Credit: George Mason University George Mason University researcher Andrea Weeks played a key role in identifying an ancient seedling linked to the biblical myrrh. The seed, a yellow and fragrant resin from the Commiphora tree, was discovered in the Judean desert and revived by a team of researchers. Weeks was invited to join the project, […]
In 2024, two new satellites were launched to find methane super-emitters from space: the Environmental Defense Fund’s MethaneSAT took off in March 2024; and Carbon Mapperlaunched later last year as a public-private partnership. Methane is a super-powered greenhouse gas. Pound-for-pound, methane is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first two decades after […]
Hula hooping has remained a staple of modern US culture since the 1950sbut people around the world have participated in similar activities for thousands of years. The physics behind maintaining a perfect spin, however, has remained a mystery. Is it something that can be achieved by anyone with enough time and effort, or are there […]
Police in New York City have named the woman who was set on fire and burned to death on a subway train in Brooklyn. Authorities on Tuesday identified Debrina Kawam, 61, of New Jersey as the victim of the seemingly random 22 December attack that burned her body beyond recognition. Sebastian Zapeta, 33, is accused […]
Example images of a landfill with methane emissions from the work face. Credit: Environmental Science & Technology (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.4c07572 A team has found via testing from airplanes that landfill work faces tend to be responsible for the biggest share of methane emissions in U.S. landfills. Their findings are published in the journal Environmental Science […]
Burnt and battered human bones from 5,700 years ago hint at a brutal end for a group of Stone Age people who likely died in a house fire in what is now Ukraine, a new study finds. But why two of the people had violent head injuries and why one died a century later than […]
Some of the most bizarre lifeforms on Earth lurk in the deeper realms of the ocean. There was so little known about one of these creatures that it took 20 years just to figure out what exactly it was. Things only got weirder from there. The organism’s distinctive, glowing presence was observed by multiple deep-sea […]
A critically endangered ‘Akikiki that study lead author Kyle Kittelberger photographed on Kauai in 2022. Credit: Kyle Kittelberger Looking to inform the conservation of critically endangered bird species, University of Utah biologists have completed an analysis identifying traits that correlate with all 216 bird extinctions since 1500. Species most likely to go extinct sooner were […]
Illustration of charge density wave (CDW) and periodic lattice distortion (PLD) and their symmetries in 1T-TiSe2. The symmetry of the system as a whole cannot be higher than the intersection of the two symmetries. As a result, the system becomes chiral, although neither CDW nor PLD is chiral by itself. Credit: From Nature Physics (2024). […]
In this extract from “Your Face Belongs to Us” (Simon & Schuster, 2023), journalist Kashmir Hill recalls the emergence of Clearview AI, the facial recognition technology company that burst into public consciousness with its artificial intelligence (AI) software that could supposedly identify pretty much anyone with just a single shot of their face. In November […]
