Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites. But the emergence of new multicellular life-forms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a “third state” that lies beyond the traditional boundaries of life and death.Usually, scientists consider death to be the irreversible halt of functioning of an organism as a whole. However, practices such as organ donation highlight how organs, tissues and cells can continue to function even after an organism’s demise. This resilience raises ...read more
If you haven’t given it much thought, you probably think non-human animals see the world the same way we do. The truth is the world looks very different to most other animals than it does to us.And this discrepancy between how non-human animals see the world and how we do can be a problem for wildlife biologists. To address this, Daniel Hanley, biologist at George Mason University and his team published their results in PLOS Biology on a new recording system that could help better capture how ...read more
Contemporary coelacanths are often described as living fossils. Superficially, that may be true. But new evidence now makes that nickname less valid. The two species of the large-boned lungfish alive today don’t look that much different than the first known coelacanth fossil dating back over 410 million years ago. But two new fossils show that the species did evolve — albeit slowly and subtly. Also, scientists for the first time link evolution to tectonic activity, according to a report in N ...read more
What parent hasn’t been there? It’s been a long day, you still have dinner to make, maybe lunches for tomorrow too, and you just don’t have the energy to wrangle your kids into a new art project or plead with them to pick up a book.Instead, you give in when they beg for more iPad time. Or maybe they promise they’ll do their homework after just a few more YouTube videos, and it’s easier to agree than have another argument. Now you’re not only exhausted, you feel like a bad parent too. ...read more
Boeing’s crew transport space capsule, the Starliner, returned to Earth without its two-person crew right after midnight Eastern time on Sept. 7, 2024. Its remotely piloted return marked the end of a fraught test flight to the International Space Station which left two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, on the station for months longer than intended after thruster failures led NASA to deem the capsule unsafe to pilot back.Wilmore and Williams will stay on the Internation ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine