Six Ways Supercomputing Advances Our Understanding of the Universe

At NASA, high-end computing is essential for many agency missions. This technology helps us advance our understanding of the universe – from our planet to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Supercomputers enable projects across diverse research, such as making discoveries about the Sun’s activity that affects technologies in space and life on Earth, building artificial intelligence-based models for innovative weather and climate science, and helping redesign the launch pad that will send astronauts to space with Artemis II.  continue reading

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Economic burden of childhood verbal abuse by adults estimated at $300 billion globally

Childhood verbal abuse by adults costs society an estimated $300 billion (£239 billion) a year globally, show findings presented at the first international conference on childhood verbal abuse, hosted by UCL, Words Matter and the World Health Organization (WHO).. continue reading

DIY Science Projects

If there is one thing that is guaranteed to get your students excited, it’s a good science experiment! While some experiments require expensive lab equipment or dangerous chemicals, there are plenty of cool projects you can do with regular household items. Regardless of how empty your cabinets may be, we think you are likely to have at least some of these things lying around at home. continue reading

The Ultimate STEM Guide for Kids: 239 Cool Sites About Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

It’s never too early to encourage kids and teens to pursue education and activities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). It’s important to set future generations up for success as careers in these fields continue to grow.

The pursuit of curiosity and understanding is a fundamental aspect of human nature and plays a crucial role in our personal growth, intellectual development, and the advancement of society as a whole. When we are curious about something, we have a natural inclination to explore and seek out knowledge, which leads us to ask questions, conduct research, and engage in various forms of inquiry.

Curiosity drives us to understand the world around us, to unravel the mysteries of nature, and to make sense of complex phenomena. It is the foundation of scientific inquiry and innovation, as well as artistic and philosophical exploration. Through curiosity, we challenge existing knowledge, push boundaries, and make new discoveries that contribute to the expansion of human knowledge and understanding.

Explore: https://www.ted.com/playlists/752/the_pursuit_of_curiosity_and_understanding 

A learning and development strategy known as STEM education combines the study of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Over time, STEM education has developed into a multidisciplinary worldview that is essential for teaching students modern problem-solving, creative, and critical analytical abilities.

STEM learning has always been considered necessary and important, but technological improvements have made it a fundamental prerequisite for any modern education system. There has been numerous discussion in India about popularising science and promoting scientific temper, but STEM education is still struggling to receive the attention it deserves in our educational system.

For centuries, ever since Isaac Newton formulated his laws of motion and gravity, mathematicians and astronomers have grappled with this issue. In the simplest model of the solar system, which considers only the gravitational forces exerted by the sun, the planets follow their elliptical orbits like clockwork for eternity. “It’s kind of a comforting picture,” said Richard Moeckel, a mathematician at the University of Minnesota. “It’s going to go on forever, and we’ll be long gone, but Jupiter will still be going around.”

How do you remember where you parked your car? How do you know if you're moving in the right direction? Neuroscientist Neil Burgess studies the neural mechanisms that map the space around us, and how they link to memory and imagination.

Every weekday, TED Talks Daily brings you the latest talks in audio. Join host and journalist Elise Hu for thought-provoking ideas on every subject imaginable — from Artificial Intelligence to Zoology, and everything in between — given by the world's leading thinkers and creators. With TED Talks Daily, find some space in your day to change your perspectives, ignite your curiosity, and learn something new.

A food web is a map of what organisms eat what other organisms in a given area. Those life forms include all the species in that area, such as plants, animals and even microbes. Food webs represent feeding relationships with arrows. Each arrow points from the species getting eaten (the prey) to the species feeding on them (the predator).

Researchers at Linköping University and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden clearly never paid much attention to lists of things wood is bad at, so they went ahead and made the world's first wooden transistor.

To be upfront, the team behind the innovation added a special ingredient to get around the whole issue of wood being so lousy at conducting a current. And while it works, don't expect to find one inside your next smartphone.

As a star runs out of fuel, it will billow out to a million times its original size, engulfing any matter — and planets — in its wake. Scientists have observed hints of stars just before, and shortly after, the act of consuming entire planets, but they have never caught one in the act until now.

In a study appeared in Nature, scientists at MIT, Harvard University, Caltech, and elsewhere report that they have observed a star swallowing a planet, for the first time.

Planetary scientists now know how thick the Martian crust is, thanks to the strongest Marsquake ever observed.

On average, the crust is between 42 and 56 kilometers thick, researchers report in a paper to appear in Geophysical Research Letters. That’s roughly 70 percent thicker than the average continental crust on Earth.

In today’s information saturated digital landscape, discerning the truth has become an increasingly complex challenge. While many assert that science holds the factual truth, the line between science as a methodology and scientism — which asserts that scientific knowledge is more reliable and valuable than all other forms of knowledge — often blurs. When scientists exceed the boundaries of testable hypotheses, personal belief systems intermingle with empirical evidence, complicating our understanding of truth.

