Deborah Bloomfield

If you haven’t tried it yet, go and test out OpenAI’s ChatGPT – it’s scarily good at writing. It will write a semi-original article (the information will be taken from internet sources but it passes plagiarism checkers just fine), cite sources within the text, and the grammar is almost spot on. The AI is so […]

A new report describes a case of a rare neurological condition called sixteen syndrome, one of a family of disorders with similarly numerical names. The condition is so unusual that only a handful of cases have appeared in the medical literature before – and, in this particular case, the patient’s symptoms could also help medics […]

You wake up in a haze. Head pounding. Stomach churching. The stale smell of last’s night overindulgence on your breath. You wonder, how long can this go on? Well, according to this medical case report, perhaps up to 4 weeks. In 2007, doctors in Scotland reported the case of a man who experienced a headache […]

As you drift off to sleep, you may have experienced the feeling of falling, accompanied by an involuntary jerk that forces you awake again. If you have, you are not alone. It has been a topic of discussion on Twitter this week, after author Holly Seddon tweeted about it, and others said they’d had the […]

A myth passed down by Indigenous Australians for 7,000 years may be a record of an actual event. For thousands of years, the Gugu Badhun Aboriginal people have lived in the upper Burdekin River valley in Northern Queensland. Surviving likely from before the written historical records of Egypt or Mesopotamia, several tales of death, destruction, […]

Eating boiled peanuts followed by roasted peanuts could be enough to help children overcome their allergies, according to new research. The idea goes that creating a weakened version of a peanut in which the immunoreactive parts are partially destroyed by heat could act almost like a vaccine, training up their immune system until handling a […]

Planes built for Saturn’s largest moon, self-growing building blocks, deep space satellite mega-constellations, and oxygen pipelines on the Moon are just a few of the 14 experimental projects selected by NASA to receive more of their funding in a push to advance the agency’s exploration of space. As part of the Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) […]

A viral video on TikTok shows the bizarrely flappy faces of muntjac deer in all their glandular wonder. While it might look like the facial anatomy dreamt up by James Cameron’s Avatar, they’re actually an adaptation these animals have evolved to be able to scent mark their way through the wilderness.  The Reeves’s or Chinese muntjac, […]

Two spotted salamanders seemingly holding hands as they bob in a carnivorous pitcher plant jacuzzi at matching stages of decay have scooped the Close-Up Photographer Of The Year (CUPOTY) Competition for Canadian photographer Samantha Stephens. Her winning shot, taken in Algonquin Provincial Park, won Stephens the £2,500 (~ US$3,000) cash prize and the CUPOTY 04 […]

Predicting the future is a risky business in science, but if we are looking at the long-term evolution of the Solar System, astronomers and planetary scientists have a reasonable idea of how that will pan out. It’s not like we know what will happen at 10:04 pm on November 12 in the year 88,000,001,955. But […]

The Russian space agency, Roscomos, has confirmed that the Soyuz MS-22 will have to leave the International Space Station empty following the leak to its coolant.  The leak happened last December 14, possibly caused by a micrometeorite hitting it just right. A review was initiated to work out if it was still safe for cosmonauts […]

Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day in western superstition. Theories on why it has become known as unlucky range from there being 13 people present at the last supper according to the Bible to Loki being the secret 13th secret guest at a dinner party for the Norse gods before generally causing all […]

Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean is home to one of the world’s weirdest lakes. Not only is Pitch Lake brimming with bizarre microbial life, but its “waters” are also such an odd consistency that you can walk across it.  Found near La Brea on the southwestern tip of Trinidad, Pitch Lake is around 40 […]

No rhinos in the Kaziranga National Park were lost to poaching in 2022, marking a first for the protected nature reserve since 1977. The reserve is the world’s largest for the great one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) and is home to around 2,200 of them, making up the majority of their global population. The park, in […]

The vast majority of people use one hand or the other for most things – and for nearly 90% of the human population this is the right hand. Some 10% to 13% of humans are left-handed, with men being three times more likely to be left-handed than women, though very few people are ambidextrous. Until […]

Fossil hunter Mary Anning not only helped find the first intact ichthyosaur fossil and the first pterosaur outside Germany, but was the first to identify coprolites as fossilized poop. At a time when both women and the working class were largely excluded from practicing science, her capacity to break through both barriers was remarkable – […]

The largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere could vanish within five years if emergency water conservation measures are not imposed immediately. According to a new report, Utah’s Great Salt Lake is currently 3 meters (10 feet) below its minimum healthy level, and its disappearance could expose millions of people to toxic dust containing particles […]

After Andromeda and the Milky Way, the Triangulum galaxy is the largest galaxy in our local group of galaxies. And it might take the title of the weirdest based on a new analysis conducted by astronomers. It appears that the younger and older stellar populations are segregated by age creating a unique distribution but also […]