Scientists have long puzzled over why the surface of the sun is cooler than its corona, the outer hazy atmosphere visible during a solar eclipse. Now thanks to a five-minute observation by a small, but very high-resolution ultraviolet telescope they have some answers. Even before the July 2012 launch of the High-resolution Coronal Imager, nicknamed…
You know that dog biscuit shaped like a bone but made mostly of wheat? The fact that your dog is satisfied with it instead of going for a piece of your thigh may be one of the big reasons why its ancestors evolved from wolves to house pets. A team of Swedish researchers has compared…
Since 1799, the Royal Institution of Great Britain has occupied a grand building in London’s Mayfair, surrounded today by luxury shops and private art galleries. For many years, the building was a central part of British science. Michael Faraday dazzled crowds there in the nineteenth century with pyrotechnic displays of chemistry. In many respects, its…
Researchers have been able to trace a line between some of the earliest modern humans to settle in China and people living in the region today. The evidence comes from DNA extracted from a 40,000-year-old leg bone found in a cave near Beijing. Results show that the person it belonged to was related to the…
Climate change has shrunk Andean glaciers between 30 and 50% since the 1970s and could melt many of them away altogether in coming years, according to a study published in the journal Cryosphere. Andean glaciers, a vital source of fresh water for tens of millions of South Americans, are retreating at their fastest rates in…
All but about 50 of hundreds of research chimpanzees belonging to the National Institutes of Health should be retired to the national sanctuary in northwest Louisiana, and all of them should have plenty of room to play and climb, an NIH committee has recommended. The NIH Council of Councils Working Group approved the proposal, which…
It’s been called the “holy grail” of brain research and now, it may have been found. Scientists in the U.S. say they have developed a way to detect the concussion-related brain disease called CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, in living athletes. Until now, the disease, which brings on dementia, depression and personality changes, could only…
Men are more likely than women to commit scientific fraud, a new analysis of misconduct convictions reveals. And the urge to cheat spans the entire range of academic careers, from students to seasoned professors. For the new study, published in the journal mBio, scientists examined 228 cases of misconduct in the records of the United…
In a SPIEGEL interview, synthetic biology expert George Church of Harvard University explains how DNA will become the building material of the future — one that can help create virus-resistant human beings and possibly bring back lost species like the Neanderthal.
From our friends at NASA comes an amazing 13-second animation that depicts how temperatures around the globe have warmed since 1950. You’ll note an acceleration of the temperature trend in the late 1970s as greenhouse gas emissions from energy production increased worldwide and clean air laws reduced emissions of pollutants that had a cooling effect…