Plastic Debris Found in Antarctica’s Southern Ocean
Researchers on 70,000-mile voyage to investigate climate change say effect of humans is now ‘truly planetary’
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How Science Explains America’s Great Moral Divide
Researcher Jonathan Haidt delves into the psychology of red-state, blue-state, and offers hope for reconciliation
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Great Barrier Reef Has Lost Half Its Coral Cover Since 1985
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half its coral cover since 1985, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The loss has been spurred by a combination of factors including hurricanes, coral-eating starfish and coral bleaching. The paper is the most comprehensive survey of a…
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Fraud, Not Error, Is Main Reason Studies in Journals Are Retracted
Falsified data is the main reason biomedical and life science research articles are retracted, a problem that has increased 10-fold in the past three decades, a review of studies found. About 43% of the articles were rescinded because of made-up or manipulated data, 14% were retracted because the study appeared in more than one publication…
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Proposed Space Boat Could Explore Lakes On Saturn’s Moon Titan
While rovers are ideal for exploring Mars, a boat is best for Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Scientists are proposing a new mission to explore this alluring world that would send a floating probe to land in a lake on Titan, the largest of the more than 60 natural satellites of Saturn. Smaller than Earth but…
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Bee Brains Help to Make Robots Smarter
Honey bee brains could soon be helping robots act more independently. The way that bees smell and see is being studied in a £1m project to produce a simulation of the insect’s sensory systems. The simulated bee brain will then be used by a flying robot to help it make decisions about how to navigate…
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Source of Monster Black Hole’s Energy Jet Identified
A peek at swirling matter around a giant black hole verifies that it is the source of a monstrous blast of energy thousands of light-years long, researchers say. Bursts of energy known as relativistic jets spew out matter at close to the speed of light. These jets can travel across an entire galaxy, suggesting they…
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Dioxin Exposure Has Harmful Effects Across Generations
Washington State University researchers have found that the great-grandchildren of pregnant rats exposed to low doses of dioxin develop diseases and reproductive abnormalities — even though they did not have direct exposure. The finding challenges the traditional explanation of how traits are passed from one generation to another.
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Mayas Prophesized, but Not End of World
As the clock winds down to December 21, experts on the Mayan calendar have been racing to convince people that the Mayas didn’t predict an apocalypse for the end of this year. Some experts are now saying the Mayas may indeed have made prophecies, just not about the end of the world. Archaeologists, anthropologists and…
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Loop the Loop, DNA Style
In certain toy racecar tracks, sneaky players can flip a switch, trapping their opponents’ vehicles in a loop of track. Cells employ a less subtle approach: they change the track’s layout. In a study published online in Science, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and Oxford University discovered that, by forming or undoing…