Science
Science
Ground squirrels observed hunting and eating vole in California, could be driven by an explosion in vole numbers with roughly seven times more voles than the 10-year average reported, squirrels are in general flexible regarding food and eat insects as well as hatchling birds but have never been seen hunting adult mammals before
Researcher Nathan Cofnas is fired from Emmanuel College, part of the University of Cambridge, for violating its diversity and inclusion policies when he argued that the number of black professors at Harvard would approach zero in a meritocracy and that they would not hold any high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment
Nobel laureate in physics 2013, Peter Higgs who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson in particle physics in 1964 which was later confirmed at CERN in 2012, dies at the age of 94, was born in Newcastle in 1929 and worked at the University of Edinburgh for almost all of his career
The Swedish professor of epidemiology Martin Kulldorff was fired from his position at Harvard University for opposing vaccination mandate, writes that ignoring Sweden's actions during the lockdowns is like ignoring a placebo control group, that he could not publish his support for the Swedish solution in the American media, that the state helped Twitter to censor anti-vaccine posts and that science cannot survive in a society that does not value truth and strive to discover it
Statistically significant negative correlation found between penile length in the flaccid state and IQ according to study by Cuntong Wang and Yihe Wangding with data from 115,387 men aged 18 to 65 years from 139 countries, also notable differences between ethnicities were found
John Tooby passes away at age 71, founded evolutionary psychology as scientific field in collaboration with his wife Leda Cosmides, celebrated by friend Steven Pinker as exceptionally good person and intellectual giant who brought to fruition Darwin's prediction that psychology will be placed on a new foundation
Humanity consisted of 1280 individuals between 930,000 and 813,000 years ago, according to research using newly developed coalescent method, bottleneck is thought to have lasted for 117,000 years during which the species was close to extinction
US intelligence publishes report on the links between the Wuhan institute and the emergence of Covid-19, pointing to the institute's extensive research on the coronavirus and genetic modification, but claims that there is no indication that the virus was created as a biochemical weapon or with genetic modification
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s three-hour appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast is criticized by pro-vaccine pediatrician Peter Hotez who claims misinformation, Rogan promises to donate USD 100,000 to a charity of Hotez's choice if he debates Kennedy Jr. with no time limit and investor Bill Ackman is chipping in with USD 150,000, seems like the debate might happen
First babies with DNA from three people born in UK, after experiment with innovative IVF treatment called Mitochondrial Donation Threatment in hopes of preventing rare genetic diseases
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel plans to be cryogenically frozen after death with the hope of one day returning to life, says he doesn't really believe it will work and sees it as more of an ideological stance
Author and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari warns that artificial intelligence could create religious scriptures and attract worshippers, saying that of course religions throughout history have claimed that their holy books were written by unknown human intelligence, which has never been true but could very quickly become the case with far-reaching consequences
Mammoth meatballs are made by Australian company Vow by taking the DNA sequence from the extinct animal's myoglobin, filling in the gaps with elephant genetic material and replicating the sequence in sheep stem cells, co-founder Tim Noakesmith says the mammoth was chosen because it is a symbol of the loss of diversity and for climate change
20,000-year-old inscriptions apparently deciphered by hobby archaeologist Ben Bacon, who spent seven years solving the problem, are believed to be lunar calendars and are at least 10,000 years older than other similar finds
The durability of Roman concrete is due to millimeter-scale lime clasts that used to be disregarded as evidence of sloppy mixing practices or poor-quality raw materials, according to a team of investigators from MIT and Harvard University, professor Admir Masic says that the idea of low
December 2022 the coldest month in hundred years in Reykjavik in Iceland with an average temperature of minus 3.9 degrees Celcius which is 4.9 degrees below the average in the last ten years, despite the cold the number of hours of sunshine was more than usual
Doctors and their families are less likely to comply with the guidelines about prescription drugs, according to a study published in the American Economic Review: Insights that examined Swedish data from 2005 to 2016 and included nearly 6 million people of whom about 150,000 were doctors and
Birth control can affect sexual preferences, says psychologist Sarah Hill at Texas Christian University, hormones affect our preferences and can sometimes cause a different direction than what brain would normally do, support from scientific studies as well as anecdotal evidence from online forums
