An image of the sun’s corona taken during a 2008 solar eclipse in Mongolia. (Credit: Miloslav Druckmüller (Brno U. of Tech.), Martin Dietzel, Peter Aniol, Vojtech Rušin) When the moon slides in front of the sun Monday, millions of viewers will catch a glimpse of the sun’s corona, which will appear as a hazy glow outlining the solid shadow in front of our star. Scientists will be watching closely as well, because eclipses are one of the few times they can easily gather d ...read more

The TIKAD drone can carry marksman rifles, assault rifles and even grenade launchers. Credit: Duke Robotics In 2015, Israeli Special Forces likely made history by using a sniper rifle mounted on a commercial drone to take out a target. The robotic solution that achieved such pinpoint accuracy came from Duke Robotics, a startup founded by veterans of the Israel Defense Forces. That startup has since developed a multi-rotor sniper drone capable of accurately firing a wide arr ...read more

We’re now counting down the time until the Great American eclipse in hours, not days. Are you ready? If you aren’t, don’t worry, we have you covered with the Eclipse 2017 Widget from our partners at Astronomy magazine. Powered by SkySafari 5, this interactive widget well let you know exactly when the show will begin, and when you’ll reach maximum eclipse in your area. If you click “view” on the time readouts in the event column, you can al ...read more

Photo: flickr/Marcela G Sometimes the human brain does weird things. Take the woman described in this case study, for example; when she brushed her teeth, it would induce a seizure that resulted in an orgasm before she passed out. It seems that there was reduced blood flow (hypoperfusion) and some damage (atrophy) in part of her brain that likely caused her tooth-brushing-induced orgasms. No other activity seemed to produce this effect, including brushing without toothpaste. Why this part ...read more

Antimony. (Credit: Bostock/Shutterstock) The elaborate system of pipes that carried water to Roman households was an engineering marvel—for its time. Unfortunately, their sophisticated water utility may have been poisoning everyone. An analysis of a pipe fragment from Pompeii revealed the presence of high levels of antimony, an element that can cause vomiting, diarrhea and even organ damage at high enough concentrations. It was probably included to harden the soft lead pipes, w ...read more

(Credit: Shutterstock) A true Scotch drinker doesn’t pour an aged Macallan in order to, as less refined revelers might say, “get the party started.” Quite the contrary, the seasoned aficionado attends to certain norms and customs before imbibing, not unlike a traditional tea ceremony, in a nod to enlightenment, restraint and discernment—the finer things. The experts recommend pouring Scotch into a tulip-shaped glass to swirl the matured flavors. Sip, but never gulp, as ...read more

(Credit: unoL/Shutterstock) Tiny robots powered by bubbles have successfully treated an infection in mice. The achievement is another step forward in a field that has long shown promise, and is only now beginning to deliver. The therapeutic robots in this case were tiny spheres of magnesium and titanium coated with an antibacterial agent and about the width of a human hair. They were released into the stomach, where they swam around and delivered a drug to the target before dissolving. Ro ...read more

Apollo 10 photograph taken from the Lunar Module “Snoopy” showing the Command Module “Charlie Brown” with Mt. Marilyn in the background (north is to the left, scene is 80 km wide). (Credit: LROC) In 1968, Jim Lovell became the first human to pilot a spacecraft — Apollo 8 — around another world. And two years later, his Apollo 13 heroics earned him an eternal place in spaceflight history. But those feats also left Lovell as the only person to visit the moon t ...read more

Endangered piping plovers are a precocial species, which means they mobile after emerging their egg. (Credit: Shutterstock) Protecting species in peril doesn’t happen overnight. Rather, it’s all about stringing together small wins that, in the long-term, make all the difference. A little luck can also go far. When waves surged on the Pennsylvania coast of Lake Erie early this summer, it could easily have been the end for a nest of piping plover eggs caught in the water’s path ...read more

(Credit: Shutterstock) Social media has been a boon to social science. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other platforms serve as online laboratories that reveal all kinds of stuff about the users, researchers say. The rise of these platforms has sparked a flurry of scientific papers describing people’s social network interactions. A lot of the conclusions of the studies can engender the response, “Well, no kidding.” But offering validation for intuitive or common sense knowle ...read more