Air bubbles trapped in a thin ice core slice. (Credit: Tas van Ommen/Australian Antarctic Division)
“Don’t forget to write!”
Friends and loved ones bid adieu to members of the latest research team to begin the long trek to Antarctica this weekend.
The goal of this latest expedition, which is scheduled to return mid-February, is to see whether concentrations of an atmospheric molecule called hydroxyl, or OH, has changed over time since the industrial revolution. The answe ...read more
An artist’s impression of the hot white dwarf GALEXJ014636.8+323615 (white) and its ultra-hot magnetosphere (purple) trapped with the magnetic field (green). (Credit: Nicole Reindl)
Some 1,200 light-years from Earth, an international team of astronomers has discovered an ultra-hot magnetosphere, or magnetic field, surrounding a sun-like star.
The star, dubbed GALEXJ014636.8+323615, is a white dwarf, the dense core of a dead star.
“White dwarfs are the remnants of about 95 perc ...read more
Scientists used ultrasound to deliver a drug to a rat, like the one captured here. (Credit: Pan Xunbin/shutterstock)
At least 50 million people worldwide live with epilepsy. For nearly one-third of those people, anti-seizure medications don’t work. Surgery to remove the part of the brain that causes epileptic fits is an option for some, but the intrusive treatment might not work. It could also lead to memory and language problems, among other complications. Now researchers from Stanford ...read more
The second Nemi ship emerges from the lake. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
For centuries, the medieval fishermen who sailed in the placid waters of Lake Nemi, 19 miles south of Rome, knew a secret. It was said that the rotting timbers of a gigantic ancient shipwreck lurked below the water’s quiet surface. But the lake was tiny, with an area of only 0.6 square miles. And with no other body of water connected to it, what could a vessel of that size be doing there? Still, the stories about the ...read more
The bionic mushroom created by the researchers. (Credit: American Chemical Society)
“Power mushrooms” sounds like something out of Super Mario, but a lab in New Jersey has made them a reality.
Hoping to create a new source of renewable energy (and to test out some ideas), a team at the Stevens Institute of Technology engineered a symbiotic relationship between the common button mushroom, some cyanobacteria and a few electrodes made of “graphene nanoribbons” (GNRs) &mdas ...read more
Bugs are consuming pharmaceutical drugs pumped into streams, which then end up in the systems of predators, like the platypus. (Credit: John Carnemolla/shutterstock)
Humans don’t absorb 100 percent of the drugs we consume. The pharmaceuticals that our bodies don’t use are flushed out of our systems and flushed down into sewage systems, processed in water treatment plants, and finally dumped into streams and other waterways.
But an alarming number of pharmaceutical compounds aren&rs ...read more
Three deformed femurs from separate ancient burials. (Credit: Erik Trinkaus)
There’s something odd about the bones of ancient humans. It’s always a bit stupefying to gaze at a femur pulled from the earth and think about it being on the inside of a living, breathing human very much like yourself. But that’s not what stood out to Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University who studies the bones of ancient humans.
He had a pivotal realizati ...read more
An artist’s impression of the strange, interstellar object ‘Oumuamua. One new study suggests that the space rock could actually be an extraterrestrial light sail. (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)
‘Oumuamua — a curious, cigar-shaped rock — was the first interstellar space rock ever discovered in our solar system, though scientists debate whether it should be classified as an asteroid or comet. Now, a new study suggests that the strange object could actually be an alien ...read more
Orb weavers, from the grouping Orbiculariae, make the classic, wheel-shaped spiderweb, as well as other intriguing designs. This tree hosts a sampling of Orbiculariae, illustrating the web diversity. Evolutionarily older spiders and their ancestors appear on the ground and trunk; more recent arrivals hang from the highest branches. (Credit: F. Vollrath and P. Selden/AR Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 2007 (Modified from Vollrath 1988))
It may seem silly to fear a little spider — but t ...read more
