Deborah Bloomfield

Monkeys are among the many animals known to use tools, so it is no surprise long-tailed macaques in Phang Nga National Park, Thailand, crack nuts with stones. In the process these “hammerstones” sometimes break. The products look so much like the tools found in Africa and attributed to early hominins such as Australopithecus that scientists […]

In the Bible, it’s said when the Euphrates river runs dry then immense things are on the horizon, perhaps even the foretelling of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the rapture. Revelation 16:12 reads: “The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare […]

Scientists have genetically engineered bacteria that don’t cause illnesses in humans but do enjoy getting inside tumors, with this particular interest seen as especially useful to fight cancer. The bacteria act as a mole, infiltrating the tumor and then producing special molecules that alert the immune system, which subsequently attacks the cancer. This bacteria was […]

A team of environmental researchers has estimated the biomass of all wild mammals, finding that humans vastly outweigh all of them combined.  The team, led by Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, was attempting to identify a metric that could be used to track conservation efforts on a global scale. […]

Are British people smarter and more informed than Americans? According to a new study, many Americans seem to think so, and it may come down to a simple difference in how we use a common word. Oscar Wilde famously noted that British and American people “have really everything in common…except, of course, language”. While this […]

Space in Earth’s orbit is getting crowded. The number of satellites in orbit in 2018 was just over 2,000 – but the introduction of megaconstellations such as Starlink has increased the number massively. There are currently 9,000 satellites, and by the end of the decade, the number is expected to reach 60,000. That could become […]

Viral fossils that integrated into our genetic code millions of years ago could be responsible for some subtypes of autism, a new study has suggested. Experiments in mouse models revealed a possible role for these endogenous viral elements and suggest that this should be an avenue for further research. The human genome is littered with […]

The space between planets is not clean and pristine, despite being an excellent vacuum. It has dust, and this dust often catches sunlight creating a faint glow that permeates interplanetary space. The ghostly glow appears visible from Earth as a hazy triangle of light known as “zodiacal light”, and the best time to see it […]

In a bizarre case of wildlife imitating art, an African serval cat rescued from a tree in Ohio tested positive for cocaine, according to the animal rescue group who nursed the strung-out animal back to health. Rest assured, the story has a much happier ending than Cocaine Bear and the wild cat is now living […]

Love it or (more likely) loathe it, there’s certainly a routine to boarding a plane. Every day, millions of us line up in snaking queues, separate out our electronics from the rest of our luggage, take off our belts, shoes, and jackets, and desperately try not to make eye contact with the TSA agent who […]

Archaeologists have uncovered a sunken Roman room on the grounds of Leicester Cathedral, UK. The discovery of the chamber believed to date to around 200 CE may confirm an old folktale about the cathedral and how the grounds were used for worship (and possibly sacrifice) long before the cathedral was erected. The approximately 4-meter by […]

In March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan, shifted the Earth’s axis, and shortened days on Earth.  The quake – the most powerful on record to hit the country – shifted the planet’s axis by about 17 centimeters (6.5 inches), and may have moved the main island by about […]

In a US first, a case of tickborne relapsing fever caused by a particular species of bacteria has been reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The pathogen in question is Borrelia lonestari, a distant relative of the bacteria responsible for Lyme disease, which has never before been found to cause […]

Researchers have discovered the earliest known runic inscription referencing the Norse god Odin, resident of the heavenly realm of Asgard and overseer of Valhalla. Etched into the surface of an ornamental gold disk, the engraving predates the next oldest mention of Odin’s name by around 150 years. The thin gold ornament – or bracteate – […]

Some bacteria are capable of producing electricity out of tiny atmospheric concentrations of hydrogen. Having identified the enzyme responsible, scientists have demonstrated it can do this without the rest of the organism, opening the path to long-lasting ways to charge devices that can run on small amounts of electricity. The discovery could also allow for […]

New research indicates that the average intelligence quotient (IQ) in the US has declined for the first time in nearly 100 years. But does this mean that the population of the US is actually getting dumber? Not necessarily. Researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Oregon looked at the results of online IQ tests […]

With the recent release of the movie Cocaine Bear, people might be more inclined to question just what is possible in the ursine world. Foremost on the list of what bears can or can’t do is the mystery of how bears create feces when they don’t eat for months at a time. North American bear species […]

Cyclone Freddy first came into the world on February 6 and has since been causing carnage across the Indian Ocean, making landfall in Madagascar and Mozambique. The deadly tropical storm has already broken some grim records, including being the only storm in the Southern Hemisphere ever to have intensified more than three times, and is […]

A new mechanism by which toxic substances are metabolized by an enzyme, mitigating their harmful effects and considerably lengthening lifespan, has been discovered. Experiments in the model worm Caenorhabditis elegans and in yeast revealed that increasing the expression of the adh-1 gene was enough to delay aging, and the researchers suspect that the same could be […]

Rats can be infected with SARS-CoV-2 and those within the New York City sewer system may already be carrying the virus, according to new research. The study is among the first to demonstrate that rats, both laboratory and wild, can be infected by the coronavirus, and that it may present a second way for humans […]