The Milky Way and its closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, are on course for “ a head-on collision,” says astronomer Roeland van der Marel of the Space Telescope Science Institute. But no need for precautions because the crash won’t happen for another 4 billion years. Researchers have long known that Andromeda, currently some 2.5 million light-years away, is moving toward […]
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Babies exposed to air pollution in the womb are more likely to have autism than those whose mothers spend pregnancy in clean air, according to a new study. In the largest study of its kind, UCLA researchers compared levels of air pollutants, mostly related to vehicle traffic, during pregnancy gestation periods of 7,603 children with autism and 75,635 children without […]
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Beijing Fatter and sicker: Prevalence of type 2 diabetes has more than tripled in China over the past decade as Chinese people adopt a more Western diet and lifestyle. “China, unfortunately, has become the world’s capital for diabetes,” said Michael Rosenblatt, chief medical officer of pharmaceutical giant Merck. “The government is starting to pay more attention, as this is the […]
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The VEST is the brainchild of Dr. David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He designed the device based on the principles of sensory substitution, the theory that scientists can transmit data gathered by the brain using one sense, and transfer it to another sense. In this case, the VEST translates touch into sound. […]
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Mysterious radio signals from space have been known to repeat, but for the first time, researchers have noticed a pattern in a series of bursts coming from a single source half a billion light-years from Earth. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are millisecond-long bursts of radio waves in space. Individual radio bursts emit once and don’t repeat. But repeating fast […]
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Astronomers have found the strongest evidence yet that ancient Mars had a massive ocean for millions of years— an indication that the Red Planet once had everything necessary to support life. Shortly after Mars formed 4.5 billion years ago, NASA scientists say, the planet was wet, with enough water to cover the entire planet to a depth of about 450 […]
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Forty-eight years after British physicist Peter Higgs predicted its existence, the Higgs boson was finally spotted by scientists at the CERN lab in Geneva.The “God particle” explains the existence of mass and backs up the Standard Model, the foundational theory of modern physics. “For physicists, this is the equivalent of Columbus discovering America,” says physicist Themis Bowcock. The Higgs is […]
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It’s not like we really needed to be told again that our planet is getting warmer…. But IT IS!!! Both NASA and NOAA have independently concluded that Earth’s surface temperatures in 2015 were higher than any previous year in recorded history. The hottest year recorded before that? 2014!! The temperatures in 2015 beat the 2014 record by a whopping 32.2 […]
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