In a slightly depressing new paper, two researchers describe how they tried to get access to the data behind 111 of the most cited psychology and psychiatry papers published in the past decade. The researchers, Tom E. Hardwicke and John P. A. Ioannidis of Stanford, wanted to place the data into a ‘Data Ark‘ to ensure its continued preservation for science. Unfortunately, in most cases, the data was not made available. The paper is called Populating the Data Ark and it’s out no ...read more

Scientists have discovered smaller dogs aim higher, most likely to appear larger. Photo Credit: Mike Finkelstein You know how people say you should aim high? Well, small male dogs have taken that advice to heart. A new study has found that they lift their legs higher when urinating than larger dogs, apparently attempting to appear bigger than they are.  Dog walkers know that walking a male dog is an exercise in patience, as they want to pause to sniff, lift, and dribble a little urine ...read more

Cruise ship employees, part of a “polar bear guard” unit, shot this bear after it got close to them. Experts say such encounters are happening more often. (Credit: Gustav Busch Arntsen/Governor of Svalbard) Workers were still fast asleep in their orange tents at Greenland’s Summit Station when the polar bear neared camp. An early riser spotted the bear and shouted to alert campers, sending people to the safety of a hard-sided building nearby. As the bear scoured the research ...read more

Voyager (left) launched in 1977; New Horizons (right) launched in 2006. The two missions have a curiously interconnected past.(Credit: NASA/JPL; NASA) While many people know about the Voyager missions launched in the 1970s and the New Horizons probe that visited Pluto in 2015, few are aware that the relationship between these two missions dates back to the 1960s. Had scientific goals been different at the time, Voyager might have taken the place of New Horizons, decades before the latter was e ...read more

SIMP J01365663+0933473, shown here in this artist’s concept, is a massive, nearby exoplanet with a powerful, aurora-generating magnetic field.(Credit: Caltech/Chuck Carter; NRAO/AUI/NSF) A bizarre rogue planet without a star is roaming the Milky Way just 20 light-years from the Sun. And according to a recently published study in The Astrophysical Journal, this strange, nomadic world has an incredibly powerful magnetic field that is some 4 million times stronger than Earth’s. Furthe ...read more

A soft robotic device powered by popcorn, constructed by researchers in Cornell’s Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab. (Credit: Cornell University) Robots have always been cool and futuristic. Since we live in such ultra-modern times we’re seeing more and more of them, whether it’s to clean our floors, drive our cars or even give us extra limbs. But usually the focus is on what robots can now do, and less on what actually powers their abilities. Not today: A team of Cornell ...read more

(Credit: Ivan Marjanovic/Shutterstock) If the quintessential ecological battle cry of the seventies was “Save The Whales,” today it is “Save The Bees.” From news headlines to environmental campaigns to alarming documentaries, we’re warned that if the bees go extinct, we’ll go with them. It makes sense — about 75 percent of crops are reliant on animal pollinators, which are often honeybees. Without them, the theory goes, we’d not only lose $212 bi ...read more

(Credit: Hayk_Shalunts/shutterstock) Zebra finch males sing just one song their entire lives. It’s a tune to woo females and keep away other males. Now scientists find they may have a way to reconstruct the songs these birds sing in their dreams. Birds sing by using muscles to vibrate air. Prior work suggested that each of the different muscles that play a part in bird song just controlled one acoustic feature of singing. However, recent work hinted that each muscle could play more ...read more