Deborah Bloomfield

Are you a bear? An owl? A lion? A dolphin, maybe? No, this isn’t some weird knock-off Sorting Hat quiz – we’re asking about your chronotype. It’s a fundamental piece of your biology, but for some reason, we tend to think of it in terms of animals – or, worse, as evidence of laziness or […]

Chinese scientists report the discovery of a new strain of bacteria that exists only inside the Tiangong Space Station. The new microbe has been called Niallia Tiangongensis; it is related to the human pathogen Niallia circulans, which is linked to wound infections, and is usually soil-dwelling. Well, from humble beginnings to the stars. The Chinese […]

Humpback whales don’t always give birth in the tropics, as had previously been thought. Sometimes the calves come during their epic migration, and have to complete the journey in their mother’s slipstream. In fact, new observations reveal, these births can occur as far south as Tasmania or New Zealand, leaving the newborns to swim thousands […]

Researchers have built the USA’s most powerful laser yet, so powerful that the only way to describe its power is to compare it to the world’s annual consumption of electricity. The instrument, called ZEUS, is hoped to have applications in a variety of fields, from medicine to astrophysics. ZEUS is the first official experiment that […]

There’s a pretty big variety in the bird world. From tiny wrens and goldfinches to flightless species like ostriches and powerful swimmers like gannets, the birds of planet Earth have a lot of niches covered. However, there is only one bird species that can truly fly backwards.  Hummingbirds are famous for being pretty; in fact, […]

A tomb discovered within an elite necropolis in Pompeii has been identified as the final resting place of an ancient priestess who may have served the fertility goddess Ceres. According to archaeologists, this is the first grave ever to be connected to the cult of Ceres in the doomed city, and the woman whose ashes […]

Just over 90 million years ago, a prehistoric giant went extinct. Longer than Tyrannosaurus rex, and considerably taller, Spinosaurus was one of the largest theropod dinosaurs ever to stamp across the planet, but unless you count that time we heard a ringtone coming out of one’s belly in Jurassic Park III, we’ve never really got […]

While photographing the auroras during a geomagnetic storm, Mike Lewinski caught sight of something extraordinary: a brilliant white beam of light tearing through the night sky. He was shooting from the quiet town of Crestone, Colorado, on May 16, as a moderate geomagnetic storm rippled across the Northern Hemisphere. Celestial events like this occur when […]

Welcome back to the world of differently colored animals. From 1-in-100,000 coloring found on an elk, to gorgeous white stingarees floating along the seafloor, the animal world can sure throw a spanner in the works when it comes to “typical” coloration. Now the latest creature to join the party is a diamondback rattlesnake, without the diamonds. The […]

Sand dredging off the coast of Java has recovered more than 6,000 bones, including two fragments of skulls of the early humans Homo erectus. H. erectus and the other animals found there lived on territory long since swallowed by the sea. The finds refute the idea that early humans were isolated on Indonesian islands, showing […]

In 1973, an article appeared in the journal Science, documenting one of the most notorious experiments in psychiatric history. The study would go on to make shockwaves in the media, and played its part in the reform of psychiatric diagnoses in the USA and around the world. But is it all it seems? The paper […]

White-faced capuchin monkeys on Jicarón Island have started abducting baby howler monkeys, surprised scientists report. It’s possible this behavior comes in waves, but it had not been detected in the first five years scientists intensively studied the population, and now appears to be spreading widely. The reasons are still unknown, but the authors think adolescent […]

Former US President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer, according to a statement released by his office on May 18. “Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized […]

The future of immunizations could include “self-boosting” vaccines if an exciting new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is anything to go by. The team is developing microparticles that slowly break down to release doses of vaccine on a timed schedule – theoretically, that means getting all the doses of a vaccine in […]

Quasars are a state when a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy is feeding at such a rate that it ends up spewing out more than it can chew. The material can glow so bright that it outshines the whole galaxy, and some of it can reach incredible speeds. Researchers have discovered […]

If you’ve never questioned how on Earth humanity has survived this long, just have a scroll through social media and you’ll soon come to. Not only has it revealed that people are eating sticks of butter, huffing toxic fumes, and spreading serious levels of health misinformation, but now people are shaving off their eyelashes, too […]

Orcas are apex predators of the ocean, capable of taking down a variety of species and even the occasional yacht. However, in Iceland, there are orca groups that specialize in hunting fish, in particular herring. Observations in different years have revealed juvenile pilot whale calves among these groups – so were the orcas trying to […]

Another of Colorado’s reintroduced gray wolves has died. The female wolf was reported dead in northwest Colorado on May 15, marking the seventh death among the wolves reintroduced to the state in recent years. In a short statement, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said the cause of death will not be revealed until the necropsy and […]

They might look pretty, but Callery pear trees are an invasive species in the US and have the potential to cause chaos in the local ecosystem. But perhaps worst of all, they really, really stink.  Callery pear trees, also known as Bradford pear trees, are an ornamental tree that’s been in the country for just over […]