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Category: Discover Magazine
While parts of the U.S. are wet and frigid, the Southwest is bone dry and still waiting for winter to arrive
A wide area around the Four Corners region of the U.S. Southwest is now in severe drought — and the three-month outlook is grim When it comes to snow cover, a comparison of satellite images shows just how much a difference a year can make. (Images: NASA Worldview. Animation: Tom Yulsman) While downtown Boston streets were flooding and then freezing as a result of the powerful bomb cyclone that pummeled the U.S. East Cost, folks in the U.S. Southwest were no doubt wond ...read more
Is It a Human or Computer Talking? Google Blurs the Lines
(Credit: Viktorus/Shutterstock) Siri and Alexa are good, but no one would mistake them for a human being. Google’s newest project, however, could change that. Called Tacotron 2, the latest attempt to make computers talk like people builds on two of the company’s most recent text-to-speech projects, the original Tacotron and WaveNet. Repeat After Me Tacotron 2 pairs the text-mapping abilities of its predecessor with the speaking prowess of WaveNet for an end result that is, fra ...read more
A Romantic Partner's Scent Can Alleviate Stress
A woman enjoys a stress-reducing whiff of worn shirt. (Credit: Shutterstock) The human sense of smell is perhaps our most underrated ability. The power of scent may not get the credit it deserves because we experience it differently than our other senses. Rather than proceeding directly to the thalamus—the seat of consciousness—like other sensory signals, scent information travels to parts of the brain associated with emotions and memory. Therefore, much of the information we recei ...read more
Blockchain Technologies Could Help You Profit from Green Energy
Blockchain technologies could help homeowners sell their green electricity to their neighbors. (Credit: Shutterstock) Imagine buying a solar panel from a hardware store, mounting it on your roof, then selling the green electricity you produce at a price you set. Is this even possible? Some companies certainly think so. These startups are harnessing the power of blockchains to democratize green power. Before you can understand how blockchains are part of the solution, you first need to know a fe ...read more
Witch: A Label That Still Shapes Social Networks
(Credit: Monty Python and the Holy Grail/Columbia Pictures) Being labeled a witch can do great harm; it did during the Salem witch trials and continues to today in many places in Africa and Papua New Guinea. Now, researchers investigating villages in China have analyzed the effects the reputation of witchcraft could have on everything from recruiting workers to getting married. It’s data that could shed light on why this belief persists in societies. Scientists examined farming villages ...read more
Debunking Phrenology with 21st Century Methods
Modern neuroscience has been accused of being a ‘new phrenology‘ but now neuroscientists have conducted a modern evaluation of phrenological claims using neuroscience methods. In an enjoyable new preprint called An empirical, 21st century evaluation of phrenology, Oxford researchers Oiwi Parker Jones and colleagues say that they’ve rigorously tested, and debunked, phrenology for the first time. Notoriously, the phrenologists believed that the shape of an individual’s sku ...read more
Eruption of Kadovar Is the First Surprise of 2018
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An Unknown Microbe Sequenced in Space for the First Time
NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson works inside the International Space Station’s Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG), which provides a sealed environment for astronauts to conduct scientific research. Recently, Whitson used the MSG to help become the first person ever to sequence the DNA of an unknown microbe entirely in space. (Credit: NASA) In July 2016, while aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronaut Kate Rubins successfully sequenced mouse DNA that was delivered to her ...read more
Your Weekly Attenborough: Trigonopterus attenboroughi
Trigonopterus attenboroughi. (Credit: Alexander Riedel) Today I’m going to tell you about a weevil. There are a lot of weevils, and beetles in general, out there, but this one is special. Plucked from anonymity, this little guy was blessed, or cursed perhaps, with the mantle of greatness. Trigonopterus attenboroughi hails from the Indonesian islands of Java, Bali and Lombok, and it was discovered in 2014 by German researcher Alex Riedel. Discovering new species can take a lot of hard work ...read more