Time keeps marching on...backwards, at least when it comes to telling the story of human evolution and migration. The oldest human fossils found outside of Africa suggest our species may have left that continent 200,000 years ago.
You may recall that 2017 was the year that the conventional timeline for human evolution and migration finally toppled thanks to overwhelming archaeological and paleogenetic evidence. Our species is much older, and left its ancestral continent of Africa much e ...read more
Last week’s sea rescue of Australian swimmers by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is just the start of a robotics revolution.
On January 18, an Australian lifeguard piloted a drone over the turbulent ocean off the far north coast of New South Wales to rescue two teens in distress. As thrilling as it was to watch a tiny drone drop a flotation device to the two struggling swimmers, the rescue was relatively easy, using proven robotic technology in an ideal, wide-open environment.
#RESCUE ...read more
NASA is holding its annual Day of Remembrance today to honor the crew members of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, as well as other NASA employees who have lost their lives while advancing space exploration.
This year marks the 15th anniversary of Columbia’s last space shuttle mission, which suffered a catastrophic and fatal end. The unfortunate event shook the science community and the public, but the lessons taken away from the incident overhauled NASA’s approac ...read more
This past holiday season, you may have been one of the millions who either gave or received a home assistant like the Google Home or Amazon Echo. Voice-activated assistants are helpful, increasingly affordable, and make you feel like you’re truly living in the future. But, like, any new technology, there’s some reason to be cautious of our newest roommates.
In a recent article exploring the social impact of the technology, Jennifer Yang Hui and Dymples Leong explain that much of the ...read more
By Egle Marija Ramanauskaite, Citizen Science Coordinator at EyesOnALZ
December 21st, 2017, just might enter the history books as the first day a citizen science trophy was ever awarded to a school. The trophy, bestowed to 250 students for contributing to Alzheimer’s research, is now proudly displayed next to sports trophies & special achievement awards at a middle school in Boise, ID.
But the story really begins back in May, 2017. By a happy coincidence, Erin Davis, a ...read more
What pairs well with chicken wings? Maybe you're thinking buffalo sauce, beer or even celery sticks, but one company wants you to finish your wings with a fun drone flight (or crash, really depends).
KFC announced Tuesday that customers can get a limited edition KFO (Kentucky Fried Object), which is a DIY drone, with select orders of Smoky Grilled Wings. Sure, it’s a lovely PR stunt, but exposing people to drone tech nonetheless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQVgmw ...read more
The world recently welcomed a pair of monkeys that were created using the same method used to clone Dolly the sheep.
In a study published Wednesday in Cell, researchers successfully produced two genetically identical, long-tailed crab-eating macaques. Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua were born eight and six weeks ago, respectively, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai. It’s a technical benchmark that could have future applications in clinical research.
Specie ...read more
A while back, I wrote a column for Discover analyzing your place in space: astronomers' best look yet at where you fit into the big, crazy, cosmic scheme of things. Any discussion of where you are inevitably brings up the related question of not just where you are, but where you are going. And there's no better time to think about where you are going that at the beginning of the year--right around the time when you realize that, once again, this isn't going to be the year you keep all your Jan ...read more
A recent call from British Member's of Parlaiment to put a 25 pence levy on disposable coffee cups, and bans on plastic products cropping up across the country, show that the UK is getting serious about tackling collective individual behavior which threatens the environment.
Large-scale programs aimed at changing people’s behavior are rare – but they do happen. Take Britain’s various carrier bag charges, for example, which led to plastic bag use in England falling by 80 percen ...read more
In the Philippines, Mayon is erupting spectacularly, creating a lava flow that stretches over 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the crater, 600-meter lava fountains, pyroclastic flows that followed gullies for 5 kilometers (~3 miles) from the summit and explosions that are sending ash and volcanic debris over 3-5 kilometers (10,000-15,000 feet) into the air.
Videos (below) show ash plumes and glowing debris spewing from the crater during these blasts and lava fountaining episodes. It's a notabl ...read more
