Your blood serves numerous roles to maintain your health. To carry out these functions, blood contains a multitude of components, including red blood cells that transport oxygen, nutrients and hormones; white blood cells that remove waste products and support the immune system; plasma that regulates temperature; and platelets that help with clotting.Within the blood are also numerous molecules formed as byproducts of normal biochemical functions. When these molecules indicate how your cells ar ...read more

Some 300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens split off from a long line of human-ish primates to become the first fully human species, with abilities and ingenuity unrivaled in Earth’s history. But back then, in terms of behavior and intelligence, those early humans wouldn’t have seemed so different from the other hominins they shared the landscape with — Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus and so on.Now picture one of these ancient people beside a 21st-century counterpart, and consider how wid ...read more

Planets orbit their parent stars while separated by enormous distances – in our solar system, planets are like grains of sand in a region the size of a football field. The time that planets take to orbit their suns have no specific relationship to each other.But sometimes, their orbits display striking patterns. For example, astronomers studying six planets orbiting a star 100 light years away have just found that they orbit their star with an almost rhythmic beat, in perfect synchrony. Ea ...read more

Dietary supplements are a big business. The industry made almost US$39 billion in revenue in 2022, and with very little regulation and oversight, it stands to keep growing.The marketing of dietary supplements has been quite effective, with 77 percent of Americans reporting feeling that the supplement industry is trustworthy. The idea of taking your health into your own hands is appealing, and supplements are popular with athletes, parents, and people trying to recover more quickly from a col ...read more

Around 500 million years ago, a strange ancestor of the modern sea star, sea urchin, and sand dollar swam above the Paleozoic seafloor. Classified as a pleurocystitid, the animal resembled an armored stingray in its appearance, armed with what looked like a set of swooping antennae. One of the first of its phylum to move around autonomously, its segmented tail swept from side-to-side to swim forward. Robotics researcher Richard Desatnik and colleagues identified the creature’s method of movem ...read more

As the world gears up for an inevitable spike in temperatures over the coming decades, a newly found deposit of fossils might provide insight on the future actions of modern species. "The distant past gives us a glimpse of our possible near future," said Jonathan Antcliffe, researcher at the University of Lausanne and co-author of the study, in a press release.Two paleontology enthusiasts came across the fossil site in Montagne Noire, a mountain range in southern France, where they unearthed ove ...read more

While on Earth dust may mostly seem like a housecleaning nuisance, in the far reaches of space, it plays an exciting role in galaxy research. Although the existence of dust in space continues to be surrounded by intrigue, an international team of astronomers recently identified a type Ia supernova creating cosmic dust. A new study published in Nature Astronomy highlighted this previously unknown source of cosmic dust. Prior to the study, dust formation has been observed in supernovae, but only i ...read more

Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? If so, how do scientists search for and identify it? Finding life beyond Earth is extremely difficult, partly because other planets are so far away and partly because we are not sure what to look for.Yet, astrobiologists have learned a lot about how to find life in extraterrestrial environments, mainly by studying how and when the early Earth became livable.While research teams at NASA are directly combing the surface of Mars for signs of life, our� ...read more

If every rock has a tale to tell, those of the Waitaki District on New Zealand’s South Island would fill a library. This is a land of limestone, sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone — basic sedimentary rock. Yet from this simple matter, time, wind, and rain have composed a wondrous story.The narrative is in the Elephant Rocks, giant dollops of limestone scattered among grazing sheep on a farmer’s field. Their scooped shapes take on different forms, depending on where you stand and at what el ...read more

Have you ever been out on a walk and as you take that next step, you feel the slippery squish of poop under your foot?It’s not just gross. Beyond the mess and the smell, it’s potentially infectious. That’s why signs reminding pet owners to “curb your dog” and scoop their poop have been joined in some places by posted warnings that pet waste can spread disease.As a small-animal primary care veterinarian, I deal with the diseases of dog and cat poop on a daily basis. Feces represent pote ...read more