The ESA's Rosetta comet orbiter has found complex, solid organic molecules in dust particles that came of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, lending credence to the theory that organic compounds, or even life itself came from the stars.

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Submitted on September 15th 2016 by drunkenninja with 4 comments

Climate change study says gas must be phased out by 2035. The last gasoline-powered car will have to be sold by about 2035 to put the world on track to limit global warming to the most stringent goal set by world leaders last year, a study said on Thursday. The report, by a Climate Action Tracker (CAT) backed by three European research groups, said a drastic shift was needed towards clean electric cars and fuel efficiency since transport emits about 14 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions.

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Submitted on September 15th 2016 by drunkenninja with 3 comments

Over the North Atlantic, where there is no radar coverage, planes don't fly like they normally fly. They follow a set of daily tracks that act like highways in the sky.

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Submitted on September 13th 2016 by rti9

A team of researchers propose an alternative explanation to what a black hole contains, one that deviates from Einstein's theory of gravity. They propose that a simple, rotational, electrically charged black hole contains new geometric elements, like those of crystals and graphene, with a spherical center point.

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Submitted on September 11th 2016 by distant

The apartment in a museum is a detailed reconstruction of a 1950s home, with all its smells, sounds and textures. Psychologists say it can spark memories for people with dementia.

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Submitted on September 14th 2016 by gladsdotter

Yes, this is a real research note.

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Submitted on September 10th 2016 by Appaloosa

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos says the big, re-usable rocket he has been developing inside his Blue Origin space company will be called New Glenn, after John Glenn.

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Submitted on September 12th 2016 by jcscher

Arguments about overdiagnosis are too simplified.

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Submitted on September 13th 2016 by gladsdotter with 1 comments

A new study from Brazil provides an early snapshot of what the future could hold for babies whose mothers were believed to have been infected with the Zika virus. Microcephaly caused by Zika was especially cruel to the babies in the study, for whom a severe form of disease progressed more rapidly than usually seen in babies with microcephaly due to other causes. Even when babies exposed to the Zika virus in the uterus are born with normal-sized heads, they might suffer other forms of brain damage.

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Submitted on September 14th 2016 by gladsdotter with 1 comments

Kinetic energy from movement has been harnessed to charge batteries, and thermoelectric generators have powered wearable devices. Now researchers at NCSU have created a new wearable prototype that's lightweight, comfortable and much more efficient than existing TEGs.

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Submitted on September 13th 2016 by Devang

Language is an essential part of our lives that we often take for granted. But, if the delicate web of language networks in your brain became disrupted by stroke, illness, or trauma, you could find yourself truly at a loss for words. Susan Wortman-Jutt details a disorder called aphasia, which can impair all aspects of communication.

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Submitted on September 15th 2016 by gladsdotter

Tesla announced yesterday (Sept. 11) that Autopilot, its self-driving feature, would soon be updated to a new version that uses a car’s radar system — in addition to its camera system — to make decisions while driving semi-autonomously. But perhaps the most interesting part of Tesla’s announcement is how the thousands of vehicles that make up its fleet are learning how to be better self-driving cars together. One of Tesla’s key advantages over incumbent carmakers is how much data it’s collecting — and that it’s actually going to use it.

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Submitted on September 13th 2016 by hedman

The strange world of wugs, wuwus and gutches can teach us how we learn to speak and where language came from in the first place.

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Submitted on September 10th 2016 by gladsdotter

Dr. Francine Garrett-Bakelman arrived at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in the middle of the night, ready to get her hands on Scott Kelly’s blood. She watched on a laptop as the astronaut stepped off a plane March 2 about 1:30 a.m., back in Houston after his record 340 days aboard the International Space Station. Then, in a nearby molecular biology lab, she set the centrifuge to the right temperature and looked over her pre-labeled test tubes.

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Submitted on September 10th 2016 by drunkenninja

The robot uprising may be closer than you think. Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot, which previously demonstrated its ability to walk across rough terrain and take all kinds of abuse from its creators, has now mastered a new, and even more terrifying skill: balancing on one foot. In the video below, from IMHC Robotics, Atlas showcases its new skill, balancing on one foot on a narrow piece of plywood for almost a full thirty seconds, which is way better than a lot of humans.

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Submitted on September 11th 2016 by drunkenninja

Researchers have long recognized only a single species of giraffe, thought to be made up of several subspecies. However, a research collaboration has now identified four distinct species. Conservation biologist Julian Fennessy of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, geneticist Axel Janke of the Senkenberg Research Institute, and their colleagues collected and analyzed samples from giraffes across the African continent. Their results appear in the journal Current Biology.

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Submitted on September 11th 2016 by geoleo

Scientists who mapped where land and water have shifted were surprised to find that Earth has gained more land than it has lost since 1985.

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Submitted on September 12th 2016 by CatLady

Physicists have just discovered a unique property in laser light: it's capable of producing its own swirls of energy that look a whole lot like smoke rings.

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Submitted on September 12th 2016 by kxh

The science buried under the pseudoscience.

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Submitted on September 10th 2016 by rti9

New research puts us on the cusp of brain-to-brain communication. Could the next step spell the end of individual minds?

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Submitted on September 11th 2016 by gladsdotter