Even though the Yeti Crab looks so soft and cuddly, you’ll probably want to reconsider. We say this because those thousands of hairs all over their body are covered in a thick layer of bacteria. So it definitely won’t be the warm & fuzzy you were hoping for. It’s believed that the Yeti crabs are actually farming the bacteria as […]
Read more
A new study has found the strongest link yet between air pollution and autism, which experts now say affects one in 50 U.S. schoolchildren. Pregnant women who lived in areas with high levels of diesel exhaust and airborne mercury were found to be twice as likely to have a child with autism as those living in places with the lowest […]
Read more
New data suggests there may be two undiscovered planets lurking on the outer fringes of our solar system. Astronomers at the Complutense University of Madrid have detected curious abnormalities in the orbits of a belt of icy rocks at the edge of the solar system, far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the eighth and final known planet. (In 2006, Pluto […]
Read more
Every week, more than 50 million Americans take acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol and many other popular painkillers, to ease their aches and pains. But a new study has revealed that the drug also dulls emotions—including happiness. Prior research showed that acetaminophen can help take the sting out of negative feelings like dread, but the new findings from Ohio […]
Read more
If you’re worried about infertility, don’t try to Google the term with a computer on your lap, says the London Telegraph. A new experiment suggests that radiation from a single Wi-Fi-enabled laptop may be strong enough to cause cell damage in sperm. Argentine researchers took samples of ejaculated semen and left them directly under a computer—simulating holding a laptop directly […]
Read more
Scientists have taken the first steps toward writing the blueprint of life in an alphabet unknown to nature, they reported online in the journal Nature. Until now, biologists have used the same base molecules when synthesizing DNA. It has been recently announced that scientists have not only created two new bases, but also inserted them into a single-cell organism and […]
Read more
■ A star college athlete has turned down a chance at sporting glory to donate bone marrow to a stranger. Cameron Lyle, a shot-putter at the University of New Hampshire, added his DNA to the federal bone marrow registry two years ago and promptly forgot about it. But this month, he discovered his marrow matched that of a 28-year-old leukemia […]
Read more
Even in a world where extreme weather is becoming more common, said Sarah Lyall in The New York Times, the past week has been truly bizarre. In China, now suffering through its coldest, harshest winter in memory, the roofs of houses in Xinjiang collapsed under the weight of deep snow. It was so hot in Australia, meanwhile, that forecasters added […]
Read more
When you’re angry, your face, head, and arms grow hot When you’re depressed, a cold numbness grips your head and arms. Love triggers a warm glow throughout your upper body, especially around your heart. Human emotions, a new study has found, are directly linked to sensations in specific body parts, and the map is largely the same across different cultures. […]
Read more
In 2015, scientists predicted that a massive solar eruption would hit Earth just before New Year’s Eve. It was expected to cause power fluctuations, radio blackouts and even affect GPS reception. There was a small chance it could make the Northern Lights visible in the San Francisco Bay Area. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that the Aurora Borealis […]
Read more