News articles report on current events that are relevant to the readership of a publication. These current events might take place locally, nationally, or internationally.

News writing is a skill that’s used worldwide, but this writing format—with its unique rules and structure—differs from other forms of writing. Understanding how to write a news story correctly can ensure you’re performing your journalistic duty to your audience.

If you think social media is powerful, keep an eye on immersive video games, says futurist Noah Raford. As more and more people are drawn into gaming and virtual worlds, the communities they forge are spawning real-world social movements. Raford urges us to recognize what's really going on -- and then harness those forces to build the future we want.

For centuries, science has built a legacy of excluding people of colour and those from other historically marginalized groups from the scientific enterprise. Institutions and scientists have used research to underpin discriminatory thinking, and have prioritized research outputs that ignore and further disadvantage marginalized people.  Nature has played a part in creating this racist legacy. After the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020, Nature committed to becoming an agent of change, and helping to end discriminatory practices and systemic racism. 

UNSW Sydney researchers, for the first time, have completely defined the essential cellular process known as methylation. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the landmark study emphasizes the essential role methylation plays in the creation of proteins.

Methylation is a chemical reaction where a small molecule—known as a methyl group—gets added to, or 'tags', DNA, proteins, or other molecules. The process of methylation can affect how a cell behaves, for example by driving the development and differentiation of stem cells. 

Researchers have discovered that in the exotic conditions of the early universe, waves of gravity may have shaken space-time so hard that they spontaneously created radiation. The physical concept of resonance surrounds us in everyday life. When you're sitting on a swing and want to go higher, you naturally start pumping your legs back and forth. You very quickly find the exact right rhythm to make the swing go higher. If you go off rhythm then the swing stops going higher. This particular kind of phenomenon is known in physics as a parametric resonance.

A 13-sided shape known as “the hat” has mathematicians tipping their caps. It’s the first true example of an “einstein,” a single shape that forms a special tiling of a plane: Like bathroom floor tile, it can cover an entire surface with no gaps or overlaps but only with a pattern that never repeats. Although the name “einstein” conjures up the iconic physicist, it comes from the German ein Stein, meaning “one stone,” referring to the single tile. The einstein sits in a weird purgatory between order and disorder. Though the tiles fit neatly together and can cover an infinite plane, they are aperiodic, meaning they can’t form a pattern that repeats.

Behavioral results suggest that learning by trial-and-error (i.e., reinforcement learning) relies on a teaching signal, the prediction error, which quantifies the difference between the obtained and the expected reward. Evidence suggests that distinct cortico-striatal circuits are recruited to encode better-than-expected (positive prediction error) and worst-than-expected (negative prediction error) outcomes. A recent study by Villano et al.1 provides evidence for differential networks that underlie learning from positive and negative prediction errors in humans using real-life behavioral data. More specifically, they found that university students are more likely to update beliefs concerning grade expectations following positive rather than negative prediction errors.

Scientists discover a way Earth's atmosphere cleans itself

Human activities emit many kinds of pollutants into the air, and without a molecule called hydroxide (OH), many of these pollutants would keep aggregating in the atmosphere. How OH itself forms in the atmosphere was viewed as a complete story, but in new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.. continue reading

Science has won a tremendous reputation for success — so much so that other fields wrap themselves in the language of science.  To be considered scientific, a field must use a highly rigorous investigative approach, the results of which are meant to be replicated or refuted by other researchers.  There are five fundamental traits that distinguish science from everything else.

You know kilo, mega, and giga. Is the metric system ready for ronna and quecca?

Fresh from redefining the kilogram and other fundamental measures, the guardians of the metric system have set their sights on another upgrade: new prefixes for outrageously large and small numbers.. continue reading

The driving test for driverless cars
How do you test whether a fully autonomous, self-driving car can cope with dangerous situations? In the real world accidents and near-misses are relatively rare — rare enough that it would take a lot of testing to see how a driverless car might react to different scenarios. Now a group of researchers has developed a new way to test autonomous vehicles, by surrounding them with virtual reality obstacles controlled by AIs.. continue reading

Where did Earth's water come from? Not melted meteorites, according to scientists
A new study published in the journal Nature brings scientists one step closer to answering that question. Led by University of Maryland Assistant Professor of Geology Megan Newcombe, researchers analyzed melted meteorites that had been floating around in space since the solar system's formation 4 1/2 billion years ago.. continue reading

Not every reader's struggle is the same
Neuroscientists find that brain signatures of reading difficulties in students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are, on average, different from those of students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds who struggle with reading. Many children struggle to learn to read, and studies have shown that students from a lower socioeconomic status (SES) background are more likely to have difficulty than those from a higher SES background.. continue reading

