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

Picture rows of translucent tanks in a dark room. Partially formed embryos float silently, bathed in amniotic fluid. That’s the science fiction portrayal of an artificial womb, where machines gestate our babies, stirring unsettling undertones of inhumanity. It’s birth without pregnancy. As The Matrix’s Neo might say: Whoa. While that’s still the stuff of fantasy, there have been serious attempts to create artificial wombs dating back to the 1960s. Most fell far short of t ...read more

Connected devices make our lives easier — and more vulnerable. We need white hats more than ever. One winter morning in 2015, as he left for work from his home in Silver Spring, Md., Jonathan Margulies pushed the button on his remote to close his garage door. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. The motor was shot. He ended up replacing it with a “smart” opener that not only lifted and lowered the door, but also connected to the internet. With a swipe on a smartphone ...read more

The decrease in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests researchers observed in a pilot study of the Portland, Ore., area after the Affordable Care Act went into effect. Only middle-aged Portlanders, 45-64 years old, saw this benefit, though — the nearly universally insured elderly population, 65+, saw no changes. How often men should knock boots weekly to potentially reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease. Doing the dirty deed seems to lower blood levels of homocysteine, an amino ac ...read more