Since the announcement of its discovery earlier this month, the buried sarcophagus in Alexandria, Egypt, created a lot of speculation about who might be inside. Given the coffin’s large size and composition of granite, which would have had to be mined hundreds of miles away, experts said it was possible the coffin contained a man of importance, perhaps a nobleman of Alexander the Great. There was also a lot of online chatter about the possibility of unleashing a curse by openi ...read more
Tomorrow, on Saturday, July 21, Moth Week will commence! Running until Sunday, July 29, Moth Week is a way for people of all ages all around the world to come together to celebrate the beauty, life cycles, and habitats of moths. These self-described “Moth-ers� are in fact citizen scientists, as one of the key missions of Moth Week is to collect moth observation data.
Though many of the events are in the United States, this is truly a worldwide effort. ...read more
If you had to give yourself a C-section to save your unborn baby, could you do it? Having given birth to my own child, I'm not sure I could. But this woman did it. She had no other choice: she lost a previous baby during protracted labor, and she lived in a small village eight hours drive from the nearest hospital. In the abstract and detailed case report below, doctors tell her (harrowing) story. And they tell it for a good reason: "This case, which would not have occurr ...read more
Scientists revealed a new species of armored dinosaur at the Natural History Museum of Utah on Wednesday. The animal, a species of ankylosaur, lived in a wet, tropical environment in what’s now Southern Utah roughly 75 million years ago.
The herbivore sported spikes across its head and an intimidating tail club for fending off large predators like the tyrannosaurs that also roamed the landscape. Scientists dubbed it Akainacephalus johnsoni.
“Literally tra ...read more
Those fruit flies buzzing around your pantry might be pesky, but to a neuroscientist, they’re a gold mine of information. The insects, tiny though they may be, are surprisingly sophisticated, boasting at least 100,000 neurons in a brain that handles everything from navigating via visual cues to complicated grooming rituals.
For years, brain experts have been chiseling away at the daunting task of mapping this tiny insect’s brain, which is about the size of ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine