By some estimates, a third of Earth’s organisms live in our planet’s rocks and sediments, yet their lives are almost a complete mystery. The recent work of microbiologist James Holden of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and colleagues shines a light into this dark world. In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they…
How do violence, holy spaces, and diversity intersect in America? Terror in holy spaces is not a new facet of American religious history. Church and synagogue bombings occurred during the civil rights movement, including the notorious 1963 attack that took the lives of four young girls in Birmingham, Alabama. Sikh Americans have been targeted and…
Curiosity, the largest and most advanced spacecraft ever sent to another planet, stuck its extraordinary landing in triumphant and flawless fashion, and is poised to begin its pioneering, two-year hunt for the building blocks of life — signs that Earth’s creatures may not be not alone in the universe. NASA’s $2.5-billion mission involved the work…
Whether you’re gay, straight or somewhere else on the spectrum, the truth of who attracts you could be in your eyes. Pupil dilation is an accurate indicator of sexual orientation, a new study finds. When people look at erotic images and become aroused, their pupils open up in an unconscious reaction that could be used…
Shellfish respond to increasing acidification in seawater – such as that produced by climate change – by producing lighter, thinner shells. As more and more carbon dioxide is generated by human beings, it becomes dissolved in the oceans, making them more acidic. And according to British, Australian and Singaporean scientists, this is affecting the size…
The supply of children in U.S. foster care far exceeds the demand for their adoption. Indeed, only one in five children is adopted from foster care in the United States. Not only do the circumstances leading to the surrender of children to the state continue unabated (negligence, abuse, poverty, drug addiction of the parents), but…
Mixing it up helps birds ensure that their songs are heard no matter what the habitat, say researchers at Australian National University and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. When the researchers combined acoustical data with temperature and precipitation records and other information such as habitat and latitude, they found a surprising pattern — males that…
Two recent scholarly works on millennialism leave this reviewer with a new understanding of the perverse human yearning for apocalypse
Check out this high-rise in France’s Boulogne-Billancourt re-imagined as an urban eco-village, bursting with greenery. The Natural Evolution building proposal (which comes via eVolo) was developed in response for the increasing need for high-density housing in urban areas. In accordance with that vision, it was developed for Boulogne-Billancourt, the most populous suburb of Paris and…
Last year, astronomers discovered a quiescent black hole in a distant galaxy that erupted after shredding and consuming a passing star. Now researchers have identified a distinctive X-ray signal observed in the days following the outburst that comes from matter on the verge of falling into the black hole. This tell-tale signal, called a quasi-periodic…