Deborah Bloomfield

You’re a Barbary macaque high in the Atlas Mountains of Morrocco. A fellow monkey comes towards you and hands you an infant. You’re now both holding the mini monkey, and you’ve just made an ally. This behavior is known as “sandwiching”, and it’s how Barbary macaques curry favor with troop mates – an important skill […]

If you share your Netflix password or use someone else’s to access streaming services, you could be breaking copyright laws, according to a UK government agency. The news may come as another blow to the many people that password share (definitely not us though…), as Netflix announces they will be clamping down on the practice […]

Has anyone ever tried to milk the Grinch? We know it’s a weird point to start on, but as a fluffy, bipedal animal, you’d be tempted to qualify it as a mammal. And that got us to thinking: why aren’t there any green mammals? They say absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. By that […]

As humanity ponders a future beyond the confines of Earth’s atmosphere, a team of researchers has put forward a semi-serious plan for creating giant space metropoles out of disintegrated asteroids. Presenting their findings in a new study, the authors say that taking advantage of the inherent crumbliness of space rocks could be cheaper and easier […]

Picture the scene: a softly lit restaurant, an intimate corner table, your dream human sitting opposite you. You’re about to launch into the speech you’ve been rehearsing all day, you’re going to bare the innermost workings of your soul… and they immediately whip out their phone. That, friends, is called “phubbing”, and according to some […]

Mosquitoes are one of the biggest killers of humans, and they transmit an array of different diseases. Due to the nuisance they cause, scientists have created a wide array of insecticides that can be coated onto different surfaces to kill these terrors – but unfortunately, insecticide resistance is on the rise. The Aedes aegypti is a […]

The group “birds aren’t real”, who claim that birds are no longer real, have conducted a rally in the US, in the hope of converting others to their views. For those uninitiated, the birds aren’t real movement claims that birds were once real but have now been replaced with drones by – you guessed it […]

As a general rule, if you want sight, you need light. You’re only reading this right now thanks to the light from your screen being beamed onto your retinas, converted into electrical signals, and sent up the optic nerve for your brain to interpret as a bunch of words and images. But what if you […]

For the first time, scientists have been able to develop male and female near-identical human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from the same person. hiPSCs are a valuable biological tool. These are cells that can be reprogrammed to return to a stem cell-like state. They are used for therapeutics, and molecular investigations of diseases and […]

Researchers have discovered that a diet rich in vegetables, legumes, and fish – staples of the so-called Mediterranean diet – is associated with a lower risk of preeclampsia and gestational diabetes. This link was stronger for those pregnant over the age of 35. The study looked at the diet of 7,798 women enrolled between 2010 […]

The World Health Organization (WHO) is “very concerned” by reports of increasing COVID-19 case numbers and overwhelmed health services in China, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced in a press briefing Wednesday.  The statement comes in the wake of shocking images and videos from the normally tight-lipped nation, which have seen hospitals and funerary services […]

When counteracting waves collide at a right angle, they can sometimes form square waves. The rare phenomenon is quite stunning to the observer, creating a chessboard-like pattern on the water’s surface that has made the Île de Ré near La Rochelle in France (pictured above) something of a tourist attraction. Here, people clamber up a […]

Archaeological work in the region of Tal Lachish in Israel has revealed an extraordinary complex surrounding an equally extraordinary tomb. The cave dates back to 2,000 years ago, to the Second Temple Period, but it was in use for several centuries afterward – not as a tomb, but as a holy site. It was identified […]

The JWST has made it a huge year for astronomy research, but there’s been plenty of other big (and very, very small) news. An Infrared Eye On The Universe The wait was long, with more delays and cost overruns than anyone anticipated – but after finally launching last year, the JWST gently eased its way through […]

A pair of identical twins who were raised in separate countries have displayed unexpectedly large disparities in cognitive abilities while exhibiting highly similar personality traits. A comparison of the monozygotic sibling’s characteristics sheds new light on the age-old nature/nurture debate. Born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1974, the sisters became separated at the age of […]

Watermelon snow, also known as glacier blood, is a curiously pink-tinged phenomenon found In frozen parts of the planet. And, like yellow snow, you do not want to eat it. It’s the result of a type of algae present in the snow, and only gets its characteristic pink coloration when the sun is out. Curiously, […]

NASA’s Perseverance has dropped the first of the canisters containing the backup samples collected by the rover during the first part of its mission. The canisters will be delivered to Earth in 2033 by the Mars Sample Return mission. These samples will be analyzed in ways that our excellent robotic explorers simply can’t do. Perseverance […]

The Black Death of the 1300s would have been an undeniably sucky time to live, the year 563 CE was pretty dire, and the first half of the 20th century saw more than its fair share of misery. However, when looking at terrible times to be a human, the dreadfulness of the 17th century is often underappreciated. Wealth […]

A new health survey has found that the top COVID symptoms are still continually changing, with an altered sense of smell now reaching the top 10 symptoms most people will experience.   ZOE, a company that has continually polled COVID-19 patients to understand the disease and guide policy, has released their monthly Health Study as of […]