With La Niña’s demise, just a small patch of blue indicative of cooler than average sea surface temperatures remains in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, very warm water has formed off the coast of Peru. (Source: NOAA View)
The La Niña of 2016 is now officially gone. Following on from a monster El Niño, it turned out to be one of the shortest and weakest on record.
La Niña, which can influence weather across many parts of the ...read more
Join SciStarter, Science Cheerleader and our partners from Discover Magazine and Astronomy Magazine at the free Family Science Days in Boston on February 18th-19th as part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting.
This free event features tons of interactive science exhibits. Come talk with scientists, learn about their jobs, and explore science! SciStarter will help you DO science with citizen science including counting birds for the Great Bac ...read more
Can you spot the hitchhiker? (Credit: M. Maruyama)
Sometimes even experienced entomologists need a double-take to fully grasp what they’re seeing. And upon closer examination, they found a new species hiding in plain sight.
A new kind of beetle discovered in the Costa Rican rainforest almost passed by unnoticed, because it hides so well on the army ants it uses for transportation. It was only after the researchers tried to puzzle out the mystery of the ants with two abdomens that th ...read more
Bulbasaurus phylloxyron (Courtesy of Matt Celeskey)
You may have seen the story: Last week scientists decided to name a recently discovered mammalian ancestor after the Pokémon, Bulbasaur. But in this case, fiction is stranger than truth.
Indeed, the new species goes by the name Bulbasaurus phylloxyron, but its association with pocket monsters is coincidental. In taxonomy, it’s common to name a new species after its prominent features, and Bulbasaurus (bulbous lizard ) phylloxyron ...read more
Figure 3. Words, phrases, and topics most highly distinguishing females and males. Female language features are shown on top while males below. Size of the word indicates the strength of the correlation; color indicates relative frequency of usage. Underscores (_) connect words of multiword phrases. Words and phrases are in the center; topics, represented as the 15 most prevalent words, surround.
File this under “reinforcing stereotypes“: these scientists use word clouds created fr ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
