Enlarge / Aerial view showing a tractor digging graves in a new area of the Nossa Senhora Aparecida, where COVID-19 victims are buried, in Manaus, Brazil. (credit: Marcio James / Getty Images) While attention has been focused on the worrying new variants of SARS-CoV-2, there has been some good news: despite the evolution of a […]
Enlarge / Look at this lovely cube-shaped piece of poo, courtesy of the Australian bare-nosed wombat. (credit: Patricia J. Yang et al., 2021) Scientists have been puzzling for decades over how the Australian bare-nosed wombat poops out neat little cubes of feces instead of tapered cylinders like pretty much all other animals. According to a new […]
A rotational deceleration experiment with egg yolk, using an egg scrambler and measuring the soft matter deformation, to find possible answers about concussions. (video link) A growing number of professional football players have been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), likely the result of suffering repeated concussions or similar repetitive brain trauma […]
Enlarge / The immune response involves a lot of moving parts. (credit: BSIP/Getty Images) There’s still a lot of uncertainty about how exactly the immune system responds to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But what’s become clear is that re-infections are still very rare, despite an ever-growing population of people who were exposed in the early days […]
Volta’s electric eels can gather in groups, working together to corral smaller fish in shallower waters, a new study finds. Then, smaller groups of about 10 eels attack in unison with high-voltage discharges. Electric eels were long believed to be solitary predators, preferring to hunt and kill their prey alone by sneaking up on unsuspecting […]
Enlarge (credit: Rizlan Bencheikh and Bruce Arey, PNNL) In recent years, researchers have used DNA to encode everything from an operating system to malware. Rather than being a technological curiosity, these efforts were serious attempts to take advantage of DNA’s properties for long-term storage of data. DNA can remain chemically stable for hundreds of thousands […]
Enlarge / SOUTH TANGERANG, INDONESIA – JANUARY 7, 2021: A patient recovered from COVID-19 donate plasma at Indonesia Red Cross Transfusion Center in South Tangerang. (credit: Barcroft Media / Getty Images) It’s clear that the immune system can mount a robust response to SARS-CoV-2, as the vaccine trials have made clear. Beyond that, though, there […]
Enlarge / Large flock of jackdaws in silhouette flying in the evening sky over the trees. (credit: iStock / Getty Images Plus) There’s rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we’re once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science […]
Enlarge (credit: Olivier Le Moal | Getty Images) Before this century is over, we’re almost certainly going to need to pull massive amounts of carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere. While we already know how to do carbon capture and storage, it takes a fair amount of energy and equipment, and someone has to […]
Enlarge / That stuff floating in the water is exactly what you think it is. (credit: Jeff Gritchen/Orange County Register) When we saw the memes scoring the size of a blue whale’s anus second to some of the year’s most reviled politicians, our first thought was that it was deliciously funny. Naturally, our next thought […]