New Zealand's kiwi birds, a national symbol, are endangered. And scientists say the rest of the island's bird populations have also been hard hit by humans. (Credit: Lakeview Images/Shutterstock)
When the Maori arrived to New Zealand from Tahiti some 700 years ago, they found a “land of birds.” The gargantuan, ostrich-like moa stood as tall as 10 feet and the kakapo – a giant flightless parrot with the face of an owl –then roamed the island country in abundance. Today, ...read more
The brain is buzzing with gamma oscillations - cycles of neuronal activity with a frequency (around 40-60 Hz) higher than that of other major brain waves.
A longstanding hypothesis is that gamma serves as a kind of 'clock signal' that enables the coordination and integration of signals. Gamma has even been proposed as the mechanism by which the brain 'binds' information from different brain areas into a unitary consciousness.
However, while the gamma-clock hypothesis is intriguing, direct ...read more
To understand what life-signs astronomers read from a planet, they must first understand the planet’s star. (Credit: NASA/GSFC/C. Meaney/B. Monroe/S. Wiessinger)
When astronomers look for signs of life outside of the solar system, they’re mostly looking for what researchers call biosignatures. These are tell-tale indicators that something is living on another world.
So, while the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) draws headlines for hunting alien communications l ...read more
(Credit: Immersion Images/Shutterstock)
From the time we see Bambi’s mom bite the dust, we all know what death
is. At least, we think we do. But the simple definition of death—that the body
stops working—doesn’t take into account how weird our bodies actually are.
“We really know nothing about what happens when you die,” says Peter Noble, a former professor at the University of Alabama. Noble knows firsthand that surprises await scientists studying the e ...read more
Comparison of satellite images of the western edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet about 250 miles across, one acquired in 2018 on July 30, and the other on July 31 of this year. Vastly expanded areas of blue in this year's image are indicative of water at the surface. The gray area, known as the "ablation zone," is where ice is exposed and experiencing melting. (Images: NASA Worldview. Animation: Tom Yulsman)
As forecast, the dome of heat that brutalized Western Europe has moved over Greenland, ...read more
(Credit: Courtesy of San Diego Zoo)
(Inside Science) -- In 1975, medical doctor Kurt Benirschke founded the Center for the Reproduction of Endangered Species with the goal of using molecular genetics tools to save endangered species. In the corner of the modest lab, which contained a freezer with liquid nitrogen to bank cells, Benirschke hung a poster: “You must collect things for reasons you don’t yet understand.”
That credo holds true for scientists in cryobiology toda ...read more
A new study of obesity genes and different kinds of exercise finds that jogging is the best way to counteract weight gain. (Credit: By Giuseppe Elio Cammarata/Shutterstock)
Obesity is worldwide health problem tied to both nature and nurture. Genetic mutations make some people more likely to gain weight than others, but exercise lessens those chances. Now, some surprising new research suggests that certain exercises are better than others at counteracting these fat genes. For example, cycling ...read more
A type of tumor that can pass between dogs is showing researchers how cancer cells evolve. (Credit: Jess Wealleans/Shutterstock)
Thousands of years ago in Asia, a dog got cancer. A single cell underwent a mutation that turned it into the beginnings of a tumor. The dog eventually died, but not before passing on a unique legacy: its cancer cells.
Today, those cells are still growing in dogs across the globe. That’s because this particular kind of cancer cell turned out to possess an in ...read more
WASP-121b is so hot that the planet has puffed up beyond its ability to hold onto its own atmosphere, and is instead streaming it away as it flies around its star every 30 hours. (Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Olmsted/STScI)
Astronomers just used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to take the temperature of an exoplanet called WASP-121b and discovered that the world is so hot that heavy metals actually leak behind it as it whips about its central star. It's the first time scientists have seen such a phenom ...read more
Turtles, tortoises (shown here) and other reptiles change sex inside their eggs depending on the outside temperature. That trait has scientists worried that climate change may skew their populations toward one gender. (Credit: Seasoning17/Shutterstock)
Freshwater turtle nests dot the sandy shores of ponds throughout Asia. And like many reptiles, the embryos become males or females depending on how warm or cool their nests are. Females like it hot, scientists have noticed. That is, when it&rsq ...read more
