There’s nothing worse than a trip to the outhouse in cold weather. But for Arctic bumblebees, potty breaks outside their regular burrow cavities may help keep their living space relatively clean and orderly.“A lot of social insects have this kind of behavior,” says Hailey Scofield, director of climate change mitigation at Kawerak, a nonprofit organization serving tribes in eastern Alaska.In a study published recently in Ecosphere, Scofield and her colleague Leah Valdes, a Ph.D. student in ...read more
In 1894, French immunologist Albert Calmette produced the first successful antivenom by injecting horses with small doses of Indian cobra venom, then harvesting their antibodies. For 130 years afterwards, these life-saving concoctions — along with their considerable defects — have remained fundamentally the same. Each one works only against a single species, making treatment tricky if you can’t identify the snake that bit you. Plus, because they originate in animals, the foreign antibodies ...read more
A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this decade to 2040.The mission would be the first to try to return rock samples from Mars to Earth so scientists can analyze them for signs of past life.NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference on April 15, 2024, that the mission as currently conceived is too expens ...read more
Age is a risk factor for a host of diseases. Heart disease and stroke, most cancers, osteoarthritis, and, of course, dementia become far more likely as we age. Though we hear about it less often, aging can also be hard on your eyes. Several conditions that affect older people can lead to vision loss and even blindness. “However, vision loss is not an inevitable part of aging,” explains Roma Patel, associate professor of ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine and clinical spokesperson f ...read more
About a trillion tiny particles called neutrinos pass through you every second. Created during the Big Bang, these “relic” neutrinos exist throughout the entire universe, but they can’t harm you. In fact, only one of them is likely to lightly tap an atom in your body in your entire lifetime.Most neutrinos produced by objects such as black holes have much more energy than the relic neutrinos floating through space. While much rarer, these energetic neutrinos are more likely to crash into so ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine