Meet megapredator Razanandrongobe sakalavae of Madagascar’s Jurassic. My, Razana, what big teeth you have. (Credit Fabio Manucci)
Out of Madagascar comes a megapredator the stuff of nightmares: a massive croc-like carnivore that walked erect and had a mouthful of steak knife teeth more like those of T. rex than modern crocodiles. While this might sound like some crazy hybrid creature dreamed up for the next Jurassic Park sequel, this animal was real, and finding new pieces of it sheds lig ...read more
The medical journal Prenatal Diagnosis recently played host to a vigorous debate over whether a male fetus was spotted engaging in masturbation on ultrasound.
The alleged case of antenatal autoeroticism was reported by Spanish gynecologists Vanesa Rodríguez Fernández and Carlos López Ramón y Cajal in September last year. Their paper was called In utero gratification behaviour in male fetus. Here’s the ultrasonic evidence of the act:
Rodríguez Fern&aacu ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
This Fourth of July, as you and your family settle on a sandy beach or grassy lawn to watch a fireworks display, you’re probably not thinking about the science behind the explosives you’re witnessing. In fact, you probably are not even thinking of them as explosives. But that’s exactly what they are—-and there’s a lot of science that goes into creating that dazzling display of fire and colors.
Fireworks often comprise mixtures of oxidizers a ...read more
Examples of researchers’ mazes, and the solutions. (Credit: Bae, et al)
Scientists are bringing wrinkles into style with self-organizing mini-mazes that could someday serve as digital fingerprints for secure technology.
In a study published Friday in Science Advances, a team of researchers, led by Wook Park of Kyung Hee University in South Korea, demonstrated a fabrication technique that offers greater control over how wrinkling, usually a random process, occurs on a silica-based substra ...read more
The Kemper power plant. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
A once-promising clean coal plant in Mississippi is set to switch to natural gas instead.
The facility, run by utility provider Southern Company, is over budget and behind schedule, and has failed to achieve its goal of producing electricity from coal with significantly reduced carbon emissions. A review by the Mississippi Public Service Commission gave the plant until July 6 to begin planning its future and recommended a switch to natur ...read more
Five years ago I blogged about the debate over whether the blue-for-boys, pink-for-girls color convention used to be the other way around. My post focused on a 2012 paper by psychologist Marco Del Giudice arguing that the idea of a cultural “pink–blue reversal” in the English-speaking world in the early 20th century is a myth.
Now, Del Giudice has published an ‘update’ revisiting the issue. Based on text data from late 19th and early 20th century American news ...read more
Two ways to look at Tabby’s Star: as intriguing data, or as an invitation to flights of fancy. (Credit: Tabetha Boyajian, left; FantasyWallpapers.com, right)
There’s an old saying: “Great discoveries don’t begin with ‘eureka!’; they begin with someone muttering, ‘That’s odd…’” I’ve long attributed the quote to the great science popularizer Isaac Asimov. Jason Wright gently corrects me. He has researched the line, he expla ...read more
A 509th Bomb Wing B-2 Spirit conducts a fly-by during the Scott Air Force Base 2017 Air Show and Open House June 11, which celebrates the base’s 100th anniversary. The Air Force plans to replace the B-2 Spirit bomber with the similar-looking B-21 Raider bomber starting in the mid 2020s. Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Tristin English
The U.S. Air Force’s future B-21 Raider bomber may have the option to remove the human pilots from the cockpit and effectively become& ...read more
One of the world’s deadliest venomous animals—a female Anopheles gambiae—demonstrating the behavior that makes her so lethal. Photo Credit: CDC/ James Gathany
People are often surprised when I say that mosquitoes are the deadliest venomous animal in the world (the deadliest animal period, really, if we don’t count ourselves). Mosquito bites—and the venoms delivered by them—kill upwards of 750,000 people worldwide every year thanks to the deadly diseases that ...read more
