I mentioned to a friend, a gay man nearing 60, that World AIDS Day, which has been observed on Dec. 1 since 1988, was almost upon us. He had no idea that World AIDS Day still exists.
This lack of knowledge is a testament to the great accomplishments that have occurred since World AIDS Day was created 30 years ago. It is also due to an accident in the timing of his birth that my friend escaped the devastation wreaked by AIDS among gay men in the U.S., before there was antiretroviral therap ...read more
Future of Spaceflight
The upcoming year is shaping up to be a big one for private spaceflight. A number of big players in the race to get paying passengers to space seem poised to actually make that happen, and companies like Boeing and SpaceX have announced a number of ambitious goals.
It looks like they might be beat by the Brit, though. Last week, billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson claimed that his company Virgin Galactic will send astronauts into space by Christmas of this year. ...read more
How did the manta ray get its horns? That’s something biologists at San Francisco State University have been trying to figure out. While not actual horns, the two fleshy growths are the reason why the manta are called “devil rays.”
A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution shows that these hornlike lumps, known as “cephalic lobes,” are actually the foremost part of the manta ray’s fin and not separate appendages, as pre ...read more
Detecting Gravitational Waves
Scientists have announced the detection of four new gravitational waves, bringing the total to 11. First captured by the LIGO detectors in 2015, the new observations of ripples in the fabric of space-time are quickly adding up and helping researchers to better understand powerful and distant cosmic phenomena like black holes and neutron stars.
Scientists, using LIGO and the European-based Virgo gravitational wave detectors, have detected gravitational waves ...read more
(Inside Science) -- While fruit flies may bother people who have week-old bananas at home, the humble insects have for decades benefited scientists studying how organisms live and grow. The tiny flies are more like humans than you might initially think -- about 60 percent of fly genes match with a similar human gene -- and they breed quickly in the lab. Beginning in 1933, the Nobel committee has so far awarded six prizes in physiology or medicine for fly research, including the 2017 Prize fo ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine