Like most animals that thrive in cities, rats get a bad rap. We even use the word "rat" for nasty people, particularly those that go behind your back. But this study suggests that rat society may not be so bad after all. By placing rats in special cages that allow them to give food only to another rat (not themselves), these researchers found that rats will trade grooming for help with getting food. In fact, the more help they got, the more grooming they gave. Maybe it's time to update the ...read more
Thanks especially to warm temperatures, plus a lack of precipitation, the snowpack in most of the Western United States is in bad shape right now — nowhere worse than in California's Sierra Nevada range.
For all but the northern reaches of the region, snowpack stands at no more than about 50 percent of average, and in many places it's much worse.
For California, snowpack as of today, Feb. 4, is at just 25 percent of normal.
Luckily, the state's reservoirs are still brimming with wa ...read more
Check out this image captured Thursday by NASA's Aqua satellite. See that swirling vortex, complete with a clear eye? It has formed just off the coast of San Clemente Island to the west of San Diego.
Here's what it looked like to an F-18 fighter pilot flying directly over the feature:
https://twitter.com/WXMegs/status/959638888993173506
This is a classic von Kármán vortex, a cyclonic swirl of clouds that can develop when winds are diverted around a big obstacle such an ...read more
As with our planet as a whole, if you want to know the fate of polar bears in a warming world, you need to follow the energy.
For the planet, researchers have been doing just that by keeping track of how carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we emit into the atmosphere have been tipping the climate's energy balance toward more and more warming. And the high north where polar bears live has warmed faster than any other region on Earth, resulting in shrinking sea ice and a cascade o ...read more
It can be hard to say "thank you." Shyness, stubbornness and the fear of opening ourselves up to another can strangle those two words to silence in our mouths.
Gratitude is especially hard to convey when you're trying to thank a famous broadcaster for starting you on your scientific journey. At the core of most of these species we've featured, these "Attenboroughs," is a humble message of thanks, given in the best way a researcher knows how.
Attenborough's hawkweed, Hieracium attenbo ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine