Frigid terrain on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, where researchers recently documented microplastic pollution in falling snow. (Credit: Sejsejlija/Shutterstock)
When it snows in the Arctic, there's another kind of flake drifting down alongside the ice crystals. Tiny bits of degraded plastic, commonly called microplastics, have been found swirling among the snow in otherwise pristine Arctic environments.
Microplastic pollution has previously been found everywhere from city streets ...read more
The full moon has been associated with aberrant behavior for centuries. (Credit: Aron Visuals/Unsplash)
It’s sometimes called the "Transylvania effect.” In the dark sky, the clouds shift, revealing the full moon’s eerie silver gleam, and the people on Earth below go mad. It’s a story that gets repeated by doctors, teachers and police officers. The science, though, says something different.
Blaming the full moon
for strange behavior is a time-honored tradition. In th ...read more
Most of our planet baked in July — earning the title for hottest month on record, according to two analyses, and in a tie in a third. (Source: NASA GISTEMP)
Two analyses out today show that in July, Earth endured its hottest month on record.
A third analysis shows last month in a tie with August 2016 for the dubious title of Earth's hottest month in records dating back to the 1880s.
Also out today: An update from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that Arctic sea ice is c ...read more
Parasites aplenty riddled humans and their dogs at a swampy site in Bronze Age England. From left: Microscopic eggs of a fish tapeworm, giant kidney worm and Echinostoma worm found in ancient feces from the Must Farm site. (Black scale bar represents 20 micrometers.) (Credit: M. Ledger, Department of Archaeology, Cambridge University)
Around 3,000 years ago, people were going about their
business in a marshy corner of eastern England known as The Fens.
These Fenland folk had just built ...read more
(Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University)
If you have two functioning legs and a reliable nervous system, walking and running are generally thoughtless tasks. But if you’re a soldier hauling massive amounts of gear on your back for an extended period of time, putting one foot in front of the other can get exhausting.
That’s where the idea for a soft, futuristic "exosuit" came about in 2011 – when DARPA funded a project, called Warrior Web. The U.S. Army partnered wit ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine