work that goes into sequencing an over 6 billion base pair genome, with 200 million added in this new research. The new genome added 99 genes […]

As far as archaeological discoveries go, finding a mummified hand of a tiny baby clutching at a late medieval coin is already Indiana Jones territory. But in 2005, a team opened up a pot at an abandoned cemetery in Nyarlorinc, Hungary, and found just that. Also, the hand was green, pushing the whole find well […]

For the first time, a team of researchers has discovered a hidden underground necropolis underneath the streets of Naples using muon tomography – essentially, cosmic ray particles. In muon tomography, or muography, scientists use cosmic rays to map previously-inaccessible areas. Muon particles are negatively-charged particles produced by cosmic rays that collide with atoms in the […]

Mark Zuckerberg has announced a new change to WhatsApp’s disappearing messages, which can now be saved by other users before they disappear. Previously, a disappearing message would be gone once the allotted time was up, meaning people that wanted them to stick around needed to screenshot or risk never seeing it again. Now, users can […]

A collection of 32 iron bars has been found in the basement of a home in Valdres, Norway, dating back to the Viking or early Middle Ages. Grete Margot Sørum came across the approximately 1,000-year-old treasure while cleaning out the basement of her parents’ home. The collection contains a number of small identical iron rods […]

A pulsar 12 million light years away has been confirmed as being brighter than our standing laws of physics allow. A new paper provides evidence that its magnetic field is so powerful that it is turning atoms into long threads, allowing it to achieve otherwise impossible levels of brightness. In 1924, astronomer Arthur Eddington proposed […]

Astronomers using the JWST have discovered hundreds of stars surrounded by dust, the raw material from which rocky planets are born. The observations come from a star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the small companion galaxies of the Milky Way. This galaxy is located just 200,000 light-years from our own. The star-forming […]

Parrots are the fourth most popular pet in the United States with over 20.6 million pet parrots kept in households across the country. These birds are highly intelligent with complex social, cognitive, and emotional needs. In the wild, most parrot species would usually be found in large flocks, but captive birds often live alone, and […]

The spicy history of the chili pepper may have just been rewritten following the discovery of a rare fossilized berry, Lycianthoides calycina. It’s a member of the chili pepper tribe Capsiceae, which was originally thought to have emerged in South America 15 million years ago, but now looks as if it was heating up North […]