My, what sharp teeth you have, Janjucetus. New research finds ancient whales like “The Juce” here had dentition more similar to land carnivores than today’s filter-feeders. (Credit: Nobu Tamura/Wikimedia Commons)
The biggest animals on the planet right now are baleen whales, which upped their size thanks to efficient filter-feeding. How they got that specialized system has long been a mystery, but a new study nixes some theories about it evolving out of ancient ...read more
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The FDA has seized vials of smallpox vaccine from a California immunotherapy company, claiming they had been used for an unauthorized cancer treatment.
StemImmune markets an unapproved treatment for cancer involving stem cells and a type of virus commonly used to inoculate against smallpox. The virus, vaccinia, is an attractive option because it’s good at getting into cancerous cells and can be genetically tweaked to improve effectiveness. It’s no ...read more
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Animals from sheep to fur seals share a curious acoustic trait: Their calls feature a vibrato-like trill.
Vibrato is the small, quick oscillation in pitch that musicians use to accentuate certain notes. It makes a note sound a bit wobbly and helps catch our attention. It’s found all over the animal kingdom, too — think the staccato “baaaaa’s” of a goat. But animals’ pulsating cries are far more than stylistic. A new study f ...read more
Texas National Guard members rescue survivors from Harvey on August 27, 2017. Photo by 1st Lt. Zachary West, 100th MPAD) CC-by-2.0
The biggest news right now is the devastation caused by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey. It wasn’t the arrival of the storm itself but rather the long and intense rains that have done the damage — and really, the flooding that the Houston area is experiencing right now is some of the most stunning and devastating in the last century for the United States. ...read more
The discussion of scientific papers on Twitter is largely dominated by spam bots, paid content promoters, and “monomaniacs” obsessed with a single issue. That’s according to researchers Nicolas Robinson-Garcia and colleagues in a new paper called The unbearable emptiness of tweeting—About journal articles
To reach their bleak conclusion, Robinson-Garcia et al. read 8,206 tweets. Tweets were included if they contained a link to a peer-reviewed paper in the field of dentr ...read more
In April 2016, an FDA committee voted not to recommend acceptance of eteplirsen, a drug designed to treat muscular dystrophy. In September, however, the FDA did approve the drug, following a heated internal debate.
This wasn’t the end of the story, however. What followed was an unusual scientific controversy that played out in the peer-reviewed literature, discussed in a Retraction Watch post this week.
Following the approval of eteplirsen, Ellis Unger and Robert Califf wrote a letter to ...read more
The impression that your cup of coffee is laughing at you, or that your laundry machine has googly eyes, is uncanny but common. It’s even the subject of a Twitter account called Faces in Things with more than half a million followers. The account has featured winking chairs, moping suitcases and a smug lemon loaf. But this illusion, called face pareidolia, isn’t uniquely human. Monkeys can see it too.
Face pareidolia could be a side effect of humans&rs ...read more
This broken spear point found between two bison ribs ultimately changed not only the field of archaeology but also the narrative surrounding the arrival of Native Americans in North America. (Credit: DMNS/E-51)
The Folsom spear point, which was excavated in 1927 near the small town of Folsom, New Mexico, is one of the most famous artifacts in North American archaeology, and for good reason: It was found in direct association with the bones of an extinct form of Ice Age bison. The Folsom point ...read more
