Kyle Frischkorn, Smithsonian
Earth has no shortage of stunning landforms: Mt. Everest rises majestically above the clouds; the Grand Canyon rents deep into desert rock layers; the mountains that make up the Ethiopian Highlands, aka the Roof of Africa, tower above the rest of the continent. But all of these natural icons pale in comparison to the dramatic formations that lie beneath the ocean.
Jan Hoole, The Conversation
Why do cats purr? Humans tend to think that purring is a sign of happiness in a cat and indeed it can be but there are other reasons why our feline friends produce this particular vocalisation.Purring is a habit that develops very early in a cat's life, while suckling from its mother, so clearly it is not a sound that is directed solely at humans.
Steven Novella, Science-Based Medicine
Some alternative medicines are essentially magic like homeopathy, acupuncture, reiki, and straight chiropractic. They purport to work through non-existent life force or essence. Sometimes they try to blur the lines by adding a layer of scientific jargon, but in the final analysis they are magic. Other so-called alternative products or treatments are just bad medicine.
Lisa Zyga, PhysOrg.com
When researchers deposit a drop of fluid containing thousands of free-swimming, genetically engineered E. coli onto an array of micromotors, within minutes the micromotors begin rotating. Some of the individual bacteria have swum head-first into one of the 15 microchambers etched on the outer edge of each micromotor, and with their flagella protruding outside the microchambers, together the swimming bacteria cause the micromotors to rotate, somewhat similar to how a flowing river rotates a watermill.
Dean Burnett, The Guardian
Have you recently had a baby? Here's a step-by-step guide for how to go about your new role as a mother.1. Do what you think is best for you and your baby.2. Get told you are wrong.Admittedly, this is adapted from a superior joke made by a friend and occasional guest poster Martha Mills.
Veronique Greenwood, Quanta
For a species whose numbers show no signs of collapsing, humans have a shockingly high mutation rate. Each of us is born with about 70 new genetic errors that our parents did not have. That's much more than a slime mold, say, or a bacterium.
Tia Ghose, Live Science
A cache of secret letters has been unearthed near the site of an ancient Roman fort in the United Kingdom.The cache of faded wafer-thin slices of wood, which were written on with ink, were discovered buried in the ground near the Fort of Vindolanda on June 22. The fragile wooden letters, which had been discarded in the first century A.D., were discarded in a small excavation pit.
Joel Shurkin, IS
It's hard to think of dinosaurs as being loving, caring parents, but scientists have found some of them may have been just that. Take the oviraptorosaurs, a group of feathered creatures that look as if they were constructed by a malignant committee from spare bird parts.By studying fossilized oviraptorosaur eggs, researchers from France and China have found that oviraptorosaurs lay across those eggs in nests and warmed them with body heat just as modern birds do. Paleontologists... Читать дальше...
Nathaniel Scharping, DM
Chinese researchers have successfully transmitted quantum entangled particles from a station on earth to a satellite orbiting far overhead.The experiment is part of an ongoing effort by researchers using the Micius satellite to achieve long-distance quantum communication, a feat that would yield hacker-proof information networks. In this most recent work, researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China beamed photons to the satellite and transmitted the... Читать дальше...
Ryan Cross, Science Mag
Whether caused by a car accident that slams your head into the dashboard or repeated blows to your cranium from high-contact sports, traumatic brain injury can be permanent. There are no drugs to reverse the cognitive decline and memory loss, and any surgical interventions must be carried out within hours to be effective, according to the current medical wisdom. But a compound previously used to enhance memory in mice may offer hope: Rodents who took it up to a month after... Читать дальше...
The Economist
THE pill-sized cameras in today's mobile phones may seem miraculously tiny, given that a decade ago the smallest cameras available for retail sale were the size of a pack of cards. But Ali Hajimiri of the California Institute of Technology is unimpressed. In his opinion even these phone cameras are far too thick (witness the optical bump on the back of most mobile phones), so he and his team plan to replace them with truly minuscule devices that spurn every aspect of current photographic technology. Читать дальше...
Sarah Lewin, Space.com
In a new experiment, researchers have created a superdense version of ice found deep within icy moons and colliding comets, and watched it form in nanoseconds.The scientists created the ice by exposing ordinary water to a sudden, intense, laser-generated shock wave, and they observed the formation of the superdense phase of ice, called ice VII, using rapid X-ray pulses to document its nearly instantaneous phase change. The transformation took place at the SLAC National Accelerator... Читать дальше...
Jonathan Amos, BBC
The door has closed on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).The successor to Hubble has been locked tight inside a giant chamber where it will undergo a series of tests to simulate conditions off Earth.Engineers must first pump out all the air, and then chill down the telescope to fantastically low temperatures.In about 30 days' time, they should be ready to start the checks that ensure JWST's spectacular mirrors can focus light properly.
