When it comes to playing the odds, there are times when gambling feels more enticing than others. But is there a pattern to when people indulge in games of luck and when they abstain? Well, according to this study, there is! Apparently, when other circumstances dictated by "luck" are going well, people are more likely to play the lottery. Specifically, they found that people are more likely to play the lottery during a long string of sunny days, or when a local sports team is playing well. S ...read more
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Losing weight may not be that hard — for rodents, a new study shows. Researchers have discovered an internal scale in rats and mice that sends signals to the brain to cut back on food if weight gain is detected. Now, the researchers hope to translate the findings to humans.
For the study, the team mimicked weight gain by implanting capsules into the abdomens of obese rats and mice. Mice received a capsule that weighed about six grams, while rats were ...read more
Last month, a 1,400-pound horse named John competed with speed and style at the World Series of Team Roping in Las Vegas.
Fourteen months earlier, John couldn’t even stand without the help of six handlers and a sling.
After qualifying for a 2016 competition, John was found down at his owner’s ranch near Sacramento, felled by botulism. Despite receiving an antidote, he battled paralysis for 26 days. For most of his stay in an intensive care unit, he lay on the floor of his stall. He ...read more
New fossil find Vulcanops hails from New Zealand, home of burrowing bats including the now-extinct Mystacina robusta, shown here in an artist rendering. (Credit Gavin Mouldey)
Where might you expect to find fossils of a giant burrowing bat, three times bigger than today’s average bat? Why, in St. Bathans, New Zealand, of course. Vulcanops jennyworthyae, which lived more than 15 million years ago, tells a fascinating story of a lost world.
No offense to Jenny Worthy, the team member h ...read more
Motherly love. (Credit: Shutterstock)
Years ago, we believed that we weren’t animals and that animals were here solely for our use. Indeed, a cow was just a walking burger, a Sunday roast, keeping itself fresh and tasty ready for when we were hungry.
Luckily, for their sake, things have progressed significantly from then and now we recognize that animals (including our “superior” human selves in that category) can experience emotions from more simple ones such as happiness and ...read more
Norishige Kanai (right) pictured with fellow astronauts Mark Vande Hei of NASA (left) and Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos (center). (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
A Japanese astronaut grew three and a half inches during the course of his trip to the International Space Station.
If that sounds too incredible to be true, you’re right. It’s not. But some people evidently believed Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai when he tweeted out a mistaken measurement from aboard the ISS M ...read more
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Robots are finding new ways to get under our skin, and that’s a good thing.
Lab-grown organs are carving their place in medicine, as scientists can today grow miniature brains, kidneys and more in the lab to conduct research or even treat patients. In fact, in 2011, doctors successfully transplanted the first lab-grown organ—a trachea— into a cancer patient who needed theirs removed. But growing custom organs from a patient’s stem cells is ne ...read more
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the few truly mysterious phenomena in the universe. Astronomers first noticed the milliseconds-long intense pulses of radio waves in 2006, and we’ve slowly but steadily been learning more about the extragalactic signals ever since.
We still don’t really know exactly what they are, but thanks to a study published Wednesday in Nature (in fact it’s the cover story), we’re finally starting to understand these strange signals.
Do the Twist
...read more
This is a living representative of a primitive Glossata, moths that have a proboscid that suck up fluids like nectar. (Credit: Hossein Rajaei)
Think of some scaly animals.
Odds are butterflies didn’t come to mind. But butterflies and moths have scales on their wings, legs and bodies. Thanks to those scales, researchers have found the oldest known fossils of butterflies and moths, both in the order Lepidoptera, according to a paper published Wednesday in Science Advances.
While the Le ...read more
