Another year, another set of climate records. Here are the top ten signs you are living in a warming world, 2012 edition:
We like to know where things come from. We like stories. We like nice tales. We need our myths, our origins, our creations. So uncomfortable is it for us if something doesn’t have a cause that we strive to determine one, one way or the other, even absent the necessary evidence. Psychologist Tania Lombrozo argues…
Opsins, the light-sensitive proteins key to vision, may have evolved earlier and undergone fewer genetic changes than previously believed, according to a new study from the National University of Ireland Maynooth and the University of Bristol recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The study, which used computer modelling to provide a detailed…
German palaeontologists have dug up the remains of nine turtle pairs that died while mating some 47 million years ago, sinking into poisonous waters while locked in a final embrace, according to a report in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters. The find represents the first-ever fossil record of copulating vertebrates. “Millions of animals live…
Quashing the ‘doomsday’ rumors, top NASA scientists have assured that the world won’t end on December 21, 2012. “The world will not end in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012,” NASA said on its website….
While many dog-owners may marvel at their pet’s human-like ability to understand new words; research by scientists at the University of Lincoln, UK, suggests that dogs learn words in a fundamentally different way to us. Dogs have long been thought to learn new words in a similar way to humans; using an object’s shape such…
Two U.S. senators have introduced legislation that would make it easier for international students studying science, technology, engineering, or mathematics to stay in the United States after graduation and earn permanent residency. The SMART Jobs Act would create a new student-visa category for graduate students pursuing degrees in the so-called STEM disciplines. Students would be…