For the first archaeologists, the only way to peer inside an ancient coffin or container was to take the artifact apart. In fact, it was only through the dismantling of ancient artifacts that these individuals learned about the lives, religions and rituals of antiquity, including those of Egypt.Nowadays, there's a longer list of less invasive approaches for learning about antiquity, and that list is expanding. According to a paper published in Scientific Reports, for instance, a team of research ...read more

In his free time, David Smith designs tiles. More specifically, the retired print technician and recreational mathematician pieces together as many tiles as he can (no gaps allowed) before the pattern either repeats or cannot continue.Until recently, every shape anyone had ever tested met one of those two fates — despite the scrutiny of many brilliant minds over the past 50 years. Then, one day last November, Smith found the only known exception.13 Sided ShapeUsing an app called PolyForm Puzzl ...read more

Despite having roamed the planet millions of years ago, thanks to advances in technology, dinosaurs aren’t as inscrutable today as they once were. And over the past decades, in addition to studying what they acted like, including their habits and diets, researchers have specialized in reconstructing and depicting what they looked like — all the way down to specific details like texture and color.But how do scientists go about pinpointing these details for creatures that died 65 million years ...read more

The seizures started when Samantha Gundel was just four months old. By her first birthday, she was taking a cocktail of three different anticonvulsant medicines. A vicious cycle of recurrent pneumonia, spurred on by seizure-induced inhalation of regurgitated food, landed the young toddler in and out of the hospital near her Westchester County home in New York State.Genetic testing soon confirmed her doctors’ suspicions: Samantha, now age 4, has Dravet syndrome, an incurable form of epilepsy. H ...read more

On 1 April, the Italian government banned ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence system that generates human-like text and computer code. ChatGPT is trained on massive amounts of data scraped off the internet and the Italian authorities were concerned that this constituted a breach of privacy for those who owned the data. The ban continues as it investigates further.But this ban has had an unintended consequence. One of the big questions about ChatGPT and other so-called large language models, is h ...read more

In June 2022, Pakistan started to receive an abnormal amount of rain. Within a month, the downpours had submerged substantial swaths of the country.Wherever the water accumulated, it brought destruction and death. And though the rain stopped several months ago, millions of people are still affected by its wreckage. With this in mind, what were the causes and the consequences of these floods, and what part, if any, did climate change play in the development of the disaster?What Were the Causes of ...read more

Hurricane season — from June through November in the Atlantic — is right around the corner. And while we won’t know the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) official predictions for another few weeks, that hasn’t stopped other long-range forecasters from staking their claims.In Colorado State University’s 2023 forecast are six hurricanes and two major hurricanes (meaning Category 3 or greater). Researchers at North Carolina State University tend to agree with that ...read more

Many things go wrong when a human spends months alone in a dark cave. Time stills and the body’s rhythms go awry. Sleep withers to a few hours a night, and menstruation may come to a halt. Enthralling stories, like that of Spanish climber and cave-dweller Beatrice Flamini's, shed light on what motivates someone to become a cave dweller.Flamini's Life as a Cave DwellerOn April 14, Flamini emerged from a cave in the country after spending a record 500 days isolated underground, save for a “tec ...read more

With the help of a local fisherman, identified as Jesus Artemio Poot Villa, scientists found the second-deepest blue hole in the world in an unlikely place — the shallow Chetumal Bay located on the southeastern side of the Yucatan Peninsula. Filled with a hostile, oxygen-starved environment, the newly-named Taam Ja’ Blue Hole (TJBH) could one day invite research into how life could survive on alien planets or other harsh environments.What Is a Blue Hole?A blue hole is a vertical cave typical ...read more

Elephants love eating bananas, and feast on them whole whenever they can. But Pang Pha, a 36-year-old Asian elephant who lives at the Berlin Zoo, is a little more precious: she happens to prefer her bananas peeled. While growing up, Pha was under the custody of an attentive caretaker who used to peel her bananas for her. Now, she seems to have taught herself to break the banana against her trunk and wriggle the insides of the fruit from its peel, discarding the latter and savoring just the pulp. ...read more