Remote-control warfare is set to enter a new phase with the arrival of miniaturized bombs carried by smaller, cheaper drones. The move was perhaps to be expected, given the astonishing rise to US military prominence of these aircraft. Until now, larger, fighter-jet-sized drones, such as the Predator and Reaper, have been the vehicle for attacks….
Humans could be the only animals that are sensitive to fairness, suggests a new Royal Society Biology Letters study. It’s not that other animals are unfair. They just don’t seem to care as much about fairness as we do, or so this and other research concludes. Ingrid Kaiser of the University of Heidelberg and colleagues…
When a carnivore becomes extinct, other predatory species could soon follow, according to new research. Scientists have previously put forward this theory, but a University of Exeter team has now carried out the first experiment to prove it. Published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, the study shows how the demise of one carnivore…
In a major breakthrough, an international team of scientists has proven that addiction to morphine and heroin can be blocked, while at the same time increasing pain relief. The team from the University of Adelaide and University of Colorado has discovered the key mechanism in the body’s immune system that amplifies addiction to opioid drugs….
It’s not a great time to be an endangered species in Brazil. The rate at which wildlife is dying off in fragments of rainforests in the South American nation is greater than previously thought. Scientists visited 196 “fragments” of forest on the eastern, Atlantic coast of Brazil, and found (on average) only four of the…
The primordial particles of matter that existed just after the big bang are now being re-created in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to advance understanding of the kind of matter that existed in the first seconds of the universe. Seconds after the big bang, quarks and gluons — basic building blocks of matter — were…
Archaeologists date relic, found in dig near Jerusalem, to the 12th century B.C.
It’s become a sport of sorts, predicting the low point of Arctic sea ice each year. Expert scientists with decades of experience do it but so do enthusiasts, whose guesses are gamely included in a monthly predictions roundup collected by Sea Ice Outlook, an effort supported by the U.S. government. When averaged, the predictions have…
The United States will suffer a series of severe droughts in the next two decades, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Moreover, global warming will play an increasingly important role in their abundance and severity, claims Aiguo Dai, the study’s author. His findings bolster conclusions from climate models used…
How vulnerable are species — including humans — to radiation? This is a crucial question facing people around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, who have to live with low-level radiation the government says is insignificant but whose long-term health consequences are still unknown. At least one species – the pale grass blue butterfly –…