Deborah Bloomfield

Zebras may be the flashiest members of the equine family, but they’re surprisingly versatile when it comes to hybridization. Known collectively as zebroids, these hybrids result from breeding a zebra with another type of equine, most commonly horses, donkeys, or ponies.  Some of the most common combinations include: Zebra + Horse = Zorse Zebra + […]

The universe is big, and thanks to innovation and technology, we have seen some of it across incredible distances, all the way to some of the most distant galaxies and the first light that ever shone, the cosmic microwave background. It is undeniable that telescopes have been fundamental to understanding space, but it doesn’t mean […]

Baryons are subatomic particles made up of an odd number of quarks. Protons and neutrons found at the center of atoms are a type of baryon, but there is a whole menagerie of other baryons made of rarer and more unstable quarks. Because of that, these baryons decay into other particles, and the rarest known […]

When it comes to the human memory, many mysteries remain, but a new study is helping to solve some of them by peering into the brain’s “filing cabinet”. Using recordings of brain activity and machine learning tools, a research team has revealed new insights into how our brains sort and catalog memories of objects. For […]

Despite all that we’ve discovered about those who lived thousands of years ago, it can sometimes feel difficult to imagine them as real people. However, we’ve now been served up with a (literally) handy reminder, after researchers discovered a 4,000-year-old handprint on the base of what’s believed to be an ancient Egyptian tomb offering. The […]

A golden retriever named Bumper and a black Labrador retriever named Peanut have shown that Parkinson’s disease (PD) carries a distinct odor that can be detected by specially trained sniffer dogs. According to researchers, the pair’s olfactory expertise may offer hope for an early diagnostic test that could help doctors catch and treat the illness […]

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Boxing and cheerleading collide in the case of the pom-pom crab (Lybia edmondsoni). Also known as the boxer crab, it has evolved to use the stinging power of anemones to its advantage by holding the venomous species Triactis producta in each claw. The defense mechanism increases feeding opportunities for the anemone as it’s waved through […]

There are a lot of fun relationships between species in the underwater animal world, from hermit crabs using anemones as hats, to the complex system that exists between coral and algae. Sometimes, though, it’s a little bit simpler, as this chilled video of a crab hitchhiking reveals.  Underwater videographer and photographer Zoe Slack, who goes […]

Science has shown us that COVID-19 vaccines had a transformative effect, saving lives, preventing illness, and altering the course of the pandemic for the better. But thanks to a new study, we can put some numbers to it. According to this analysis, 2.5 million lives were saved by COVID shots during 2020-24. According to the […]

Landing on another body in the Solar System is a tough business. Despite many successful touchdowns throughout history, spacecraft sent to land on the lunar surface still regularly fail in the final moments. Meanwhile on Mars, the Spirit rover sent by NASA became stuck in the planet’s soft sand after its wheels broke through a […]

A new preprint study has taken a look at transient objects captured by astronomers in the pre-Sputnik era, finding a curious correlation with nuclear tests and unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). Since 2017, the Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project has attempted to look for stars and other sources of light […]

What if planet Earth is undergoing such rapid change that the traditional framework of “seasons” no longer makes sense in our everyday experience? This is the bold new idea proposed by a pair of geographers at the University of York and London School of Economics in the UK. Seasons, in their most conventional sense, refer […]

Sharks and rays have been found to have an XY sex chromosome system superficially like our own, but with its own unique features. It’s also older than that of any other vertebrate. There are lots of ways to determine sex besides the XY system used by non-monotreme mammals, where XX (usually) denotes females and XY produces males. […]

Most of the black holes we know of are in two categories. They are either supermassive, millions or billions of times the mass of the Sun, or stellar-sized, from a few times to a few tens of times our little star. There is an in-between category known as intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) that weigh […]

If you set a camera trap in the woods today, you might just be in for a big surprise. Camera traps are an incredibly useful tool for capturing animal behavior, especially elusive species, and providing a low-cost, non-invasive way to monitor wildlife populations. In Thailand, one recently managed to film an extremely rare golden cat […]

Roughly 720 million years ago (give or take a few tens of millions), Earth plunged into one of the most extreme climate events in its history. In several stages, the planet became a giant snowball, encased in ice from pole to pole for millions of years. What exactly triggered this deep freeze has long divided […]

Scientists report a new quantum state of matter that might lead to a computer that can self-charge but is also capable of withstanding the extreme radiation that can be found in deep space. This new quantum state of matter is the spin-triplet excitonic insulator. Electronics are based on semiconductors, which can be understood as having […]

The sharks just don’t stop coming at Mammoth Cave National Park in the US, where palaeontologists have uncovered yet another new species of ancient shark that lurked in the shallow seas submerging the region millions of years ago. The new species, which is thought to have only reached less than 30 centimeters (12 inches) in […]

A non-hormonal, reversible male contraceptive pill with very few side effects might not be as far off as previously thought, early human trial results suggest. In a first-in-human study, a drug called YCT-529, developed by YourChoice Therapeutics, was found to be safe and well-tolerated when administered to healthy men. Even at its highest dose, the […]