Artist concept of the Sea Dragon in the water. Aerojet via Astronautix.
Imagine standing among the small crowd in a viewing gallery aboard a command ship floating 35 miles off the coast of Cape Canaveral. Five miles away you see the upper portion of a rocket bobbing gently, waves lapping at the fuselage. Though isolated at sea there’s a buzz of activity in the air. The conversation on board is punctuated by a loudspeaker booming status updates on the rocket in the water. Finally, an annou ...read more
(Credit: Aristokrates/Shutterstock)
After a protracted fight, salmon have become the first genetically modified animal to be sold in stores.
The salmon, implanted with genes that boost their growth, come from the U.S.-based biotech firm AquaBounty Technologies, which has been attempting to gain regulatory approval for their product for some 25 years. Last week, AquaBounty announced it had indeed sold salmon fillets to customers in Canada after receiving regulatory approval in 2016, t ...read more
Over the past decade and a half, satellites the size of a toaster have opened up new possibilities for using space. Called CubeSats, these diminutive spacecraft offer several appealing virtues for scientific and national security missions and one major handicap—but a fix is on the way.
Built to a standard size of roughly 10 centimeters on each side, the featherweight CubeSats can be quickly developed and inexpensively launched, because they piggyback on rockets hauling bigger payloads int ...read more
By Kayla Keyes, Mote Marine Laboratory
Recent news about Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been grim: the most recent aerial survey of the reef identified a stretch of bleached coral over 900 miles (1500 km) long, and scientists have declared the reef to be in a terminal stage. Studies have shown that losing the Great Barrier Reef would result in a globally destructive economic and environmental chain reaction, but despite all of the pressures threatening the future of our reefs a positiv ...read more
A reconstruction of the gliding mammals. (Credit: April I. Neander/UChicago)
The oldest gliding mammals ever discovered are strengthening the case for taking to the skies.
Well, they couldn’t exactly soar like the eagles, but the two new species, discovered in China, at least sampled the aerial life. Both date to around 160 million years ago during the Jurassic Period, when mammals as a lineage were first getting off the ground — both metaphorically and literally. They’re not ...read more
The entrance to Lida Ajer, a cave in the Sumatran highlands of Indonesia. Researchers say teeth found at the cave belong to anatomically modern humans and are up to 73,000 years ago. (Credit Julien Louys)
The conventional timeline of human evolution and migration continues to crumble in the face of new research. The latest finding puts anatomically modern humans deep in Indonesia up to 73,000 years ago — tens of thousands of years before once thought possible.
The old school timelin ...read more
Another day, another over-hyped sex differences neuroscience study. The headlines this time around are especially cringeworthy:
Study Finds Women’s Brains Are Far More Active Than Men’s
Women Are Using A LOT More Of Their Brains Than Men. Surprise, surprise 😏
Women really DO overthink things! Scans reveal they have ‘more active brains than men’
The paper in question was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and it comes from a group led by Dr. D ...read more
The Lina biodegradable car. (Credit: Eindhoven University)
A concept car in the Netherlands is constructed almost entirely of materials the grow in the soil.
Called “Lina,” the biodegradable car is the work of students at Eindhoven University of Technology and is composed mainly of sugar beet resin and flax. It weighs in at under 700 pounds and can reach a top speed of around 50 miles per hour. The four-seater runs on batteries and can go about 60 miles on a single charge ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
Some 4,000 years ago in the Russian steppe, the relationship between man and dog was, you could say, complicated.
It seems in that time and place, as a rite of passage into manhood, teenage boys were sent to a ritual site to “transform” into dogs by eating their flesh.
This is the new interpretation, presented in an upcoming paper in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, of roasted and chopped bones from at least 64 dogs and wolves, found at the Bronze ...read more
