Elephants are no pushovers when it comes to walking great distances every day, and they even seem to have a knack for planning their demanding journeys. A new study puts the ingenuity of these mammals on full display, showing how they strategically choose certain routes to make their trips as efficient as possible. The study, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, shares several key findings that demonstrate how African savanna elephants move through challenging landscapes. Being the large ...read more
Within glacial ice sheets, there are streams of ice, sometimes called ice rivers, that move much faster than the surrounding ice. If you’re having trouble imagining how ice moves inside ice, Elizabeth Thomas, a paleoclimatologist at the University at Buffalo, suggests an analogy to help visualize these icebound rivers.Since the Gulf Stream carries warm water from the tropical Atlantic Ocean up the coast of the Carolinas and then across to Europe, she explains, “the Gulf Stream is essentially ...read more
Mosquitoes are more than pests. They’re also a mortal threat, contributing to millions of cases of malaria a year. Fortunately for humans, however, a team of researchers has recently identified a medication that could curb mosquito populations, controlling their spread of malaria. Revealing their results in a paper published in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers report that the medication nitisinone makes human blood deadly to mosquitoes. “One way to stop the spread of diseases ...read more
Humanity’s search for life on Mars has taken a significant step forward with the discovery of organic molecules that resemble key building blocks of life on Earth.Since landing in 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover has made multiple discoveries suggesting that Mars may have once had habitable conditions. Now, scientists have identified the longest organic molecules ever found on the Red Planet — offering new insights into its potential to support life.A detailed report on these findings was rece ...read more
Neutrinos are the most ubiquitous particles — a hundred billion zip through your fingertip each second — yet they have no charge, almost no mass, and they barely interact with other matter. A century ago, when the Italian physicist Wolfgang Pauli predicted their existence, it wasn’t even clear how to look for them. "I have done a terrible thing,” he famously said. “I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.” Fortunately, he spoke too soon. Neutrinos are in fact detectable, ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine