Study shows dogs know how to lie.

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Photo: flickr/Alan Levine We know that dogs have a guilty look, but can they actually be guilty? Well, according to this study, the answer is… kind of. Here, researchers show that dogs are capable of “deceptive-like behavior.” In a set of experiments, dogs tended to lead a human “competitor” away from food when that human would keep it for himself. However, the same dogs happily lead their “cooperative” owner to the ...read more

Collaborative Citizen Science for Clean Water Management

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

By Lishka Arata, Conservation Educator at Point Blue Volunteers collecting a sample from the lake to examine under the microscope. Photo: CMC Despite the current administration’s efforts to roll back the Clean Water Act and dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, interest and participation is growing in a new EPA- and stakeholder-led citizen science project that aims to inform clean water management. The Cyanobacteria Monitoring Collaborative has been gathering steam since 2010, wh ...read more

A Glimpse of a Microchip's Delicate Architecture

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

A 3-D rendering of the internal structure of a microchip. The material in yellow is copper — showing the processor’s circuit connections which link the individual transistors. The smallest lines shown are individually around 45 nanometers wide. (Credit: Mirko Holler) Computer chips continue to shrink ever smaller, but we still wring more processing power out of them. One of the problems that comes with taking our technology to the nanoscale, however, is that we can no longer s ...read more

Phosphorus Is Vital for Life, and We're Running Low

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

A farmer sprays field with a nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium fertilizer. (Credit: oticki/Shutterstock) All life needs phosphorus and agricultural yields are improved when phosphorus is added to growing plants and the diet of livestock. Consequently, it is used globally as a fertilizer – and plays an important role in meeting the world’s food requirements. In order for us to add it, however, we first need to extract it from a concentrated form – and the supply comes almost exc ...read more

Sharks' Missing Link To The Past

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

A slightly scientifically inaccurate illustration from 1909. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) If, like me, you like fossils and you like sharks, you’re in luck. A recent re-look at a fossil found more than a decade ago has answered a big question about the story of sharks’ evolution. Published recently in American Museum Novitates, a new high-tech reinvestigation of a well-preserved fossil first described in 2003 revealed the animal was more than an Early Devonian sharklike fish. T ...read more