Hailing from East Africa, the newly described giant, plant-eating dinosaur Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia lived around 100-110 million years ago, during the middle of the Cretaceous. The animal, a member of the titanosaur lineage, is helping paleontologists understand how, where and when the mightiest of land animals evolved.
Sauropodomorphs are some of the most common and geographically diversely dinosaurs in the fossil record, and their shape — small head, long neck, big torso, ele ...read more
After some 15 prolific years on the Martian surface, NASA's Mars Opportunity rover has gone silent. And after an all out effort to re-establish contact, the space agency says it's given up hopes of ever hearing back from the rover. We talked to the NASA engineers and scientists whose lives have been touched by the Opportunity rover about their experiences and what the craft meant to them. For some researchers, the mission has encompassed their entire career. For others, ...read more
Nearly 10 percent of Americans have diabetes, a chronic condition where the body does not process sugar. Diabetics either do not make enough insulin — a hormone that acts like a key to let sugars into cells to use for energy — or cells stop responding to insulin. As a result, sugar builds up in the bloodstream leading to high blood sugar. Over time, high blood sugar can give rise to nerve damage and heart disease among other complications.
Now researchers have reprogrammed human cel ...read more
NASA will hold a briefing at 2pm EST today on the status of its Mars Opportunity Rover, which has been out of communication since June 10, 2018, when dust storms enveloped the planet.
Mission scientists have been trying to rouse the rover since dust storms subsided in October, but have been unsuccessful so far. Previous reporting indicated that few options were left for Opportunity. Winter is coming on Mars, and the low temperatures could permanently damage the rover if it can't power its ...read more
A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “Learning Through Citizen Science: Enhancing Opportunities by Design” in now available in print.
“In the last twenty years, citizen science has blossomed as a way to engage a broad range of individuals in doing science. Citizen science projects focus on, but are not limited to, nonscientists participating in the processes of scientific research, with the intended goal of advancing and us ...read more
Last November, scientists' minds were blown by the discovery of a 19-mile-wide crater under Greenland. The crater had been hiding in plain sight just 150 miles from a major air force base. Scientists flying airborne surveys with NASA’s Operation IceBridge found it serendipitously while testing their equipment while en route to collect Arctic data. And, on Monday, the same group announced they’ve found another potential impact crater that's even larger, and it sits ...read more
As humans get more ambitious with their plans for exploring Mars, we’re going to need to land bigger spacecraft on its surface. Up until now, NASA's robotic missions have used parachutes, inflatable bubbles, and sky cranes, as well as descent rockets. But to land the kind of heavy spaceships that can carry human astronauts to Mars, engineers will need new methods to touch down.
At the moment, most spacecraft rely on parachutes to slow down from a whopping Mach 30 or so as they enter the M ...read more
Ever catch yourself letting out a frustrated sigh, a squeal of delight or maybe a gasp of terror? These off-the-cuff vocalizations are called vocal bursts. And in a new study, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley have mapped out a record number of them.
To start things off, the researchers asked 56 people, some professional actors and some not, to react to different emotional scenarios. From these reactions, the team recorded more than 2,000 vocal bursts. Next, they ...read more
I thought it would be helpful to provide a description of what SciStarter’s Participant API is and why a growing number of projects and platforms are implementing it and becoming SciStarter Affiliates in the process.
A little background. SciStarter had been “merely” a database where project scientists would add their projects and citizen scientists would find projects. As PBS, Discover, NSTA and others started embedding our Project Finder, more and more people were a ...read more
