A new study of obesity genes and different kinds of exercise finds that jogging is the best way to counteract weight gain. (Credit: By Giuseppe Elio Cammarata/Shutterstock)
Obesity is worldwide health problem tied to both nature and nurture. Genetic mutations make some people more likely to gain weight than others, but exercise lessens those chances. Now, some surprising new research suggests that certain exercises are better than others at counteracting these fat genes. For example, cycling ...read more
A type of tumor that can pass between dogs is showing researchers how cancer cells evolve. (Credit: Jess Wealleans/Shutterstock)
Thousands of years ago in Asia, a dog got cancer. A single cell underwent a mutation that turned it into the beginnings of a tumor. The dog eventually died, but not before passing on a unique legacy: its cancer cells.
Today, those cells are still growing in dogs across the globe. That’s because this particular kind of cancer cell turned out to possess an in ...read more
WASP-121b is so hot that the planet has puffed up beyond its ability to hold onto its own atmosphere, and is instead streaming it away as it flies around its star every 30 hours. (Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Olmsted/STScI)
Astronomers just used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to take the temperature of an exoplanet called WASP-121b and discovered that the world is so hot that heavy metals actually leak behind it as it whips about its central star. It's the first time scientists have seen such a phenom ...read more
Turtles, tortoises (shown here) and other reptiles change sex inside their eggs depending on the outside temperature. That trait has scientists worried that climate change may skew their populations toward one gender. (Credit: Seasoning17/Shutterstock)
Freshwater turtle nests dot the sandy shores of ponds throughout Asia. And like many reptiles, the embryos become males or females depending on how warm or cool their nests are. Females like it hot, scientists have noticed. That is, when it&rsq ...read more
LightSail 2 took this picture of itself, with Earth in the background, while deploying its sail on July 23. (Credit: The Planetary Society)
The Planetary Society, a non-profit organization focused on space exploration, has successfully transferred their LightSail 2 spacecraft from one orbit to another using only the power of sunlight, a first. The recent success not only proves the effectiveness of solar sailing technology, but also opens up a new, more cost-effective way to propel small sp ...read more
The placenta has no native microbes, scientists say. (Credit: Blue Planet Studio/Shutterstock)
The placenta is a unique organ. The temporary body part forms in the uterus during pregnancy and supplies the developing baby with nutrients and oxygen while also carrying away waste products. The organ is also a common source of pregnancy complications.
Recently scientists have wondered whether microbes might be to blame. Some research has suggested that, like the gut, a host of bacteria coloni ...read more
A river channel filled with cliff swallow holes carved into the Desert Spring Tuff. Image by Erik Klemetti
Earlier this month, I spent a little over a week exploring one of the biggest mysteries in then Cascade Range. These volcanoes span from Northern California into British Columbia and host such well-known peaks as Mount St. Helens, Hood and Shasta. Yet, some of the largest eruptions over the past million years in the Cascades may have come from volcanoes that are totally hidden from view ...read more
(Credit: Jakub Grygier/Shutterstock)
It’s possible to choose between being the captain or the co-pilot of your dreams. Lucid dreaming is a phenomenon that sees people taking control of the narrative of their dreams, often with thrilling results. Always wanted to fly? You can lift right off. Hungry for a giant cheeseburger? Dive right in.
Practitioners say that the technique requires discipline and patience to master. But there are also chemical shortcuts: supplements that seem to bri ...read more
This image of the Crab Nebula in x-rays shows the pulsar clearly spinning at the nebula's center. (Credit: NASA/CXC/ASU/J. Hester et al.)
Astronomers using the Tibet AS-gamma Experiment have discovered the highest-energy light ever measured from an astrophysical source. Photons streaming from the Crab Nebula were recently measured at energies well over 100 tera-electronvolts (TeV). That's a trillion electron volts, or some 10 times the maximum energy that the Large Hadron Collider sees when ...read more
