The Trump administration continues its deluge of executive orders that directly affect science and research, just days after being sworn in. Following the executive orders (EOs) taking the United States out of the Paris Agreement and World Health Organization and the scientific nonsense in the EO on trans and non-binary people, Trump has now imposed […]
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Sick Of Your Job? Antarctica Is Offering New Employment Opportunities
Tired of the rat race and the relentless grind of a 9-to-5 job? You might want to consider packing your thermal underwear and heading to Antarctica for a unique work adventure: The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has announced it is recruiting for a variety of job positions at its research stations in Antarctica. ADVERTISEMENT GO […]
Why Do Stars Twinkle But Planets Don’t?
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is probably the first scientific fact babies hear in the English-speaking world. It’s easily verifiable too. You look out of the window on a clear night and you will see stars twinkling. But not everything twinkles in the night sky, namely the planets. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE There are five planets […]
How Do We “Hear” In A Dream?
Dreaming may be a little like “madness”, some have said. When awake, a person with psychosis may experience the world as if in a dream, while a dreamer may get a small sense of what it is to have a psychotic event. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE This is not my observation. It was made by […]
Camel Milk Could Be An Alternative To Diary. Would You Drink It?
When it comes to our favorite milky products, it’s a cow world. Across the globe, bovine milk is still extremely popular with many people. But could there soon be an alternative product on the market? Camel milk (stay with me here) may actually be more beneficial for humans than dairy milk, as it is hypoallergenic […]
What Is A Superbug?
Most of us will have heard the word “superbug” in headlines, usually followed by the latest one we should be worried about – but what actually is a superbug? And why are people so concerned about them? Super ≠ good ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Superbugs are microorganisms – not just bacteria, but also viruses, parasites, […]
Good News: Tapirs Are Back In Rio De Janeiro State After More Than 100 Years
Tapirs might be one of the largest land mammals in South America clocking in at an impressive 300 kilograms (661 pounds), but they have been noticeably absent from a region in Brazil for over 100 years. Now, thanks to camera trap technology, the first images and videos of these iconic animals returning to the region […]
Can You Roll Your Rs? If Not, You Might Be Able To Learn
It could be said that you hadn’t had a decent high school Spanish lesson unless you spent half of it wearing out your tongue attempting to roll your rs, eventually consigning yourself to never being able to pronounce rojo properly. But we come bearing good news – it turns out you can actually learn to […]
Brand New Species Of Scorpion Is A Venom Spraying Badass From Columbia
Species that possess venom are some of the most badass in the animal world. Now, a new member has joined their ranks – a scorpion from Columbia that represents the first venom-spraying species of scorpion reported both in South America and in the genus it belongs to. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE The new species has […]
Which Human Species Survived For The Longest? Spoiler: It’s Not Us
For any member of the Homo lineage, half a million years on Earth can be considered a pretty good innings. Most of our human ancestors became extinct around the time they hit that milestone, and our own species is already pretty far along the conveyor belt towards this annihilatory age. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE And […]
Aliens Probably Aren’t “Little Green Men” – So Why Do We Insist On This Depiction?
The last year has been tense for anyone even vaguely interested in aliens or unidentified foreign objects (UFOs). From US congressional hearings on UFO sightings and extraterrestrial technologies, to mummified “alien” bodies being exhibited to lawmakers in Mexico; the excitement for things related to “little green men” has not been this high in decades. And while these recent […]
“Inaccessible” Tumor Removed Through Eye Socket In UK’s First Surgery Of Its Type
In the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, after the death of a pharaoh, embalmers would remove the brain matter of their ex-ruler via the nose. Now, we’ve improved on both counts: surgeons can go in through a keyhole incision by the eye socket, remove a brain tumor, and the patient doesn’t just survive but is […]
Welcome Super-Venus? New Class Of Planets Has Been Proposed
Enaiposha, also known as GJ 1214 b, is an exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf Orkaria, located just 48 light-years from the Solar System. It was discovered in 2009 and was one of the first exoplanets to have both its mass and radius measured. It is bigger than Earth but a lot smaller than Neptune, so […]
Evolution Of A New Blood Group Split Neanderthals And Homo Sapiens In Eurasia
Was blood a factor in the demise of the Neanderthals? New research is showing that Homo sapiens underwent huge changes in their blood groups after leaving Africa, between 70,000 and 45,000 years ago, before spreading across Eurasia. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE People’s blood group is all about the presence or absence of specific antigens (proteins […]
How Did Birds Survive When The Other Dinosaurs Died? Don’t Believe Netflix
In the Netflix documentary series Life On Our Planet, chapter six is devoted to birds and their evolutionary success since other dinosaurs died out in the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction following the asteroid strike. Early on, we are presented the story of some birds hatching from eggs laid before the catastrophe and finding their way in […]
Pompeii’s Worst Day, Peeing Together, And The GOAT Dinosaur Movie?
This week on Break It Down: a new timeline shows exactly when and how the eruption of Vesuvius spread, chimps have been observed going to the bathroom together all at the same time, trust in science remains high worldwide despite recent global events, sex differences between male and female brains are present as early as […]
The Pittcon Promise: Changing Lives Beyond The Lab
Since the 1950s, Pittcon has stood as a cornerstone of laboratory science. Its roots trace back to Pittsburgh, where two visionary societies – the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh (SACP) and the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh (SSP) – teamed up to form something extraordinary. They created the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied […]
Living Conditions Have Improved For Us All, So Why Are Men Growing Twice As Fast As Women?
Most of us know that humans are gradually growing taller, but has that extra height affected everyone equally? A new study says no – suggesting instead that men have outgrown women in both height and weight by a factor of two since the time of our great-great-grandparents. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE “To put this in […]
One Of The Largest Pterosaur Fossils Ever Found Is Rewriting Their Evolutionary History
Scientists studying one of the largest pterosaur fossils ever found and identified have concluded that these animals were likely more diverse in the Jurassic than the fossil record suggests. Armed with what they described as a “field-defining” discovery from the Isle of Skye, the species Dearc sgiathanach, they uncovered groundbreaking insights into their functional anatomy […]
The Aestivation Hypothesis: Are Aliens Waiting For The Next Era Of The Universe?
With 200 billion trillion (ish) stars in the universe and 13.7 billion years that have elapsed since it all began, you might be wondering where all the alien civilizations are at. This is the basic question behind the Fermi paradox, the tension between our suspicions of the potential for life in the universe (given planets […]
