The story has been told many times. At the beginning of the 20th century, physics seemed essentially solved. One or two puzzling phenomena like the photoelectric effect and concerns over black body radiation had scientists scratching their heads but a general feeling prevailed that solving these issues would be dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.In the event, these seemingly minor problems required an entire revolution for the laws of physics. And the result — quantum theory and relativi ...read more
Many people with pets can relate — on sick days, their dog or cat seems to know something is wrong. More so, they refuse to leave their side. They follow them from the bed to the couch and back again.When pets keep close to their ailing humans, researchers have found it is possible to pass on the pathogen. Although scientists typically focus on animal-borne diseases that spread to humans (like the Avian flu), researchers are increasingly considering how diseases can spread in the reverse.Scien ...read more
An international team of scientists released a sort of brain cell audit that counters last year’s controversial claims of high Tyrannosaurus Rex intelligence. A 2023 Journal of Comparative Neurology report calculated that the dinosaur's brain held over 3 billion neurons. A new paper in The Anatomical Record calls that an over-estimation.That 2023 study put T. rex’s intelligence potentially on par with monkeys and suggested the dinosaurs could perhaps use tools and teach social behaviors to t ...read more
There’s nothing worse than a trip to the outhouse in cold weather. But for Arctic bumblebees, potty breaks outside their regular burrow cavities may help keep their living space relatively clean and orderly.“A lot of social insects have this kind of behavior,” says Hailey Scofield, director of climate change mitigation at Kawerak, a nonprofit organization serving tribes in eastern Alaska.In a study published recently in Ecosphere, Scofield and her colleague Leah Valdes, a Ph.D. student in ...read more
In 1894, French immunologist Albert Calmette produced the first successful antivenom by injecting horses with small doses of Indian cobra venom, then harvesting their antibodies. For 130 years afterwards, these life-saving concoctions — along with their considerable defects — have remained fundamentally the same. Each one works only against a single species, making treatment tricky if you can’t identify the snake that bit you. Plus, because they originate in animals, the foreign antibodies ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine