Deborah Bloomfield

North America’s rarest snake, the rim rock crowned snake (Tantilla oolitica), was recently spotted for the first time in four years. Unfortunately, the elusive snake was found lifeless after seemingly choking to death on a giant centipede. The dueling specimens were found by a hiker in John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park of Key Largo, […]

The Moon is the closest heavenly body to Earth, and so it sometimes passes in front of others, as seen from our perspective. When it does this to the Sun, we call it a solar eclipse, but when some other object is briefly blocked it is known as an occultation. This year is a big […]

If you could ask Thomas Jefferson where the roots of American democracy lay, he’d likely point to the English Magna Carta, or the one-man, one-vote (or to be precise, one-man-over-18-with-two-Athenian-parents-who-isn’t-a-slave-or-a-freed-slave-or-foreign-or-descended-from-a-foreigner-or-in-debt-or-a-criminal-or-descended-from-either, one-vote) system of ancient Athens. Which is odd, really – because why would you “bring democracy” all the way from Europe when it was already […]

Great Salt Lake, in northern Utah, is so named for three reasons: it’s big, it’s wet, and it’s full of salt. But usually, that last property isn’t quite so obvious as it is right now – because since Fall of 2019, the Great Salt Lake has been increasingly dotted with large, white mounds of a […]

An archeological mystery 1,300 years in the making – why ancient Chinese artists would sculpt a single “unicorn” in a sea of horses – has finally been solved. The answer: they didn’t. But a new study, published in the journal Heritage Science, has discovered what really happened. The first half of the eighth century was […]

Every year thousands of volunteers join paleontological digs in the hope of finding a new species of dinosaur. We don’t yet know if Teri Kaskie managed that last year when she spotted bones sticking out of a hillside in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park, but it seems likely she’s done something even better. What Kaskie spotted […]

While reporting on NASA’s scrubbed Artemis I rocket launch on Saturday morning, news anchor Julie Chin started to experience what she described as “the beginnings of a stroke.” China was reading the news for an NBC station in Tulsa over the weekend when she started stumbling on her words and acting confused.  Advertisement “I’m sorry,” Chin […]

A 13-year-old chimpanzee escaped from Kharkiv Zoo in Ukraine and went on a delightful stroll around the northeastern city for a few hours. She was persuaded to come back by zookeepers as she decided the rain was not to her liking, donned a jacket, and then got transported home… on a bicycle. The escape artist, […]

A 31,000-year-old skeleton discovered in Borneo appears to have undergone a surgical amputation of its left foot. While Stone Age surgery sounds like an extremely dicey move, it looks like the young hunter-gatherer recovered and lived for a number of years after the operation. Reported in the journal Nature today, this find is the earliest […]

In response to the significant impact of the meat industry on climate change, the Dutch city of Haarlem has become the first to ban meat advertisements. The idea was originally proposed by green party GroenLinks – and, following the addition of meat into a list of products that contribute to the climate crisis, the ban […]

Those landing at Gibraltar International Airport on the morning of August 24, were treated to a spectacular view of a Levanter cloud billowing over the Rock of Gibraltar. A video from the Met Office of Gibraltar’s Twitter account shows the cloud sweeping over the peak in beautiful time-lapse footage.  Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory […]

Even the most devoted cat owners wonder at some point, perhaps waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, whether their cat really loves them. Dog people like to smugly point out dogs’ long history as humankind’s best friend. But research shows cats’ reputation as a cold and aloof pet is […]

If you’ve ever had a urinary tract infection (UTI) before, you know what a pain it can be. Not just because of the physical pains it causes, but because it can also be such a pain to go to the doctor, provide a urine sample, and wait for your results. UTIs are extremely common, with […]

A goal of space exploration is in-situ resource utilization, bringing very little from Earth and using what you might find on the moon, planet, or asteroid that you are visiting. Plenty of researchers are trying to work out how to craft materials on Mars and a new study has found a way to create a […]

For the first time ever, you can watch a virus enter a cell and infect it. Scientists from Harvard Medical School captured the live footage of engineered viruses doing their thing as they bound to living cells, and later injected their genomes into them. Their findings are published in the journal PNAS. Advertisement Viruses infect […]

Most astronomical objects can be studied with a wide variety of telescopes, but the Sun is a different matter; even a brief peek would destroy the sensitive instruments on most professional telescopes. The National Solar Observatory exists to build and operate telescopes across America suited to observing our local light source. Its most powerful instrument […]

Becoming ill is never a pleasant experience. However, have you ever been ill with a viral infection and an unusual body part aches that you think really shouldn’t be aching? It may feel like your actual hair is throbbing, your skin is sensitive to the touch, or your teeth may be sore. But why may […]

A rechargeable, remote-controllable robo-bug cockroach is the latest cyborg to come shuffling out of flexible electronics. The word salad for a cybernetic creation is thought to be a novel approach to urban search and rescue in creating a recon-ready cockroach that can be powered by the Sun (others are sniffing out explosives). For a cockroach […]

Some really skilled people can quickly solve a Rubik’s cube, other people can easily juggle, and it appears that there is a subset of people that can do both at the same time. Now, an incredible record has been established for how quickly someone can solve not one but three Rubik’s cubes while juggling them. […]

According to NASA, a trip to Mars would take you about seven months and about 300 million miles, and your spacecraft would be traveling at about 24,600mph. That’s a lot of travel time and an amazing speed travel. Traveling to Mars may not be in the cards for you or your family, but we’ve got […]