Mosquitos are an annoyance to all — but some people seem to attract them far more than others. (Credit: mycteria/Shutterstock)
As I slept unaware beneath the stars one night in early July, what I can only assume to be a legion of mosquitoes declared war against my forehead.
I’ve been a mosquito magnet as long as I can remember, so I should have foreseen the itchy misery they would deliver upon my face. I offered them an exposed patch of flesh, they took it. Eight times. But my ...read more
Satellite image of a wildfire blazing in in the Qeqqata Kommunia of western Greenland. The image consists of data acquired by a Sentinel satellite on July 14th, 2019 in the infrared and visible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. (Source: Copernicus Sentinel Data processed by Pierre Markuse)
Last month has gone into the books as the warmest June on record, beating out 2016 by a comfortable margin, according to the latest global analysis by NASA.
Now, more than half way through July, co ...read more
(Credit: rcherem/shutterstock)
In 1974, an architecture professor named Erno Rubik built a movable piece of art to help his students understand three-dimensional problems. Though his own creation took him more than a month to solve, it soon became an iconic puzzle game, the Rubik’s cube.
The goal of the game is to re-arrange the faces of a cube decorated with 54 multi-colored squares so that each face shows a solid block of color. There are 43 quintillion potential ways to arra ...read more
An ant infected by a cordyceps fungus with a stroma emerging from the back of its head. (Credit: David P. Hughes, Maj-Britt Pontoppidan/Wikimedia Commons)
Forget The Walking Dead – there’s a real zombie outbreak happening right now — though it’s more like the crawling dead.
Ants, moths, grasshoppers, wasps and hundreds of other species of insects regularly fall victim to a deadly parasite that hijacks their bodies and brains, causing strange behaviors and eventual ...read more
The four VERITAS telescopes in Arizona will soon be used to hunt for alien communications. (Credit: The VERITAS collaboration)
Traditionally, the hunt for intelligent life in the universe has focused on radio signals from far off worlds. But scientists are turning to more varied types of signals, acknowledging that we have very little idea how a truly alien life-form might choose to communicate, either with themselves or us.
With that in mind, Breakthrough Listen, a program searching for ...read more
(Credit: NASA)
Exactly 50 years after the first humans stepped foot on the
moon, three astronauts will blast off into space to join the current crew on
the International Space Station.
On July 20, NASA astronaut Drew Morgan, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Skvortsov, will launch from Kazakhstan around 12:28 EDT. After a four-hour orbit around Earth, the crew will travel the last two hours to the ISS, docking around 6:50 p.m. EDT. Two hours ...read more
(Credit: HappyRichStudio/Shutterstock)
The same stuff that’s been linked to red wine’s heart-health benefits could also someday help astronauts walk on Mars. In a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology, researchers say that resveratrol, a compound found in wines, could lessen muscle loss on the long trip to Mars.
The Trouble With Traveling to Mars
Currently, a one-way trip to Mars will take something like nine months. To make the trek, whichever spacecra ...read more
Researchers had a lucky break that helped them crack the code of Egyptian hieroglyphics, like the ones shown on this artifact. But many lost languages remain undeciphered, with no Rosetta Stone to point the way. (Credit: Zoran Karapancev/shutterstock)
Since the invention of writing several thousands of years ago, humans have come up with myriad scripts that turn the phonetic sounds of spoken languages into something visual. Most of these written languages have already been deciphered, from E ...read more
The VR glove in action.(Credit: Song et al, Scientific Reports, (2019) 9:8988)
Our squishy human brains are notoriously easy to fool. Whether it’s optical illusions or more advanced trickery, it doesn’t take much to exploit our mind’s weaknesses. But, that’s also what enables virtual reality (VR) systems, where technology can effectively transport us to a digital world. And thanks to a newly developed VR glove, the effect might soon be better than ever.
A team of en ...read more
Tropical storms loom large over different parts of the globe, while extreme heat and droughts wreak havoc on other areas. Flash floods and landslides plague parts of India, as dust storms make it difficult to drive and breathe in the southwestern United States.
Extreme weather. We may feel powerless, but there are ways we can help scientists better predict these events and help provide warning systems. That’s empowering.
Stay safe.
The SciStarter Team
ISeeChange
...read more
