Deborah Bloomfield

Dr Emma Yhnell is a senior lecturer at Cardiff University. With a PhD in neuroscience, she is an expert on all things neurons and takes great pride in sharing this knowledge with her students. There are many strings to Yhnell’s bow: when not busy teaching, she is a passionate science communicator, writing and talking about […]

While technology has many quirks, it’s improved our lives in some surprising ways. One of those is active noise cancellation, and right now you can put some amazing science in your ears with these JBL earbuds, part of our Every Day is Black Friday sale. We’re taking Black Friday deals out of the day after […]

PDFs are highly useful, as fans of CURIOUS know, yet we often need to do more with PDFs than just read them. UPDF Pro offers a huge suite of features to make PDFs easier to work with, and right now it’s available at the price on the web! Rated 4.2 out of 5 stars on […]

Vegan diets have become increasingly popular over the years, especially among people looking to improve their health. Indeed, a growing body of evidence shows that plant-based diets (including vegan diets) can have many benefits for health, and have been linked to lower heart disease risk alongside decreased body weight and cholesterol levels. However, some people […]

It’s a paradox: Life needs water to survive, but a world full of water can’t generate the biomolecules that would have been essential for early life. Or so researchers thought. Water is everywhere. Most of the human body is made of it, much of planet Earth is covered by it and humans can’t survive more […]

When it comes to dealing with stress, we’re often told the best things we can do are exercise, make time for our favourite activities or try meditation or mindfulness. But the kinds of foods we eat may also be an effective way of dealing with stress, according to research published by me and other members […]

A new study has uncovered how one subclass of marine mollusks, Heterobranchia, may have been able to survive and bounce back after a mass extinction event. The end-Triassic mass extinction event happened around 201 million years ago and marked the beginning of the Jurassic period and the dominance of dinosaurs on Earth. Although less devastating […]

After the very pretty partial Solar Eclipse last week, we are getting a total lunar eclipse, as the eclipses come in pairs. Our natural satellite will cross into the shadow of the Earth, darkening it first before assuming the characteristic crimson color of this type of eclipse. Billions of people will be able to see […]

A man from the UK has grown one of the world’s most dangerous plants in his house. Botanist Daniel Emlyn-Jones cultivated the plant inside a cage, and for good reason: even a slight touch of the leaves can lead to agonizing pain, so much so that the plant has become the stuff of legend. “I’ve […]

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 1 at 9:41 am local time. This is the first time since June 2019 that the rocket has taken to the sky. And it did so for a secret mission on behalf of the US Space System Command, part of the […]

If you go down to the forests of the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, you might just be lucky enough to hear the distinct short “tuu” note of the islands’ newest species. The Principe Scops-Owl, or Otus bikegila, has just been formally described, though local people have suggested its presence since as far […]

A NASCAR driver used a desperate, last-minute physics trick in order to beat several other cars to the finish line. The risky move saw Ross Chastain move up five places by – and we can’t stress enough that we are not messing with you here – driving the car along the wall like he was […]

Even when humans don’t drive animals to extinction, our footprint on this planet is so deep we often change the species around us. The latest example is the rhinoceros. Several species and subspecies teeter on the brink of annihilation. Others are doing better, but they’re less well-endowed in the horn department than their ancestors, possibly […]

Alan Turing was one of the greatest minds to have ever lived, and is widely regarded as the father of modern computing. Known for being part of the team that cracked the Enigma code using an early computer, as well as extensive computational work that was way ahead of his time, Turing was at the […]

The earliest humans to inhabit South America harbored genetic material from several extinct Eurasian hominid species, new research has revealed. In addition to carrying Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA, these ancient migrants also possessed genes from as far away as Australia and Papua New Guinea, all of which raises a number of intriguing questions about early […]

Should “pet detectives” be a real thing and not just a film that has aged particularly badly? That’s the question Flinders University researchers are exploring by trying to get human DNA off cats. Ultimately, the work may provide forensics teams with an additional route to capturing criminals when all other efforts to place a suspect […]

With Elon Musk continuing to make headlines, as ever, an old clip from a 1999 documentary has resurfaced showing the multi-billionaire when he was a mere millionaire.  The segment opens with Musk and then-fiancé Justine Wilson awaiting the arrival of his new car, a million-dollar McLaren F1, which he’d just bought with money earned from […]

Nikola Tesla is often hailed as one of the brightest minds of the past two centuries, best known for his visionary engineering ideas and the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system. Like many aspects of his eccentric life, it’s apparent the prophetic inventor was obsessive about his diet. Through much of his […]

In Le Flore County near Heavner, landlocked Oklahoma, there is a large piece of sandstone covered with runic markings that some believe date back to 600-800 CE, and were left there by Vikings. In the 1920s, a local to Heavner, Gloria Farley of the Smithsonian, was made aware of the giant sandstone. From then on […]