Deborah Bloomfield

Parts of Uganda have entered a three-week lockdown to help contain an Ebola outbreak that has struck the country. Uganda’s President Yoweri K Museveni announced the measures on October 15, noting that people will not be able to travel in or out of Mubende and Kassanda.  A nighttime curfew between 7:00 pm and 6:00 am […]

North America was once home to enormous ostrich-like dinosaurs called ornithomimosaurs, new research has found, and some of the largest known to have existed were stomping around what’s now called Mississippi. Clocking in at 800 kilograms (1,764 pounds) in weight, the “bird-mimic” dinosaurs had little heads on top of long necks as well as long […]

We have bad news for anyone who likes to look up at the sky and not see the words “Drink Pepsi” (for example), as researchers have found that space adverts are not only possible today, but economically feasible. The team, from Skoltech and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, had previously looked at the viability […]

A new study has offered hope that we could be close to finally finding a treatment for a rare form of inherited blindness in adults. Such a treatment has been sorely lacking after recent results have suggested promising therapies for children, but not for adults who are currently living with the condition.   The therapy, […]

Controversy has bubbled up around a recent research project at Boston University that created a lab-made hybrid version of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. The research combined the spike protein of the Omicron variant (BA.1), the fast-spreading but relatively mild variant, with the “backbone” of a more pathogenic strain from earlier in the pandemic. […]

A new JWST image just dropped and it may be its most epic yet. The most powerful eye in the sky has turned its attention to one of the undoubtedly most iconic cosmic features known to humanity, the Pillars of Creation. Brought to the world’s attention in 1995 thanks to Hubble’s first spectacular image of […]

Avian influenza is currently seeing a spike in parts of the globe, with the UK environment agency recently announcing that Britain is experiencing its worst outbreak on record. While health authorities are advising residents across the globe on how to prevent the spread of disease, posts on social media have scientists worried as people comfort […]

Everyone loves a surprisingly colored species, from these gorgeous black seal pups to the bright feathers on pterosaurs, the animal kingdom is no stranger to colors of all kinds, be it present in fur, feathers, or fins. Now to add to the list, an extremely rare sighting of a melanistic Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) has been […]

An astonishingly rich trove of Neanderthal remains from Chagyrskaya cave in Siberia’s Altai mountains has offered scientists their first insight into Neanderthal family structure. The group was highly inbred, but more surprisingly were patrilocal – with fathers staying close to home while mothers often came from other populations. Whether this was normal for Neanderthals, or […]

The Black Death, the single greatest mortality event in recorded history, left a huge impression on the makeup of genes that code our immune systems. Centuries later, certain genetic variants related to surviving the Black Death continue to influence people’s risk of disease and health.  In a new study, an international team of scientists analyzed […]

“A party led by artificial intelligence (AI) is attempting to run for Danish government” is a sentence you’d expect to find in a sci-fi about some distant future which is bound to go well for the humans. But, the Synthetic Party is a real thing and it’s hoping to field an AI candidate in Denmark’s […]

Being hospitalized with COVID-19 is associated with an 11 percent increase in the risk of developing schizophrenia, new research has found. While a number of previous studies have detected an observational association between the severity of infection and schizophrenia, this is the first to identify a causal link between the two. Primarily a respiratory illness, […]

While looking over photos of an ancient manuscript during the COVID-19 lockdown, a historian discovered what is thought to be the oldest known map of the stars hidden beneath a medieval Christian text. The map may in fact be the work of Greek astronomer Hipparchus (190-120 BCE), who mapped the stars centuries before any other […]

An increase in flesh-eating bacterial infection has been reported in Florida amid the fallout of Hurricane Ian which tore through the state late last month, resulting in over 100 deaths and a hell of a mess to clean up.  The Florida Department of Health reports 65 cases of Vibrio vulnificus infection and 11 deaths in the […]

A new study has found that over-50s should be getting at least five hours of sleep a night if they wish to slash their risk of getting multiple chronic health problems. Those who slept longer during the night had significantly better odds of avoiding multiple different morbidities later in life, while those that had disrupted […]

From the moment we’re born, we have this strange idea in our brains governing how we think about math. You almost certainly do it yourself: it’s the concept that smaller numbers go on the left, and larger ones on the right. It’s such a ubiquitous concept that only a handful of societies are known to […]

Whether your love of dogs has had you yearning for your very own pup or thinking of entering the field of dog trainer extraordinaire, you still need to have some essential skills to ensure your pup’s success. There are a lot of dog training programs out there, but normally they cover the basics and forgo […]

Are we alone in the universe? This is a question that has intrigued humans for centuries and inspired countless studies and works of fiction. But are we getting closer to finding this out? Now that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is in operation, we might have taken one giant leap in being able to […]