Deborah Bloomfield

In recent times, thousands of dead seals have washed up on Russia’s Caspian Sea coast. Now officials are saying the most likely cause is hypoxia, or deprivation of oxygen. Around 2,500 seals or more have washed up in recent weeks, according to a top Russian environment official giving an update on Monday, according to AP. […]

It’s the Late Cretaceous and you, an ankylosaur, have been minding your own business while eating some plants. You’re famished from bashing away Tyrannosaurus rex all day – those pesky predators – and now some other ankylosaur is moving in on your patch. Time to dust off that tail, because it’s clubbing time. That’s the […]

The remains of a medieval man, found at a monastery in Poland, have revealed he had two different forms of dwarfism, the combination of which has never been reported before in the medieval period in Central Europe.  The skeleton is believed to date from between the ninth and 11th centuries CE and was discovered in […]

A mysterious structure has been revealed along Daytona Beach Shores in Volusia County, Florida, on the heels of Hurricane Nicole and Hurricane Ian. No one is quite sure yet what the object may be, but there are some interesting ideas floating around the local community, from a shipwreck to the relics of a long-lost NASCAR […]

As 2022 is drawing to a close, it’s time to find out what has been crowned Oxford Word of the Year. Without further adieu, we’re pleased, and a little surprised, to tell you, that it’s “goblin mode”. For the first time in its history, the vote was opened up to the public, and after more […]

Take a really good look at this picture. You’re seeing the inside of the Orion Capsule. But don’t just focus on the cool equipment, including a virtual assistant in the center – NASA has placed several easter eggs around the capsule for everyone to solve. The space agency doesn’t specify how many things are there […]

Covering interstellar distances in a human lifetime is far from easy. Going at 1 percent of the speed of light, it would take over 400 years to reach the closest star, and we have not been able to propel any spacecraft even close to that speed. But a new method aims to get to those […]

The creator of Gmail has made a prediction: the new chatbot ChatGPT will completely disrupt Google’s business within a year or two, eliminating the search engine result page in the process. By now, you have probably come across a number of creations from ChatGPT: an artificial intelligence (AI) based chatbot that can do everything from […]

A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool capable of seamlessly aging or de-aging people in video footage has been developed by researchers at Disney Research Studios. Dubbed face re-aging network (FRAN), the tool will be capable of making actors look older or younger for movie scenes set in the future or past with minimal post-production fiddling. […]

From beloved children’s books to Norwegian dance songs, foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are ever-present in popular culture as a symbol of woodland cunning and are widespread across most of the Northern Hemisphere. But what do you call a baby fox? Foxes are members of the family Canidae, which also includes wolves and coyotes. Twelve species fall […]

When you boil a chicken’s egg, the translucent albumen turns white as it coagulates, creating the white-with-a-yellow-center boiled egg many of us are familiar with. Do the same to a penguin egg, and you end up with a very different aesthetic. Instead of turning white, the albumen stays translucent, creating a very peculiar-looking egg in […]

The question of how memories are stored in the human brain is an age-old puzzle. Over the years, there have been plausible theories – but the experimental evidence to back these up has not always followed close behind. With diseases that affect memory posing a huge threat to public health, there is arguably a greater […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a wretched experience for everyone, and while the greatest overt threats to public health are posed by the virus itself, new research has revealed the impact that lockdown living has had on the brains of adolescents. Compared to teenagers whose brains were scanned before the pandemic, those who were assessed […]

Orion has spent almost three weeks in space, exceeding the expectations of the Artemis I mission. The uncrewed capsule was sent on its first voyage beyond Earth to test its capabilities, to make sure that when people are on board everything will go as smoothly as possible. The mission has also been taking images, and […]

On Tuesday, December 6, at 7:56 pm UTC, most of the world’s population will look up and see a sky that is completely dark. Let’s explain. We (well, unless you happen to be a flat-Earther who believes the sun rotates around above our heads like a tennis ball on the end of a Swingball rope) […]

New research has finally pinned down an physiological change that explains why we are so much more prone to certain respiratory infections when the weather is lousy. The discovery is the first biological mechanism to explain why the common cold, flu and COVID-19 see such significant seasonal spikes when the weather is colder in certain […]

Earlier this year a team from sleep website Mornings.co.uk conducted an analysis on Google search data, to see what the most commonly-searched dreams were in each country.  Though largely missed at the time, the breakdown reveals a few interesting insights into dreams around the world and provides a bit of reassurance to anyone who thinks […]

For a management team trying to lead a company, keeping all those employees happy can often feel impossible. No matter what you do to improve the workplace for most people, it will likely still be met with a “yeah, but” from some. However, the facts show that the feelings of most workers are fairly straightforward.  […]

A study presented at the Radiological Society of North America conference has found signs of liver injury in patients, months after going through a COVID-19 infection. The study adds to evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infecting and damaging the organ. The retrospective study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, looked at patient data going back three years, […]

That suicide rates spike during the holiday season is something that you’ve probably heard either in the news or during conversation, but new research is exploring how this myth has endured for so long despite data not supporting the claim.  In 2021, provisional data showed rates of suicide increased during the festive holiday months in […]