It's not easy being a bee these days. Apis mellifera, the Western honey bee, is crucial to agriculture worldwide but faces a growing number of pests and pathogens against which beekeepers have few weapons.
But the bees themselves may be showing us the way forward: New research suggests the foraging insects may obtain protection against some viruses by consuming fungi, then returning to the hive to spread its medicinal value.
Honey bees contribute more than $15 billion annually to U.S ...read more
At vast cosmic distances, supermassive black holes called quasars gobble up matter into accretion disks that shine so brightly, they overpower the light from entire galaxies. Closer to home, compact objects called microquasars give astronomers a scaled-down taste of the processes at work inside the faraway behemoths. Now, an international collaboration of researchers has announced in the journal Nature that they’ve detected the first gamma-ray signal from the ends of the two jets spewing o ...read more
The Milky Way is apparently a hotspot for stars immigrating from other galaxies.
In a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a trio of astronomers set out to find hypervelocity stars fleeing our galaxy, but surprisingly discovered most of the rapidly moving stars are actually barreling into the Milky Way from galaxies beyond.
"Rather than flying away from the [Milky Way's] Galactic Center, most of the high velocity stars we spotted seem to be racing ...read more
Arguments with loved ones or a stressful conversation with the boss can bring you down. Now, new research provides scientific evidence that getting a hug on the same day you’ve had a conflict can lift your spirits. The finding suggests hugs are a simple yet effective way to relieve relationship stress, romantic or not.
People commonly communicate affection by hugging, holding hands, or even a pat on the back. And past research shows physical contact has psychological and physical hea ...read more
The MASCOT has landed.
As of two weeks ago, humans had never put a single robotic explorer on an asteroid. Now we have three of them hopping about on Ryugu, a 900-meter-wide object currently orbiting on the other side of the Sun. On September 20, Japan's Hayabusa2 probe dropped two little landers, MINERVA II-1a and II-1b. They promptly sent back dizzying images from the surface. Then last night (October 3), the mothership deployed MASCOT, a much larger rover that is now performing a batte ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine