News

Female insects of the cave-dwelling genus Neotrogla have penises – so far, so unremarkable. A study has now revealed that the muscles they use to protrude and retract their members evolved before the sex roles in these critters were reversed, and that their previous function may have been to provide the females with a tasty mid-intercourse […]

Madagascar is home to some of the world’s most curious wildlife, but deforestation and the exotic pet trade are pushing some species to the brink of extinction. Now, new research has established that it would take evolution 3 million years to return the species that we’ve already lost in the region, but more than 20 […]

Astronomers are reporting the discovery of a record-breaking pair of ultracool brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are small stellar objects that were never massive enough to become fully-fledged stars and, among them, the ultracool ones are failed stars that have a temperature just over the boiling point of water. The LP 413-53AB pair is record-breaking in […]

A study looking at cannabis-related trips to the Emergency Department (ED) among Californians aged 65 and above has found a 1,808 percent increase from 2005 to 2019, as the drug became legal for medical and then recreational use in the state. Using data on admissions to Californian emergency departments from the Department of Healthcare Access […]

Samples of the lunar surface returned by the Chang’e-5 mission have revealed abundant iron in a +3-oxidation state. The scientists who studied the samples believe micrometeorites are changing the lunar surface chemistry, converting Fe2+ to a mix of uncharged metal and Fe3+. Iron is noted for its wide range of oxidation states, from -2 to […]

One year ago, Elsevier released Complete Anatomy: the world’s most advanced full female 3D model for medical teaching. It aimed to tackle male bias in medical teaching, but the team behind its creation knew there was still much to be done to correct racial bias. Now, Complete Anatomy 2023 hopes to do just that as […]

If you’ve ever combed the beach to find things to decorate a sandcastle, chances are you’ve probably come across a sand dollar. While most people could be forgiven for thinking it’s just another pretty shell, the reality is quite different. What are sand dollars? Sand dollars are actually living organisms, sea urchins that belong to […]

Memories “lost” due to sleep deprivation may still be there and a medication could help to recall them, according to a new study in mice. The human-approved asthma drug roflumilast was able to help mice recall memories that they previously were unable to grasp after sleep deprivation, which could be of huge use to people […]

Galaxies often collide with each other in a slow process called merging. The supermassive black holes at their center can also merge over time. Astronomers have found two such black holes that have met following a merger. They are not colliding yet – they are instead feasting on the gas swirled around from the merger. […]

During a routine medical examination, you may have wondered why your doctor looks at your nails and what exactly it is they are looking for. Nails are a good indicator of overall health, and certain features on them can be signs of disease and organ function.  There are a number of illnesses that can interrupt […]

An unopened bottle of wine believed to be around 1,700 years old sits in the Historical Museum of the Palatinate in Speyer, Germany. Its contents look suspect, to say the least – but on a microbial scale, it might not actually make you ill, even if the texture made you sick to your stomach. The […]

It might have been a deadlier December than expected on Mars. After the expected (but still sad) demise of NASA’s InSight, another robotic explorer might have been claimed by dust and low winter light. Zhurong. The Chinese mission, arrived around Mars at the same time as NASA’s Perseverance, landing a few months later. Its exploration […]

As the world is still in the midst of rolling out 5G wireless technology to guide our telecommunications, scientists are already looking toward the next generation of mobile system technology: 6G. There are currently a number of ideas in the works, but a bold new proposal from the University of Massachusetts Amherst is arguing that humans […]

You may have heard that one day in the future, the Milky Way galaxy – in which we reside – will collide with Andromeda. If you include the outermost stars in each galaxy passing each other, then that day has almost come, following the discovery that some stretch halfway to our nearest large neighbor. The […]

Ah Utah, the state famous for its beautiful mountains, incredible landscapes, and its use as a dump for mysterious objects with no clear backstory. In 2020, there was the monolith. Though the best guess is that it was an art piece left in around 2016, it largely still remains a mystery. Now we have a […]

In the cloud forests of north-eastern Ecuador, a little snake has been slithering around harboring a fascinating secret. Tucked within its anatomy are the remnants of a pelvis, something snakes haven’t needed since they first lost their legs around 150 million years ago. Vestigial organs and limbs are remnants of evolution that demonstrate how simply […]

Lots of adults dislike woodlice. Some are physically revolted by them. But this distaste is cultural rather than innate since most small children are well-disposed towards woodlice and happy to handle them. Some people even keep them as pets. Woodlice are tiny, don’t bite, move slowly and are generally unthreatening. They are part of biological […]

England is going to ban single-use plastic cutlery and single-use polystyrene food containers, following similar initiatives by Scotland and Wales in 2022 that made providing such items an offense. It is estimated that the UK currently uses 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups annually, with England recycling only 10 percent of the 4.25 billion single-use cutlery […]

An experiment that saw mental health support provided to about 4,000 humans using an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot has been met with severe criticism online, over concerns about informed consent. On Friday, Rob Morris, co-founder of the social media app Koko, announced the results of an experiment his company had run using GPT-3.   Advertisement […]

A bunch of mammoth tusks and stone tools has recently been pored over by archaeologists in Mexico, uncovering some of the earliest known evidence of violent interactions between Ice Age people and megafauna in the Basin of Mexico.  Thanks to a new analysis by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), it’s been revealed […]