Current food packaging often contains films that must be removed before recycling, increasing costs. (Credit: Lunatictm/Shutterstock)
Rip open a bag of chips and you’ll find a shiny, silver material staring back at you. This metallized film helps keep packaged foods like cookies and energy bars tasting fresh by preventing gases from leaking out (or in). The material is the industry standard for flexible, shelf-stable food packaging. But it’s not so great for the environment.
To ...read more
A power superflare fries an exoplanet in the star's system. (Credit: NASA, ESA and D. Player)
Astronomers have learned over the past decade that even large solar flares — powerful bursts of radiation — from our Sun are actually small potatoes compared to some of the flares we see around other stars. It’s now common to spot “superflares” hundreds to thousands of times more powerful than the Sun’s flares from stars hundreds of light-years away. Earlier this y ...read more
Audubon’s Climate Watch Program needs volunteers to help it spot 12 birds threatened by climate change. Are you in?
“Hope is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the soul,” Emily Dickinson wrote. Is there hope for our feathered friends in the era of climate change? Yes, but they need our help. More than 300 North American birds will likely lose over 50 percent of their current geographical range by 2080, according to Audubon’s 2014 Birds and Climate Change Rep ...read more
Did Sue the T. rex and other members of the species have a great sense of smell? (Credit: The Field Museum)
As fascinating and awe-inspiring as fossils are, the ancient bones tell us only so much about how an animal actually lived.
Take T. rex, for example: How did the animal find food, through sharp sight, great hearing or a keen sense of smell? The nose knows, say authors of a new paper on the iconic dinosaur's olfactory ability.
In most modern animals, including birds, the size ...read more
(Credit: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock)
The pursuit of science is usually an unending stream of embarrassments for the human ego. No, the sun doesn’t revolve around us. No, we’re not all that different from common animals. No, we’re not even the only humans. But, in some ways at least, our brains really are special.
A new study out this week in Nature Neuroscience shows one more way we really are different from some of our closest simian relatives: our mental capac ...read more
