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The globe last month matched a record for the hottest September, set in 2005. It was the third time since 2000 that the world set or tied a heat record for September. In addition to 2012 and 2005, previous hot September records were set in 2003. And these records go back to 1880. Last month’s…
Researchers at Penn State University have developed a chemical model that mimics a possible step in the formation of cellular life on Earth four-billion years ago. Using large “macromolecules” called polymers, the scientists created primitive cell-like structures that they infused with RNA – the genetic coding material that is thought to precede the appearance of…
Analyzing grains of soil collected from three Apollo lunar missions, geochemists have figured out that the hydrogen in trace amounts of water on the moon’s surface probably came from solar wind, the outflow of positively-charged hydrogen from the sun. For decades, scientists didn’t find much hydrogen in the lunar samples that had been returned to…
A new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) highlights the world’s 25 most endangered primates. The report, entitled “Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates, 2012–2014,” was put together by the Primate Specialist Group of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission and the International Primatological Society as well as the Conservation…
When ancestral humans walked out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago, Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies came along with them. Now the fruit flies, widely used for genetics research, are returning to Africa and establishing new populations alongside flies that never left — offering new insights into the forces that shape genetic variation. That’s…
A man fell to Earth from more than 24 miles high, becoming the first human to break the sound barrier under his own power — with some help from gravity. The man, Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian daredevil, made the highest and fastest jump in history after ascending by a helium balloon to an altitude of…
Two American economists won the Nobel Prize in economics for their research into how to match different actors in given markets, such as job seekers with employers and patients with donated kidneys. Alvin Roth of Harvard University and Lloyd Shapley of the University of California Los Angeles won the prize “for the theory of stable…
Scientists from the Univ. of Southampton have identified a repeating trigger for the largest explosive volcanic eruptions on Earth. The Las Cañadas volcanic caldera on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, has generated at least eight major eruptions during the last 700,000 years. These catastrophic events have resulted in eruption columns of over 25km high and…
At very low temperatures, close to absolute zero, chemical reactions may proceed at a much higher rate than classical chemistry says they should—because in this extreme chill, quantum effects enter the picture. A Weizmann Institute team has now confirmed this experimentally; their results would not only provide insight into processes in the intriguing quantum world…
Daniel Kahneman sent an e-mail last week to a dozen social psychologists, spelling out what he sees as a way to restore the credibility of priming research. The research, which has found that small cues can cause strong subconscious effects, have come under fire after attempts to replicate some high-profile studies failed. It hasn’t helped…