Soy formula exposure during infancy may cause more severe period cramps in adulthood. Around 12 percent of babies are regularly fed soy. (Credit: MaraZe/Shutterstock)
Many women accept menstrual cramps as a fact of life. But researchers say that some women have it worse than others and that it may be related to what they were fed as infants.
Female babies fed soy formula are prone to more painful periods during their young adult years, according to a new study published this week from the ...read more
A female orangutan and her baby in Gunung Leuser National Park, Sumatra, Indonesia. (Credit: By Don Mammoser/Shutterstock)
It’s easy enough to spot similarities between orangutans and humans — the “man of the forest” can certainly act human, and they share our big brains, social structures and even opposable thumbs. It shouldn’t be too surprising, since we also share about 97 percent of our DNA with the great apes.
But a new finding, published today in Science Adv ...read more
Topography under Hiawatha glacier in Greenland, mapped with airborne radar data (1997 to 2014, NASA; 2016 Alfred Wegener Institute). Black triangles and purple circles are elevated peaks around the rim and center. Dotted red lines and black circles show locations of additional sampling. (Credit: Kjæer et al. / Science Advances)
Most of Earth’s surface has been plotted, mapped and measured. And along the way, scientists have turned up a plethora of craters big and small. But there w ...read more
The Bay of Naples in Italy, with the Campi Flegrei to the north (top) and Vesuvius to the east (right). Image taken 2002, NASA.
First things first. This new article in Science Advances I’m about to discuss does not — I repeat, does not — say that an eruption will be happening soon at the Campi Flegrei in Italy. There is nothing in the paper that says we need to elevate the alert status or that anything fundamentally has changed about the current state of the caldera. So, nobod ...read more
The image shows an artist’s impression of Barnard’s star b and its dim host star. (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)
Put on your friendliest face and say hello to the newest member of our planetary neighborhood: Barnard’s star b.
An international team led by researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science announced today that they’ve detected an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s star, the closest single star to Earth at just six light-years away. The ...read more
Damage caused by Hurricane Harvey in Rockport, Texas. (Credit: AMFPhotography/Shutterstock)
The death toll from hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria numbers in the thousands. Excessive rain and flooding from the Atlantic hurricane season led to damages that cost at least $265 billion. Now, two new studies show how human activity is at fault.
“Tropical cyclones can have really strong impacts on people’s lives,” Christina Patricola, a climate scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley N ...read more
An artist’s illustration shows what of the exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s Star might look like on the surface. (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)
Just six light-years from Earth, the second closest star system to our sun hosts a frozen super-Earth, according to new findings by an international team of researchers.
Barnard’s Star is a small, ancient kind of sun called a red dwarf. And while it’s not easily visible without a telescope, Barnard’s Star has long attracted astro ...read more
What does a martian sunrise sound like? Now you can find out, as researchers have “sonified” (or turned into sound) an image of the Opportunity rover’s 5,000th sunrise on Mars. The data have been used to create a unique, two-minute piece of music, titled “Mars Soundscapes” — check it out below:
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To turn the photo into sound, researchers scanned across the image from left to right. They combined brightness and color from each individual pixel ...read more
The Ant 2 “ghost” galaxy is a large, dim dwarf galaxy that scientists have discovered near the edge of the Milky Way. While low in mass, Ant 2 is about the same size as the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). (Credit: V. Belokurov and A. Smith (Cambridge, UK and CCA, New York, US) based on the images by Marcus and Gail Davies and Robert Gendler)
An international team of astronomers can’t fully explain the “ghost” galaxy that they discovered about 130 ...read more
The giant South American river turtle stands on the banks of the Tabuleiro do Embaubal Wildlife Refuge in Brazil. (Credit: Tarcisio Schnaider/shutterstock)
A group of community members living in the Brazilian Amazon have created biodiversity hotspots by working to protect a single species, the giant South American river turtle. That’s according to a new study out Tuesday. The finding showcases the power of local conservation efforts, particularly in places that lack financial resources, ...read more
