Deborah Bloomfield

People who start smoking in their mid-teens may have less gray matter in two brain regions that play a central role in pleasure-seeking, self-control, and risk-taking. Analyzing brain imaging data from over 800 people aged 14, 19, and 23, researchers discovered that both the left and right ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) appeared smaller in those […]

Google “the Mediterranean diet” and you’ll find search results suggesting it has numerous health benefits tied to the gut microbiome, improved pregnancy outcomes, and even erectile dysfunction. While a diet claiming to be a cure-all is nothing new, what makes the Mediterranean diet stand out is that some of its alleged perks are actually backed […]

Scientists are saying they’ve made a “critical first step” in developing a treatment that could allow people to regenerate their lost or broken teeth. With further work, they hope this breakthrough could be used to make “living filings” that grow and produce real enamel to regrow the tooth.  In a new study, researchers from the […]

Right now, you’re standing on a goldmine. There’s so much gold on Earth you could cover every bit of land on the planet in it to a depth of 50 centimeters (20 inches), according to one calculation. So why is gold so rare that it’s a byword for preciousness? Because almost all of it has […]

French novelist Jules Verne delighted 19th-century readers with the tantalizing notion that a journey to the center of the Earth was actually plausible. Since then, scientists have long acknowledged that Verne’s literary journey was only science fiction. The extreme temperatures of the Earth’s interior – around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,537 Celsius) at the core – […]

Light can behave both as a wave and a particle, a head-scratcher that confused scientists for centuries before the fact became obvious. This duality is a cornerstone of quantum mechanics, and the peculiar behavior of the quantum world has mostly left classical mechanics theorems behind in the realm of things our own size. A research […]

Hogfish, like many reef-dwelling sea creatures, are experts in changing the color of their skin – and it turns out they don’t even have to be alive to do so. Without the use of their eyes, how can hogfish detect the environmental changes that lead them to color shift in the first place? Researchers believe […]

Building a large space station, where hundreds of thousands of people, if not more, could live, would not be easy. You would need a lot of material and even when built, your inhabitants would have to deal with two major health issues: the effects of low gravity on their bodies and a lot of cosmic […]

Quantum mechanics, thanks to its peculiar properties, can outcompete classical applications. But those same advantageous properties require a lot of knowledge of the quantum system in question which might not always come easily. Researchers have now developed a way to visualize the wave function of two entangled photons in real time. They are calling it […]

Archaeologists from the Indian Institute of Technology and the Geological Survey of India have recovered the remains of a new dinosaur that has never been seen in India before. The new fossil belongs to a species of dicraeosaurid sauropod – a long-necked “veggiesaurus” that lived in the area during the Middle Jurassic era. The fossil […]

One of the largest insects in the world is making a triumphant return to New Zealand. The wētāpunga, Deinacrida heteracantha, predates the dinosaurs but was nearly wiped out in 1840 following the introduction of new predators to their native islands. Now, a captive breeding program is returning them to New Zealand with hopes the species […]

A hoard of ancient plant DNA has been extracted from a nearly 3,000-year-old clay brick, revealing a time capsule of ancient flora in what is now northern Iraq. The authors adapted a technique that’s normally used in materials like bone, and now say that it could be applied to clay artifacts recovered from sites around […]

If you’re living in the US and have used Facebook in the past 16 years, you have just a few days to claim your share of $725 million. We are aware this sounds like a bad scam, but bear with us. In 2018, a class action lawsuit was launched against Facebook, accusing the company of […]

Crystals with the capacity to transform light directly into mechanical energy without using electricity as an interim stage could unleash a host of advances. For example, drones that run on laser beams could cut back on batteries, or do without them entirely, with the weight savings enabling extra capabilities. The idea of wireless transmission of […]

Grief has been observed in the animal kingdom in all manner of different species from primates that walk on land to the mammals that swim in the planet’s oceans. Now, for the first time, grief and nurturant behaviors have been observed in the Cuvier’s beaked whale, one of the most elusive whale species on Earth. […]

A team of researchers has put together the dream of anyone who has watched sci-fi or Airplane; a humanoid robot that can pilot airplanes. The robot, known as PIBOT, is designed to sit in existing cockpits and operate them manually, or robutually if you will. Usual autopilots installed on airplanes are software, lacking limbs to […]

India’s lunar mission Chandrayaan-3 is expected to land on the surface of the Moon on Wednesday this week. If it can do so successfully, it will be the first lander to safely arrive at the Moon’s south pole (RIP Lunar-25) – an area of increasing interest due to the detection of large amounts of ice […]

A monster search for Nessie the Loch Ness Monster will begin in the coming weeks, as the Loch Ness Centre in Drumnadrochit, Scotland, enlists the help of a global community of citizen scientists in the search of a “water beast”. The search party will include drone pilots and beady-eyed observers conducting a surface watch of […]

There is a new solar energy design on the block, and it is bio-inspired by nature. The design has taken inspiration from the structure of leaves, and it is more effective than some conventional technology. Photovoltaic (PV) solar energy converts sunshine into electricity. Previous PV cells are not that efficient, with 10-25 percent of solar […]