More than 70 percent of children between the ages of 7 and 12 are concerned about climate change, according to a survey of 1,000 participants by eco-grocery start up Modern Milkman, 85 percent think it's everyone's responsibility to address the issue and 91 percent believe personal actions can have an impact
Second-generation immigrants in European countries are much more left-wing than their host-nation peers, comparable to the urban-rural discrepancy, in European study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research, using data on individual voting behavior in 22 European countries between 2001 and 2017
Illumina announces a machine that will be able to do a full genome sequencing for around USD 200 per human, the company has 80% of the market globally, CEO Francis deSouza believes we’re entering the era of genomic medicine going mainstream, Stacey Gabriel, chief genomics officer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard says that researchers will be able to apply added sequencing power through increasing the diversity of genomic datasets since it is a problem for medicine that the vast majority of DNA data has come from people of European descent because different populations might have different disease-causing genetic variations
Nasa spacecraft Dart to crash into asteroid Dimorphos almost 10 millions of kilometers away head-on at 22 500 kph on Monday to nudge it into slightly tighter orbit around companion space rock, demonstrating humans would stand a fighting chance of diverting any future killer asteroid heading towards Earth
150 million-year-old marine invertebrate with ten arms named Ausichicrinites zelenskyyi to honor the Ukraine president's courage and bravery in defending the country, the well-preserved fossil that was unearthed in Ethiopia is a feather star which are spectacularly colored and let nutrients moved by the current come to them as they wave their arms, the feather star also have the ability to shed an arm as anti-predator response
Covid-19 variant Omicron BA.5 which accounts for 54% of the US cases is claimed to pose the biggest threat yet to immune protection as it along with BA.4's 17% is four times more resistant to antibodies from vaccines than BA.2, Pfizer says it can have an updated vaccine targeting BA.4 and BA.5 ready to be distributed in October, the most common symptoms in the UK where the variants also dominate is a runny nose, sore throat, headache, persistent cough and fatigue with less than one in three reporting fevers
50 mg intravenous vitamin C per kilogram of body weight every 6 hours for up to 96 hours resulted in 17% increased risk of dying, according to Canadian randomized and placebo-controlled trial on 872 adults with sepsis who were receiving vasopressor therapy in the intensive care unit
Low butyrylcholinesterase levels linked to 1.3 times increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome according to Australian study comparing blood samples from 655 healthy children, 26 who died of Sids and 41 who died of other causes, the enzyme plays a major role in the brain's arousal pathway and a deficit might reduce an infant's ability to wake or respond to the external environment such as overheating or a blanket over the face
Pack of orcas attack and kill blue whales, some push the blue whale under water while other attack the head and tongue, three killings documented, marine ecologist Robert Pitman comments that it is amazing to see the biggest apex predator taking down the biggest prey
New insect species Phlogis kibalensis of the leafhopper family identified in western Uganda's rainforest by British scientist Dr Alvin Helden, the 6.5mm long male has distinctive metallic sheen, pitted body and leaf shaped reproductive organs, first Phlogis genus sighting since 1969
Chinese nuclear fusion reactor research facility in Anhui runs at 70 million degrees Celsius for over 17 minutes which lays a solid scientific and experimental foundation towards the running of a fusion reactor, according to researcher Gong Xianzu at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Nasa launches USD 10 billion James Webb Space Telescope on to its one-million-mile voyage into solar orbit to give widest ever spectrum view to be able to peer back in time 13.5 billion years to a point within a 100 million years of the Big Bang, lifted off from European Space Agency's base in French Guiana
Researchers discoveres well-preserved 72-to 66-million-year-old embryo inside 17-cm long fossilised dinosaur egg, found in the rocks of Ganzhou in southern China and belongs to toothless theropod dinosaur group called oviraptorosaur, the embryo posture is similar to that seen in modern-day bird embryos
New planet detection algorithm used to identify 366 new exoplanets, including one planetary system that comprises a star and at least two gas giant planets, could help understand what building blocks are needed for successful planet formation, according to astronomers at University Of California
Researchers should be banned from using the word Caucasian because it is associated with a racist and pseudo-scientific classification of humans, instead the term "the European-associated principal component analysis cluster" should be used, according to paper written by five Cambridge and University College London scientists
