(Credit: anetta/shutterstock) Anyone who’s hung out with babies knows how eager they are to communicate, even if they can’t do it very well. One way they do this is with the gesture of pointing, sticking out the index finger to indicate some object without touching it. Babies all over the world point in roughly the same way, starting at around 9 to 14 months. It’s a fundamental part of human interactions, as borne out by so many emojis. But as important as pointing is to ...read more

The skull fragment known as Apidima 1 (right) is about 210,000 years old, according to a new analysis. Seen from the rear (middle) and side (left) in a reconstruction, the partial skull's rounded shape shares a unique feature of modern humans. (Credit: Katerina Harvati, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen) A scrap of skullcap collected in 1978 and stored for decades in an Athens museum may rewrite the timeline of our species leaving our ancestral African homeland. A new analysis of ...read more

Planting trees, while beneficial to the planet, is not an easy solution to climate change. (Credit: Janelle Lugge/Shutterstock) Last week, a new study in the journal Science highlighted the role forests could play in tackling climate change. Researchers estimated that by restoring forests to their maximum potential, we could cut down atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) by 25 percent — a move that would take us back to levels not seen in over a century. Though the study brings hope in the f ...read more

Clownfish rely on darkness to hatch. Human lights are stealing it away. (Credit: patrik johnson/Shutterstock) From space, the picture is crystal clear. Across the globe, cities twinkle with artificial light against the night sky. And the nocturnal expanse is only getting brighter. Scientists estimate the amount of artificial light at night grows by more than two percent every year. The nighttime glow carries detrimental consequences for human health and disrupts animal behaviors like mig ...read more

(Credit: ISRO) India is expected to launch their second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2 on July 14. The launch will take up an orbiter, a lander, and a rover, dubbed Pragyan, all designed to study the moon’s little explored south pole. Using the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) most powerful rocket, Chandrayaan-2 will reach Earth’s orbit, where it’ll spend about 16 days before it heads over to the moon. After a short time in lunar orbit, the lander and t ...read more

Anne Innis Dagg, Smitten by Giraffe: My Life as a Citizen Scientist, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016. 256 pp. $34.95 hardcover. Image courtesy of McGill-Queen’s University Press Smitten by Giraffe: My Life as a Citizen Scientist is a memoir by Anne Innis Dagg. In the text, she describes her pursuits as a citizen scientist, ranging from her first encounter with giraffe (the plural of giraffe used in Smitten By Giraffe is “giraffe”) as a child, thro ...read more

The newly found asteroids circles entirely within Earth's orbit. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Astronomers just found an asteroid circling surprisingly close to our home sun, adding one more sibling to a rare family of space rocks. Our solar system has a lot of rubble left over from its creation that's strewn haphazardly between and beyond the planets. But there is some order to the mess. At the outer extremes, the Oort Cloud encloses the solar system in a giant sphere made of comets that o ...read more

Mucus (shown in pink) is secreted by a cell in the stomach. (Credit: The Path to Digestion Is Paved with Repair. Underwood J, PLoS Biology Vol. 4/9/2006, e307. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040307) We know it best as a stringy slime dripping from noses and as viscous, discolored goop hacked up by sickened airways. But it’s so much more than that. Coating the surfaces of guts, eyes, mouth, nasal cavity and ears, mucus plays a range of important physiological roles — hydrating, cleaning ...read more

(Credit: ESA/GCP/UPV/EHU Bilbao) Near the north pole of Mars, a dust storm has been ravaging for over a month. The dark clouds have been moving around the ice cap at about 4.5 mph (2 m/s), as observed by The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft. The above image frames make up a timelapse covering about 70 minutes, as dust storms push across the planet's north polar ice cap. These storms usually last for a few days or weeks but can cover the entire planet when they&r ...read more

A sulfur-crested cockatoo, the same species as Snowball. (Credit: Martin Pelanek/Shutterstock) Whether it’s doing the twist, the moonwalk or flossing, people love to dance. Moving to music is a universal human phenomenon. But curiously, in the animal kingdom our need to bust a move is nearly unique. Not even primates – our closes evolutionary relatives – dance. Parrots are the only known exception. The vocal birds have a couple of go-to dance moves. They bob their heads ...read more