The animation, based on data from a NASA airborne observatory, show just how much the state’s snowpack has grown
Snow water equivalent — the water content of snow — in California’s Tuolumne River Basin, as seen in an animation comparing 2015 and 2017. Lighter blue indicates less snow, deeper blue is more snow (see color bar at left). The 2017 snow water equivalent was 21 times greater than 2015, which was the lowest snowpack on record. (Source: NASA)
The incre ...read more
A new article posted on preprint site bioRxiv has generated a lot of interest among neuroscientists on Twitter. The article reports the existence of ‘functional connectivity‘ between surgically disconnected distant brain regions using fMRI, something that in theory shouldn’t be possible.
This is big news, if true, because it suggests that fMRI functional connectivity isn’t entirely a reflection of actual signalling between brain areas. Rather, something else must be able ...read more
An artists impression of Homo floresiensis. (Credit: Katrina Kenny, SA Museum)
The 2003 discovery of the Homo floresiensis added a new, weird branch to the human family tree. At the same time humans were spreading across Asia and Neanderthals were inching toward extinction in Europe (and the mysterious Denisovans were doing … something), this three-and-a-half foot human relative was carving out an existence on the Flores island in what is now Indonesia.
But where, exactly, it came from ...read more
Whoever named the sea cucumber after a vegetable didn’t give it enough credit. Yes, sea cucumbers are soft, warty tubes that scoot eyelessly along the seafloor. But they aren’t helpless. Some secrete a poison that’s deadly to other animals. And some, when threatened, shoot sticky threads out of their anuses to tangle up predators. When researchers collected these bizarre weapons and tested them in the lab, they discovered a material that’s unique amon ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
