Same-or-different is the concept behind the most basic toddler games. We encourage kids to put the square block in the square hole, find two cards that match, place the cow in the cow-shaped puzzle slot. But in nature, the cow-shaped slots are harder to see. Deciding whether two animals are the same or different species frequently causes debates among scientists. In Central and South America, researchers tried to find the differences between many pairs of closely related birds by simp ...read more
Cassini’s final ringscape, taken Sept. 13. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
The Cassini team members filled the chairs of mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. As a long-time astronomy journalist, I was invited to witness the end of an era.
At 4:55 a.m. PST, Cassini’s 13-year mission came to a bittersweet end when we lost signal from the spacecraft as it pierced through the cloud tops at Saturn. We’ve gathered in ...read more
Is this depression and others like it at a site in Crete actually hominin footprints? (Credit Andrzej Boczarowski)
12:02 p.m.: “In the context of the field, it’s the equivalent of blowing up the Sphinx in Egypt. It’s a big deal,” says Matthew Bennett, a co-author of the Trachilos footprints paper, published in August. But Bennett adds: “At the same time, no scientific data has been lost.”
That’s because the detailed, sophisticated analysis carried ...read more
Holy leaping eel! A hall-effect ammeter measured the current through the arm of a human subject as the eel leaped at the arm. (Credit: Catania, Power Transfer to a Human during an Electric Eel’s Shocking Leap, Current Biology, 2017)
Electric eels are fascinating creatures. They emit high voltage electricity to track and control prey, but did you know they also jump out of water to attack threats? They’ve even been documented leaping at horses and humans.
Kenneth C. Catania, a ...read more
Image: Flickr/AJC ajcann.wordpress.com
If bed bugs are living in your home, they are probably hiding out and waiting to sense the carbon dioxide from your breath to home in on their next blood meal. But how did they get there in the first place? If you haven’t recently picked up a mattress off the street (always a good plan), it’s often assumed that they could have migrated from your neighbor’s place. But how frequent these wanderings are, or if they actually happen, has ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
Later this month, global health luminaries will gather in Seattle to celebrate the anniversary of a relationship that had a rocky start back in 1986, when a brash young Rhodes scholar marched into the World Health Organization office of an epidemiologist who had published research papers on mortality in Africa.
“Are you Alan Lopez?” the visitor asked. “Yes,” Lopez remembers answering. “Well, I’m Chris Murray, and everything you’v ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
It’s not news that tattoos are hitting the mainstream, but a new study reported in the journal Scientific Reports reveals that tattoo inks’ nanoparticles are adding color to other parts of your body.
As the tattooed population knows all too well, the process of tattooing consists of placing insoluble deposits of pigmented ink just below the epidermis, or outermost layer of skin. As they also know, your body does pretty much anything it can to get that ink out ...read more
A microscopic image of glowing cotton fibers. (Credit: Filipe Natalio)
Everything is getting “smarter” these days: automobiles, refrigerators, garage door openers…trashcans?
Even the shirt on your back is wising up and feasting on the data you generate with every step. The emerging e-textiles market promises threads that communicate, conduct energy, control body temperature and shapeshift. There are smart yoga pants, for example, that feature built in haptic vibrations to gu ...read more
Enceladus (Credit: NASA)
The Cassini spacecraft has entered its final hours. And with the end nigh, Discover called up the Southwest Research Institute’s Hunter Waite — a Cassini principal investigator — for a look back at how this has redefined our view of where alien life might live in our solar system.
Before reaching Saturn in 2004, astronomers knew little about the gas giant’s many moons. Voyager got a glimpse of the system decades earlier. And Titan — the on ...read more
This timeline charts Cassini’s final flyby of the moon Titan, leading to its demise in Saturn’s atmosphere September 15. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Today, Cassini takes its final photograph, calls home with its last pre-packed data, and transitions to continuous real-time transmission to squeeze science out of every last final second before destruction.
At 12:58 p.m. Pacific time on September 14, 2017, the Cassini spacecraft will look around Saturn’s system for the fin ...read more
