Forecast for storm surge Sunday, Sept. 9 at 1 p.m. through Tuesday, Sept. 12 at 7 a.m. (Source: National Weather Service) Hurricane Irma is a true monster, exceeding the size of Florida itself, and threatening to flatten structures throughout the state with extreme winds. But perhaps the biggest risk is now posed by storm surge – water pushed up onto land. The animation above shows an experimental forecast for storm surge from the National Weather Service. It shows the height of wat ...read more

Fierce warrior Lagertha on the show “Vikings” is fictional, but a genetic study confirms the warrior buried in a Viking-era grave was a woman. (Credit History Channel) This one goes out to all my fellow shieldmaidens: researchers have confirmed through ancient DNA testing that the warrior buried in a famous Viking grave was a woman. Researchers have excavated hundreds of Viking-era graves at Birka, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Sweden. One of the graves, originally excavated in t ...read more

Map of the epicenter (star) and modeled shaking intensity for the M8.1 Pijijiapan earthquakes on September 7, 2017. USGS. One of the largest Central American earthquakes ever occurred last night off the coast of Mexico and Guatemala. The USGS estimates it was a magnitude 8.1 that ruptured about 70 kilometers off the shore, with the city of Pijijiapan closest to the epicenter. At least 32 people have known to have died in the earthquake so far according to early reports. Mexico’s 8.4 quake ...read more

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(Credit: dotshock/Shutterstock) Studies of human evolution typically look at spans of thousands of years — the length of time it often takes various mutations to take hold and become noticeable. Evolution is more dynamic than that though; it’s an ongoing process with subtle variations on traits emerging while others dip into the background. Measuring the kinds of changes that are going on right now would give us valuable insights about not only our past, but also into where we ...read more

By: Megan Ray Nichols It’s always fun to have a ladybug land on your arm while outside — but these days, it’s more and more likely that any ladybugs landing on you or the plants in your garden are not native to North America. Over the past three decades, several ladybug species native to North America have all but disappeared from the landscape. At the same time, other species, introduced from Europe and Asia, have proliferated.  What’s happening to our native ladybu ...read more

Ghostly Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. NASA. A close look at the Apollo 11 EVA footage shows ghostly astronauts, which of course has launched speculation that the footage is faked. If NASA could get to the Moon, why couldn’t it capture good video?! The footage wasn’t faked. The poor quality and ghostly look is an artifact from the odd way NASA had to convert the lunar footage to a format that could be broadcast. To understand this, we have to unpack how exactly TVs work ...read more

11. In 1868, Charles Darwin was the first to document a collection of physical and behavioral traits seen in domestic animals, particularly mammals, but not their wild relatives. 12. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that researchers offered a single explanation for the phenomenon of floppy ears, smaller teeth, tameness and other “domestication syndrome” traits: a mild deficit in neural crest cells.13 In vertebrate embryos, neural crest cells (NCCs) form along the dorsal side, or ...read more

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