Deborah Bloomfield

Using descriptive language and explaining the way something tastes or smells might be a uniquely human trait but that doesn’t mean that other animals are capable of distinguishing between different types of food or drink. While discriminating between different wine varieties is a challenge even for people, for nine rats it seems their careers as […]

Over the last month, the US flag has been spotted flying upside down outside the State Department, and now during firefall at Yosemite National Park.  ADVERTISEMENT On Sunday, visitors flocked to the park to watch the waterfall at El Capitan glow an eerie orange at sunset, as the waning Sun lights it up. While there, […]

The first ever case of human tissue being turned into glass has been identified within the skull of an unfortunate young man who died during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Originally spotted in 2020, the strange obsidian-like lump had not been reliably identified until now, yet new research confirms that it is […]

Timbuktu is often evoked as a symbol of an impossibly distant, almost mythical place. The phrase “from here to Timbuktu” conjures the image of a journey stretching endlessly beyond the horizon, a long way from home. ADVERTISEMENT In a surprising number of people’s imaginations, it is just that: a fictional, indeterminate land. A 2006 survey […]

Utah could soon become the first state in the US to ban fluoride from being added to public drinking water, after members of the state legislature approved a bill that would do so. ADVERTISEMENT The bill, HB81, was passed by the Utah House of Representatives on February 7 and by the State Senate on February […]

Palaeontologists from East Tennessee State University and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, have just revealed the existence of a new fossil specimen belonging to a giant flying squirrel. This large critter once glided through the landscape of Southern Appalachia, around 4.7 million years ago. ADVERTISEMENT North America has had a longer history of flying […]

Interstellar travel is not for humans as the timescale is well beyond a human lifespan, but celestial bodies, such as asteroids and comets, can travel from star system to star system. Humanity has observed two such objects already: Comet Borisov and ‘Oumuamua, which crossed the vast gulf of space for a quick foray across the […]

Earth’s first (water) oceans are thought to have been too acidic for life. A new study has estimated the timelines of the processes that changed this and puts a figure on when they reached the right pH to host the first organisms. ADVERTISEMENT Modern oceans are slightly alkaline, with a pH of around 8.1. The […]

Newly discovered frescoes unearthed at Pompeii reveal glimpses of a wine-fueled cult that embraced the “wild, untamable side of women”. ADVERTISEMENT The Pompeii Archaeological Park recently announced the discovery of a large-scale frieze that covers three walls of a banquet hall dated to 40-30 BCE. It depicts the initiation rites for a cult dedicated to […]

A volcano erupted in Central America tens of thousands of years ago, creating an explosion so enormous that scientists believed it triggered prolonged enough global cooling to kick off an ice age. Known today as the Los Chocoyos supereruption, it was one of the largest of the Quaternary period, but a new study looking at […]

Some of the health effects astronauts suffer on the International Space Station (ISS) may not be a consequence of weightlessness, as previously thought, but of the ISS being too clean, a new study proposes. If so, there’s a relatively simple solution – make it dirtier. Whether the ISS has a long enough future to test […]

Two US states – Texas and New Mexico – are currently grappling with measles outbreaks that have so far affected more than 100 people. Sadly, the first reported death from the highly contagious disease in 10 years has now been confirmed in West Texas. The child who passed away was not vaccinated.  ADVERTISEMENT In light […]

Flying is, for many people, a fearful experience, alongside the stress of traveling, the confined space, and the many common annoyances of airports. Flight safety has been in the news lately as several serious crashes took place over the last several weeks, with insiders saying that firings at the Federal Aviation Administration planned by Trump […]

When purchasing milk there’s a world of possibility: cow, goat, sheep, yak, and even buffalo, but there’s one farmyard staple that’s conspicuously absent: pigs. As mammals, these intelligent creatures nourish their offspring with milk, but of all the milks we humans have dared to pour over Cheerios, pig’s just doesn’t make the cut. ADVERTISEMENT The […]

Texas state health officials have reported the death of a child from measles, the first death in an ongoing two-state outbreak of the disease and the first in the US since 2015. ADVERTISEMENT The child was hospitalized in Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock last week and tested positive for measles, the Texas Department of State […]

A video that has gone viral in the last few days shows two artificial intelligence (AI) agents having a conversation before switching to another mode of communication when they realize no human is part of the conversation. ADVERTISEMENT In the video, the two agents were set up to occupy different roles; one acting as a […]

Every now and then, people are grossed out to learn a surprising truth about how their various foods are made. For instance, the cheese you sprinkle on your Bolognese involves a lot more baby cow stomach juice than is ideal. ADVERTISEMENT Today, people are learning the shocking truth about how panko breadcrumbs – those delicious […]

We’re sure we don’t need to tell you that math is awesome. It’s surprising; it’s useful; and in fields like geometry, it can be really, really pretty. But for some people, that’s not enough. The study of shapes isn’t just cool and nice to look at, they say – it has to be magic as […]

The outbreak of a currently unknown disease in northwest Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has seen hundreds of people sickened and more than 50 killed since mid-January, health officials have reported. ADVERTISEMENT In a February 16 bulletin, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that “two clusters of cases and deaths from an unknown disease […]

A private spacecraft on a pretty badass mission has sent back even more footage of the far side of the Moon, on its way to land in the Mare Crisium region of our satellite on March 2. During this latest approach, a NASA instrument placed on board the spacecraft set a new record. ADVERTISEMENT Blue […]