Thanks to sweat, you can drink in peace. (Credit: Yellow Cat/Shutterstock) Our fingers take a little while to get used to glass. New research shows that when we touch a glass object, whether it be a cup or a smartphone screen, it can take up to 20 seconds before our fingers form a good grip. This is in contrast to things like rubber, which may be just as smooth, but are much softer and easier to hold. Glass is slippery, obviously, but we can still get a handle on it thanks to small a ...read more

Morning view over the city Qalatga Darband, a lost city that was recently found with the help of drone technology. (Credit: The British Museum) With the help of drones, archaeologists discovered a lost city with ties to Alexander the Great, according to the British Museum in London. Qalatga Darband, an ancient city located in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan, lies along the Darband-I Rania, or a pass at the Zagros Mountains. What’s so significant about this path? Besides being a historic route ...read more

Get your earplugs ready because this post is metal. Last week, a group of neuroscientists published a paper reporting altered brain activity in heavy metal lovers. The paper raised a few eyebrows, not least for its statement that metal fans show “disorders of behavioral and emotional cognition.“ It’s already attracted some convincing critical comments on PubPeer. To my mind, the paper is a perfect example of a flawed neuroimaging study. Researchers Yan Sun and colleagues scann ...read more

This figure shows information sharing across all electrodes before (left) and after vagus nerve stimulation. The yellow and orange colors on the right indicate an increase of connectivity among posterior parietal regions. (Credit: Corazzol et al.) It’s generally believed that patients who are in a vegetative state more than a year after experiencing severe brain trauma won’t regain consciousness ever again. Their essential bodily functions will continue, but it’s extremely un ...read more

Image:Flickr/Felinest If you’re a “cat person”, I’m willing to bet that you are already saying “Of course cats have personalities!” But which parts of your feline friend’s personality are just part of being a cat, and which vary from cat to cat? Well, according to this study, there are five traits that account for the majority of the variability between cat personalities: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Dominance, Impulsiveness and Agreeableness. ...read more

This animation shows how temperatures at the surface and subsurface of the tropical Pacific ocean departed from average over five-day periods starting in early August 2017. The vertical axis shows the depth below the surface in meters. The cross-section is right along the equator. Note the blue blob indicative of relatively cool water rising from the depths and spreading eastward. (Source: NOAA ENSO Blog) Here we go again? Following a mild and short-lived La Niña episode in 2016/20 ...read more

The startup Flytrex launched a delivery drone service in Reykjavik, Iceland starting in August 2017. Credit: Flytrex Delivery drones are carrying customer orders for burgers and smartphones across a bay of water straddled by the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik—and that’s just the start of a much more ambitious plan. Before the end of 2017, the Israeli startup Flytrex envisions sending its delivery drones to the street corners of certain Reykjavik neighborhoods. T ...read more

Asian carp jump from the water at the mouth of the Wabash River in Ohio. (Credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers/Todd Davis) For years, people have been freaking out that Asian carp are about to invade the Great Lakes. That concern seemed more real than ever this summer after an Illinois fisherman caught a carp in June less than 10 miles from Lake Michigan — beyond the barriers designed to keep them out. These voracious fish have already decimated Midwestern rivers. They’re filters f ...read more