Norwegians have as much sex as they had 20 years ago, unlike rest of the West where sexual activity is generally declining, according to survey with 4,000 participants
Chinese Tianwen-1 spacecraft successfully lands on Mars' surface on the vast plain Utopia Planitia on Saturday, leaving its orbit where it's been since March, the rover Zhurong is later to depart from its platform to conduct inspections on the ground
Method for blocking sunlight developed by balloon test over northern Sweden although first version will not disperse darkening particles, Harvard scientist are behind project which is controversial as it may decrease interest in cutting greenhouse gas emissions
Sharing bed with dogs beneficial for length and quality of sleep say researchers who surveyed 962 American women, dogs disturb less than human bed fellows and give stronger feelings of comfort and security, cats as disruptive as humans and the least comfort inducing of the three species studied
Previously unknown whale species discovered in waters west of Mexico, US marine biologists were looking for beaked whales when they notice individuals with unusual teeth placement and unique calls, water samples taken in hope of doing DNA analysis
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus, which essentially eliminated post-transfusion hepatitis
The Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Roger Penrose for the discovery that black hole formation is a prediction of the general theory of relativity and to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy
Hundreds died or developed heart failure in Britain as result of not seeking treatment for their heart attack due to Covid-19 fears, with 5,000 fewer admissions with heart attack than expected by the end of May, according to University study published in The Lancet
22-year-old Grey parrot outperforms 21 Harvard students and 21 6- to 8-year-old children in complex version of shell game where participants needed to track locations of fluffy pom-poms hidden under cups that swapped places an increasing number of times
Magnetic north pole shifting with increasing speed from Canada toward Siberia due to changes in underground blobs of molten iron, blob under Canada split in two about 20 years ago and largest part is now shifting toward corresponding blob under Siberia
Female mosquitoes carrying the microbe Microsporidia MB are protected from being infected with malaria, 295 out of 4270 mosquitoes in Kenya tested postitive for the microbe while none were of these were infected with malaria study published in Nature Communications says, seen as potential for controlling spread of disease to humans
Stephen Wolfram announces new framework for creating fundamental theory of physics, claims to be able to derive general relativity and quantum mechanics among others from set of basic premises, launches research program to be conducted with maximum transparency online
SETI@home shuts down after 20 years of enabling volunteers to contribute computing power to the search for extraterrestial life, reasons include diminishing returns and need to focus more on analyzing the results already achieved
Largest explosion ever observed came from supermassive black hole in galaxy cluster Ophiuchus 390 million lightyears from Earth, according to researches who studied it using four radio telescopes including two in orbit, one i Australia and one in India
Two distinct forms of schizophrenia exists and are associated with different changes in brain structure, one with lower volume of grey matter and the other with increased volumes in some structure but normal volume overall, according to researches who studied 307 schizophrenics and 364 healthy subjects with magnetic resonance imaging
Covid-19 stimulates new culture of research where results are published faster and more researchers collaborate, central roles are played by prepublishing services like bioRxiv and medRxiv as well as communication platforms like Slack and Twitter where researchers analyze information in real time
All humans have Neanderthal ancestry, not only non-Africans as previously thought, according to Princeton researchers using novel computational method for identifying genetic overlap, Africans got Neanderthal genes due to migration from Europe
Study shows ambient lighting modulates fatty acid secretion within fat cells, infrequent exposure to full-spectrum light leads to increased risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome among mice, whether the same mechanism obtains for human metabolism is yet to be determined
Studies show ostensibly non-psychoactive medications are more deleterious to psychological wellbeing than previously thought, statins, paracetamol and Parkinson's medicines found to exacerbate aggression, dull empathy and promote high-risk behaviour respectively, cause for great concern in hyper-medicated West
Scientists pit doctors against AI in identifying breast cancer, neural networks consistently outperform medical professionals studying mammograms, inability to experience fatigue believed to be main advantage over humans, Google Health and Imperial College London publish findings in Nature
MRI scans before and after nine polar explorers spent 14 months in Antarctica in isolation revealed areas of brain with roles in learning, emotions and memory shrunk during trip while people staying home instead saw some growth, while levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor decreased 45 %
