Earth should be a “snowball planet,” according to common theories of stellar evolution that predict that the sun was only 70 percent of its current brightness when it first lit its fusion engine 4.5 billion years ago. The sun has been steadily growing brighter since then and will continue so into the future, eventually evaporating…
The fact that dinosaurs laid eggs put them at a considerable disadvantage compared to viviparous mammals. Weighing in at four tons, the mother animal was 2,500 times heavier than its newly hatched dinosaur baby. By way of comparison, a mother elephant, which is just as heavy, only weighs 22 times as much as its new-born…
In a novel study of health disparities in the United States, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have identified 22 socioeconomic and environmental variables that together are better indicators of early death than are race or geography. The findings upend long-held beliefs that where you live and the color of your skin are the best…
At a time when obesity has become epidemic in American society, Dartmouth scientists have found that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans may be able to predict weight gain. In a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, the researchers demonstrated a connection between fMRI brain responses to appetite-driven cues and future behavior. “This…
As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, however, the experience of being moved by art seems universal. A new neurological study offers some insight into this aesthetic paradox. The results indicate that connecting deeply to a work of art activates the same part of everyone’s brain. However, part of the brain…
The Affective Computing Research Group, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is working on computers that can read facial expressions and track basic states like confusion, liking or disliking. Wearable devices, such as electronic bracelets, can detect stress or excitement by measuring minimal changes in the sweat level. The applications of this technology are…
An incoming asteroid may benefit microbes living deep underground, according to a recent study of an ancient impact in the United States’ Chesapeake Bay. A biological census of the subsurface life forms suggests that impacts create new niches for these deep dwellers to spread into. In the last couple of decades, biologists have come to…
To hear some people tell it, the increasingly energetic and sophisticated fishing industry has left the world’s oceans a shambles, with species of cod, sharks, tuna and other fish hunted almost to extinction and vast stretches of the ocean floor wrecked by bottom-scraping trawlers. To hear some other people tell it, many depleted stocks are…
In a study that pushed quantum mechanical theory and research capabilities to the limit, UA researchers have found a way to see the molecule that likely made the universe – or at least the hot and fiery bits of it. Lurking in the vast, chilly regions between stars, the unassuming molecule known as a triatomic…
Scores of animal scientists employed by public universities have helped pharmaceutical companies persuade farmers and ranchers to use antibiotics, hormones, and drugs to make their cattle grow bigger ever faster. With the use of these products, the average weight of a fattened steer sold to a packing plant is now roughly 1,300 pounds—up from 1,000…