(Credit: Monty Python and the Holy Grail/Columbia Pictures)
Being labeled a witch can do great harm; it did during the Salem witch trials and continues to today in many places in Africa and Papua New Guinea.
Now, researchers investigating villages in China have analyzed the effects the reputation of witchcraft could have on everything from recruiting workers to getting married. It’s data that could shed light on why this belief persists in societies.
Scientists examined farming villages ...read more
Modern neuroscience has been accused of being a ‘new phrenology‘ but now neuroscientists have conducted a modern evaluation of phrenological claims using neuroscience methods.
In an enjoyable new preprint called An empirical, 21st century evaluation of phrenology, Oxford researchers Oiwi Parker Jones and colleagues say that they’ve rigorously tested, and debunked, phrenology for the first time.
Notoriously, the phrenologists believed that the shape of an individual’s sku ...read more
NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson works inside the International Space Station’s Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG), which provides a sealed environment for astronauts to conduct scientific research. Recently, Whitson used the MSG to help become the first person ever to sequence the DNA of an unknown microbe entirely in space. (Credit: NASA)
In July 2016, while aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronaut Kate Rubins successfully sequenced mouse DNA that was delivered to her ...read more
Trigonopterus attenboroughi. (Credit: Alexander Riedel)
Today I’m going to tell you about a weevil. There are a lot of weevils, and beetles in general, out there, but this one is special. Plucked from anonymity, this little guy was blessed, or cursed perhaps, with the mantle of greatness.
Trigonopterus attenboroughi hails from the Indonesian islands of Java, Bali and Lombok, and it was discovered in 2014 by German researcher Alex Riedel. Discovering new species can take a lot of hard work ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
Anyone who has kids, or has been to a toy store, is familiar with the gender color code: blue is for boys, pink is for girls.
But actually, it looks like associating a gender with a particular color is a fairly recent development and, like so much these days, is actually the fault of society, man. And according to a study that came out yesterday, gender-based colors are a social preference we can actually manipulate in little kids — and it can actually have real co ...read more
Capcom Charlie Duke, and backup crewmembers Jim Lovell and Fred Haise in Mission Control during Apollo 11’s descent. NASA
“Got the Earth straight out our front window.” As the lunar module Eagle yawed into a windows up orientation, Buzz Aldrin looked away from the computer to see the Earth nearly a quarter of a million miles away.
“Sure do,” agreed Neil Armstrong, adding, “Houston, [I hope] you’re looking at our Delta-H.” The&n ...read more
(Credit: Keplinger Research Group and Science/AAAS)
Humanoid robots like Sophia, granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia, and Atlas, which backflips like a boss, are rigid, strong and rather bulky. They’re made to look like us; they’re not designed after us. But researchers are working hard to give robots a softer touch without losing strength.
Two new studies released Thursday in Science and Science Robotics showcase new moving robotic parts, called actuators, that are advancing soft r ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
Squirrels are a passion for Sarah Westrick, a biology researcher at the University of Michigan. Last summer she attended the Kluane Red Squirrel Project in the Shakwak Trench near Kluane National Park and Reserve in Canada’s southwest Yukon Territory. Researchers congregate there each summer to study the North American red squirrel.
Westrick was studying the squirrel’s maternal behavior, specifically how the moms prepare their pups for nature’s rea ...read more
