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Watch out dummy, there’s a drone coming at you! (Credit: Virginia Tech) Thanks to a dummy we now have a better idea of what happens when a drone hits a person’s head. A study by researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) one of the Federal Aviation Administration’s UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) test sites, suggests that commercial-sized drones can cause a wide range of injuries to people on the ground. In the United States, drone fligh ...read more

The remains of a Neanderthal boy who died 49,000 years ago is revealing information about the skeletal and physiological growth of our instinct cousins. (Credit: Paleoanthropology Group MNCN-CSIC) Though his life was short — he never reached the age of 8 — his fossil remains could have far-reaching influence in hominin research. A paper to be published Friday in Science reveals the discovery of the well-preserved skeleton of a Neanderthal boy who lived in Spain 49,000 yea ...read more

Upside-down jellyfish in a tank. (Credit: Caltech) Bees, sharks, anteaters, humans, we all share the need for sleep. Why we do it is of course still largely a mystery, but the fact of it remains incontrovertible. Now, new research on jellyfish is pushing the origin of sleep even further back down the evolutionary tree, before even the appearance of brains. It’s long been known that any creature with a central nervous system needs to sleep, but jellyfish are effectively bra ...read more

The Parkes radio telescope “heard” the first fast radio burst in 2001. Could bursts actually be going off every second? (Credit: CSIRO) Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the hottest topics in astronomy right now. These short but extremely powerful bursts last only milliseconds, but release tremendous amounts of energy during that minute period of time. Since publication of their initial discovery in 2007 (the burst itself occurred in 2001), just over 25 of these sources have been ...read more

Like many people, I was first introduced to the world of archaeology by Indiana Jones, that adventuresome character who lit up the big screen rescuing artifacts from villains by the skin of his teeth. Indy was awesome and will always have a place in my heart. But while he succeeded in making archaeology seem romantic, I never understood why it was important or believed I could join the adventure until I was introduced (via the small screen) to a real life archaeologist named Sarah Parcak. Parcak ...read more

(Credit: Shutterstock) Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and hackers have plenty of will and countless ways to attack a secure network—even if it’s not connected to the internet. In the latest demonstration proving no network is safe, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev used security cameras equipped with night vision to send and receive data from a network that wasn’t even connected to the internet. Firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention s ...read more

Ivan Ivanovich’s face obscured by the sign proclaiming him a dummy. via Astronautix The countryside near Perm in the Soviet Union was rocketed by what sounded like an explosion in the afternoon of March 25, 1961. A capsule was falling from the sky, and before it hit the ground an ejection seat shot out, sending a passenger to a soft landing not far away. When recovery crews and volunteer helpers finally reached the landing site they rushed to the lifeless figure lying on the snowy gr ...read more

Mount Hora in Malawi, where researcher Jessica Thompson obtained the oldest African DNA ever successfully sequenced. (Credit Jessica Thompson/Emory University) A great irony about Africa is that, even though it’s the birthplace of our species, we know almost nothing about the prehistoric populations who lived there: the bands of hunter gatherers who moved across the massive continent, interacting with and sometimes replacing other groups. Today that changes. Thanks to new research th ...read more