News

On the side of the Hayu Marca Mountain, southern Peru, a large, mysterious stone doorway is carved into the rockface. While no one knows the true origins of the Aramu Muru doorway, its existence sheds light on the long and complex history of ancient Peruvian culture. Located near Lake Titicaca, the largest freshwater lake in […]

As well as straws designed to draw in liquids more slowly, there are other effective cures for persistent hiccups. They range from a digital rectal massage, to having your eyeballs mashed by a doctor, to having an orgasm. In 1990, a 60-year-old man developed hiccups after a nasogastric tube was fitted following his hospitalization for […]

Google has a set of six milestones they aim to surpass in order to have a commercially viable quantum computer. The first one was quantum advantage: having a quantum machine that could do a computation faster than a supercomputer. This was achieved in 2019. Now, the Mountain View based company has achieved its second one: […]

A new study has identified that houses in the US could be overvalued by a total of hundreds of billions of dollars as prices fail to account for flood risks due to climate change. The findings suggest significant policy changes need to happen in many states that do not consider such risks and that many […]

A non-surgical, focused ultrasound procedure has been found in a clinical trial to significantly improve symptoms in some patients with Parkinson’s disease. Nearly 70 percent of the treated patients responded well to the procedure, with two-thirds of these continuing to experience positive results a year later. There is still no cure for Parkinson’s disease, which […]

Few of us question the idea that we shouldn’t eat or drink – “nil per os” or “nothing by mouth” – for at least six and two hours, respectively, before any surgical procedures, but this may be changing. An increasing number of hospitals across the world have started a new approach that allows patients to […]

With a long snout sporting sharp pointed teeth, portraits of the spotted gar (Lepisosteus oculatus) can look quite intimidating – but these fish are actually the smallest modern gars. While alligator gars can morph into behemoths over 2.5 meters (8 feet) long, the humble spotted gar stops at around the 90-centimeter (three-foot) mark. Spotted gar […]

We’re pretty used, here in the West, to the “national housing crisis”, meaning too few houses being available. In Japan, however, they have the opposite problem: millions of akiya – empty and abandoned houses, strewn across the country, with virtually no hope of occupation. Sometimes called “witch houses”, these buildings are often ramshackle and awkward. […]

Scientists continue to unveil new clues about the composition of Asteroid Ryugu. Thanks to the sample of its surface and subsurface collected by Japanese probe Hayabusa-2, scientists have gained more insights into the history of this asteroid and even some details about the molecular composition of the cloud from which the Sun and the solar […]

If you’re keen to see eerie objects that look like they’ve been turned to stone, Mother Shipton’s petrifying well in Knaresborough, England, is the place to be. Due to a quirk of local geology, the petrifying well has the medusa-like ability to turn the cuddliest of objects rock-hard, taking three months for a teddy bear […]

Scientists have been able to peer inside the brains of freely-moving octopuses for the first time thanks to a new approach that uses an implanted device. The resulting recordings revealed several distinct patterns of activity in the brain, with some mirroring states observed before in mammals while others looked totally alien. Studying free-moving octopuses is […]

A tiny ancient human that lived on Luzon Island in the Philippines over 50,000 years ago died at the age of 31, according to a new analysis of the specimen’s teeth. Belonging to the species Homo luzonensis, the miniature hominid was probably less than 1.2 meters (4 feet) tall when fully grown and may have […]

If someone tries to tell you it’s possible to bend reality with your mind, be very wary. If they throw in references to quantum physics to try to make it sound scientific, run. The idea that human will can change the way the world works is an old one. We don’t know how long people […]

A retired anthropologist has revealed a little more about sightings of a Hobbit-like species by the locals of Flores Island. In 2003, archaeologists looking for evidence of the migration of modern humans from Asia to Australia stumbled across a small, fairly complete skeleton of an extinct human species on the Indonesian island of Flores, which […]

An evolutionary instinct that relies on fructose within the brain could drive the development of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study. The results suggest that diet could be influencing the onset of the disease as a result of a foraging instinct, and that consistent fructose intake may be stimulating brain activity that results in […]

Naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) are famous for a lot of things: their peculiar appearance, being one of only two eusocial mammal species, and having a queen female that is the only member of the colony that breeds. These queens can produce one to five litters per year with an average of 13 pups per litter […]

Phubbing: the act of ignoring the people around you in favor of concentrating on your phone. Be honest, now – how many of us can truly say we’ve never done this? And if you’ve done it, you’ve probably also been annoyed by it. There’s lots of evidence to show that phubbing is not the road […]

Many migratory species use the Earth’s magnetic field to keep their journeys on track. Now a study of a very non-migratory animal, the Drosophila fruit fly, shows the same capacity exists in some unexpected places. Perhaps humans are the rare ones because we don’t have this capability; if so, why? In the quest for survival, […]

It’s super contagious, makes you feel awful, and it’s on the increase. We’re talking about norovirus, the “winter vomiting bug”. Cases of the virus have been rising in recent weeks, in both the US and the UK. But what exactly is it – and, more importantly, how can you minimize your chances of catching it? […]