Beijing commuters drive through a layer of "severe" air pollution in this 2014 photo. A new analysis says that human-caused climate change will lead to thousands of additional deaths across Chinese cities in the decades ahead. (Credit: Hung Chung Chih/Shutterstock)
As Europe’s latest heat wave showed, climate change is scorching the Earth. The World Meteorological Organization suspects the period from 2015 to 2019 will be the warmest five years on record. China is particularly in troubl ...read more
Astronauts traveling to Mars will get hit with long-term, low-dosage radiation. A new study in mice suggests the radiation could cause lasting memory and learning problems. (Credit: u3D/Shutterstock)
There's a major outstanding question lingering over the future of human spaceflight: Just how much radiation can the body handle? While humans have spent more than a year at a time on orbiting space stations without ill effect from radiation, almost all astronaut experience has been in low-Earth ...read more
A digital reconstruction of two inscribed stones from the cities of Witzna and Naranja, one of which contains a phrase indicating that Witzna was burned. (Credit: Wahl et al./Nature Human Behaviour)
The Maya Classic Period, which stretched between roughly 300 and 900 A.D. is typically seen as a kind of golden age for the ancient Central American civilization. Populations boomed, supported by vast systems of terraced fields and canals that provided irrigation in the dry months. Art and scienc ...read more
New Zealand's kiwi birds, a national symbol, are endangered. And scientists say the rest of the island's bird populations have also been hard hit by humans. (Credit: Lakeview Images/Shutterstock)
When the Maori arrived to New Zealand from Tahiti some 700 years ago, they found a “land of birds.” The gargantuan, ostrich-like moa stood as tall as 10 feet and the kakapo – a giant flightless parrot with the face of an owl –then roamed the island country in abundance. Today, ...read more
The brain is buzzing with gamma oscillations - cycles of neuronal activity with a frequency (around 40-60 Hz) higher than that of other major brain waves.
A longstanding hypothesis is that gamma serves as a kind of 'clock signal' that enables the coordination and integration of signals. Gamma has even been proposed as the mechanism by which the brain 'binds' information from different brain areas into a unitary consciousness.
However, while the gamma-clock hypothesis is intriguing, direct ...read more
To understand what life-signs astronomers read from a planet, they must first understand the planet’s star. (Credit: NASA/GSFC/C. Meaney/B. Monroe/S. Wiessinger)
When astronomers look for signs of life outside of the solar system, they’re mostly looking for what researchers call biosignatures. These are tell-tale indicators that something is living on another world.
So, while the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) draws headlines for hunting alien communications l ...read more
(Credit: Immersion Images/Shutterstock)
From the time we see Bambi’s mom bite the dust, we all know what death
is. At least, we think we do. But the simple definition of death—that the body
stops working—doesn’t take into account how weird our bodies actually are.
“We really know nothing about what happens when you die,” says Peter Noble, a former professor at the University of Alabama. Noble knows firsthand that surprises await scientists studying the e ...read more
Comparison of satellite images of the western edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet about 250 miles across, one acquired in 2018 on July 30, and the other on July 31 of this year. Vastly expanded areas of blue in this year's image are indicative of water at the surface. The gray area, known as the "ablation zone," is where ice is exposed and experiencing melting. (Images: NASA Worldview. Animation: Tom Yulsman)
As forecast, the dome of heat that brutalized Western Europe has moved over Greenland, ...read more
