Deborah Bloomfield

Noble false widow spiders are a widespread species living across Europe, North America, South America, and West Asia. With a large range and density across southern Britain, noble false widows have a range of adaptations and traits that have allowed them to be successful across four continents.  While noble false widow spiders (Steatoda nobilis) are […]

The first study of the effects of plastic on the stomach tissue of seabirds has encountered a new condition, which the discoverers named “plasticosis”. Although not immediately fatal, the condition threatens birds’ capacity to obtain the nutrients they need to grow, and eventually to survive. Most disturbingly, the discovery comes from a place that should […]

The rate at which the rare but crucial quantum phenomenon known as tunneling occurs has been measured experimentally for the first time, and found to match theoretical calculations. The theoretical estimates in this area had been regarded as highly uncertain, so confirmation in one specific case allows for greater confidence in estimating the frequency of […]

Two Canadian companies have been the green light by the federal government to produce and distribute cocaine, heroin, MDMA, or the psychoactive compound psilocybin found in magic mushrooms. While it’s been said that the drugs will be used for medical purposes and won’t be made freely available to the public, the announcements have caused some […]

It’s estimated that in the US, 2.5 in 1,000 people get divorced annually. While the cause of any relationship breakdown is complex and linked to a myriad of wider factors, psychologists have been able to track down a number of behaviors that appear to have a close link to a couple’s divorce.  One of the […]

You may have heard of the Fermi Paradox, but if you haven’t, here it is in a nutshell: Given the high probability that alien life exists out there in the universe, why has nobody gotten in touch? If there are so many other civilizations out there, possibly at far more advanced stages than we are […]

Few birds are quite as internationally recognizable as the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). Often discussed as a conservation success story after DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) pesticide poisoning nearly wiped out the US population, the famous birds have bounced back and were downgraded from endangered to threatened in 1995.  However, even the national bird of the United States […]

Colombia is looking to transfer up to 70 of Pablo Escobar’s famous hippos out of the country as they continue to damage the local ecosystem and rapidly grow in population, according to CBS News. All descended from just four hippos that the drug lord imported from Africa in the 1980s, the hippos were too difficult […]

A study claims to have identified three types of orgasm experienced by women, using data collected by a “biofeedback vibrator”. Letting participants loose with a Bluetooth-connected “Lioness” dildo, researchers were able to classify orgasms into three distinct types: the wave, the avalanche, and the volcano. Lioness, who make the vibrators, had previously identified these three […]

Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons are all types of tropical storms capable of stirring up significant destruction and loss of human life. Despite their differing names, however, there’s actually very little difference between them. What’s the difference between hurricanes and typhoons? The only difference between a hurricane, a typhoon, and a cyclone is where in the […]

Over 19 million new cases of cancer were reported worldwide in 2020.1 For women*, one of the most common types of cancer is ovarian cancer, with more than 310,000 people being diagnosed with the disease worldwide each year.1 Like most cancer types,2 age is a risk factor for ovarian cancer, but it can affect younger people […]

A hidden corridor inside the Great Pyramid of Giza has been seen for the first time since it was sealed some 4,500 years ago.  In 2017, a team known as ScanPyramids scanned the Great Pyramid of Giza using muon tomography. Looking inside the pyramid, the team found what tomb raiders through the centuries apparently hadn’t: […]

Most people believe that the first rapid-fire gun was the Gatling gun, which was invented in 1862 by Richard Gatling and used in the Civil War to deliver devastating losses, the likes of which no other weapon could inflict at the time. However, a rotating, hand-cranked gun was invented almost 150 years prior – luckily […]

Optical illusions work by challenging our brains to break out of their usual pattern of viewing the world, reconfiguring the way they process, predict and analyze visual stimuli. This requires intricate communication and feedback between different brain regions, and new research indicates that this process may be altered in autistic children. “When we view an […]

A new geological model, the most detailed yet, has enabled us to peer back in time over the past 100 million years of the Earth’s surface. As you might expect, a lot has changed in that time, the details of which will further our understanding of the Earth’s geophysical landscape as we know it today […]

A common treatment strategy in patients with liver disease may be inadvertently leading Enterococcus faecium bacteria to develop resistance to one of the last effective antibiotics we have, according to a new preprint. The research, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, found that treating patients with rifaximin was associated with genetic mutations in E. faecium that […]

It’s commonly believed that gold is one of the rarest and most expensive precious metals – but while it does rank pretty high comparatively, there is one metal that has it beat hands down both for price and rarity. The monetary worth of different metals is inconsistent, differing slightly depending on demand and access. Due […]

When a new telescope – especially one like JWST – comes online, there are a lot of expectations of discovering unknowns and challenging our current understanding. The expectations are bearing some tentative fruits in the many areas of focus of the telescope, but lately, the attention has been on cosmology and how observations might be […]