70 research teams analyzed same set of fMRI data but came to very different conclusions, no two teams chose identical workflows for analysis, likelihood of significant findings systematically overestimated
Private property decisive factor behind the neolithic revolution, farming initially no more productive than hunting and gathering but facilitated the application of property rights, according to study published in the Journal of Political Economy
The Nobel Prize of Chemistry jointly awarded to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries [pdf]
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability
Russian space agency Roscosmos report that they have found the cause of a hole in the International Space Station but refuse to share the information, the hole appeared last year in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft that was docked to the station, caused loss of air pressure and was repaired using epoxy, gauze and tape
Scientists think they have found way to stop common cold and related viruses which can cause paralysis, genetically turning off protein inside cells the viruses need to replicate gave complete protection in trial on mice, plan to find drug which can temporarily suppress the protein
Chinese scientist might be closer to a HIV cure after trials using gene-editing technique CRISPR to edit the CCR5 gene show promise
International collaboration claims to have created hybridized human-monkey embryos in China, aims to create organ factories for transplants, project leader Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte previously failed to grow pig embryos using human stem cells
Russian space mission carrying the Spektr-RG telescope launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, joint venture with Germany aims to map X-rays across entire sky, trace the large-scale structure of Universe, provide insights on accelerating behaviour of cosmic expansion and identify a large number of new X-ray sources, including large black holes
New research on hominin skull fossil Apidima 1 suggests Homo Sapiens were in Europe more than 200,000 years ago, 150,000 years earlier than modern humans were believed to have spread to the continent, fossil was found in Greece in the 1970s
Researchers find correlation between amount of money in a lost wallet and return rate, the more money the bigger likelihood to report a lost wallet, contrary to predictions made by top-performing academic economists
Ionizing radiation not as dangerous to astronauts as previously believed, study of 418 spacefaring individuals finds no increased risk of death from cancer or heart disease
Planting trees most effective method of countering climate change, say researchers at ETH Zürich, planet has room for 500 billion more trees which would bind 200 billion tonnes of carbon and reduce atmospheric carbon by 25%
13-year-old Canadian Nora Keegan publishes research paper examining loudness of automated hand dryers on children's heights, assessing 44 different models, some operating at 110 decibels, also developed a synthetic air filter reduces noise by 11 decibels
Swedish and British scientists show individual’s genetic make-up has great influence on whether they choose to acquire a dog, concordance rates of dog ownership much larger in identical twins than in non-identical ones, next step to identify which genetic variants affect this choice using data from Swedish Twin Registry
Parents who raise their children as vegans should face prosecution, according to Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, comes after a number of deaths related to the diet, an estimated 3% of Belgian children forced to eat vegan
32-year-old Greek woman gives birth to boy with DNA from three people, using experimental form of IVF using an egg from the mother, sperm from the father and another egg from a donor woman, some say procedure raises ethical questions, Dr Panagiotis Psathas, president of Institute of Life in Athens, says every woman's inalienable right to become a mother with her own genetic material has become a reality
International collaboration Event Horizon Telescope says it captured first ever image of a black hole, located at center of galaxy Messier 87, 55 million light-years from Earth and with a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun
Japanese Hayabusa-2 spacecraft thought to have detonated explosive charge on asteroid Ryugu, idea to create artificial crater to better understand how Earth was formed in early Solar System, probe later to return to gather samples from gouged depression
55% of non-cyclists rate cyclists not completely human, Australian study with 442 participants conclude, 9% admit they used their car to cut off a cyclist, professor Narelle Haworth finds the word "cyclist" dehumanising and wants to replace it with "people who ride bikes"
Tyrannosaurus rex discovered 1991 in western Canada world's biggest, team of paleontologists say after decades-long skeleton reconstruction process, estimated at 13 meters and more than 8,800 kilos, T. rex nicknamed Scotty is the oldest known having lived into its 30s
Mitochondrial DNA analysis may identify serial killer Jack the Ripper as Polish barber Aaron Kosminski, was identified by witness to one of the killings who then refused to testify against him, scientists analyzed blood-stained shawl from fourth victim Catherine Eddowes, linking Kosminski to the crimes