How to Make a Self-Care Checklist That Actually Works for You

Self-care doesn’t look the same for everyone, however. Your go-to approach for managing stress may not help your best friend. And even partners in close, healthy relationships tend to have different needs for things like companionship, exercise, and leisure time.. Continue reading

PODCASTS: GLOBAL WARMING ~ CLIMATE CHANGE - UN Dispatch

Global warming is known to be a major accelerating factor in climate change. The United Nations, it’s Member States, NGOs, and business partners are monitoring, establishing goals, and taking action to control and mitigate the effects of global warming and climate change. The effects of climate change are increasingly visible in the size and habitability of world regions, and subsequently the lives, livelihoods, and security of diverse cultures of people.. Continue

Sports help kids develop important trait linked to adult success

Here's another good reason for kids to participate in organized sports: They can develop the 'grit' that helps them overcome challenges as adults, a new study suggests. Grit is defined as the combination of passion and perseverance that helps people achieve their long-term goals. This new research found that adults who played sports as a kid scored higher on a measurement of grit than adults who didn't play at all or said they quit.. Continue reading

The Role of Physics in Medicine

What is Medical Physics? Medical physics is a branch of applied physics that utilizes physical sciences to prevent, diagnose, and treat human diseases. Medical physics can be categorized into multiple sub-groups: medical imaging physics, radiation oncology physics, non-ionizing medical radiation physics, nuclear medicine physics, medical health physics, and physiological measurements.. Continue reading

Can food be medicine? Pros and cons

“Food as medicine” may be an emerging concept in the Western world but has existed for centuries as the cornerstone of health for many cultures around the globe. However, the role of diet and food in disease prevention and management compared to conventional medicine has been questioned.. Continue reading

What is Globalisation? Advantages and Disadvantages of Globalisation

Advantages and Disadvantages of Globalisation: Globalisation implies the speedup in exchanges and movement (of goods and services, capital, human beings, or even cultural practices) all across the globe. One of the globalisation effects is that it increases and encourages the interactions between the various regions and populations worldwide.. Continue reading

Critical Thinking Is About Asking Better Questions

Critical thinking is the ability to analyze and effectively break down an issue in order to make a decision or find a solution. At the heart of critical thinking is the ability to formulate deep, different, and effective questions. For effective questioning, start by holding your hypotheses loosely. Be willing to fundamentally reconsider your initial conclusions — and do so without defensiveness.. Continue reading

Electric shocks act like vaccines to protect plants from viruses

Plants can’t get COVID-19, but they can get infected by a range of other viruses. Some of those viruses can cause huge problems for crops. A ringspot virus, for instance, threatens papaya fruit trees in Taiwan. Options exist to fight plant viruses, such as proteins to treat leaves. But two Taiwanese high school students have found a novel anti-viral tactic: They zap plants with electricity.. Continue reading

Explainer: The fundamental forces

Forces are all around us. The force of gravity holds Earth in orbit around the sun. The force of magnetism makes bar magnets attract iron filings. And one known as the strong force glues together the building blocks of atoms. Forces affect every object in the universe — from the biggest galaxies to the smallest particles. All these forces have one thing in common: they cause objects to change their motion.. Continue reading

Physicists explain the mesmerizing movements of raindrops on car windshields

Staring at raindrops on a car windshield is more than just a way to get in touch with your emo side. You might also learn some physics. As a car speeds along in the rain, some water droplets slide up the windshield, others slide down, and some seem stuck in place. “It’s very hypnotizing, isn’t it?” says fluid mechanics researcher Sungyon Lee of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.. Continue reading

Too Much Information, Too Little Time

Wait. What? Often, we miss something that we wanted to see, hear, or feel - especially when there is a lot of information competing for our attention. We mostly notice this problem when we try to make the brain process lots of information at high speed. Imagine for instance that you are playing a video game and browsing the internet while checking text messages on your phone. Here, we look at how neuroscientists (scientists who study the brain and behavior) answer questions about information that comes at us very quickly: What draws our attention? How does paying attention to one thing affect how we see other things?.. Continue reading

What science still doesn’t know about the five senses

In the 1970s, psychologist Diana Deutsch discovered an audio illusion that made her feel like her brain was a little bit broken. “It seemed to me that I’d entered another universe or I’d gone crazy or something ... the world had just turned upside down!” Deutsch recalls. Like the visual illusions that trick our eyes into seeing impossible things, the audio illusion Deutsch discovered in the 1970s fooled her ears.. Continue reading

The Methods and Benefits of Flood Monitoring

A flood monitoring system is used to monitor a rise in water levels. The system comprises sensors that are deployed in cities or any area of interest. The sensors can be connected to either the main electricity or can be solar-powered. These sensors are deployed on bridges, wells, lakes, or beaches to measure water levels in real-time and continuously send data remotely to the centralized data system management via different networks such as GSM, mobile cell networks, or Wi-Fi.. Continue reading

100 Facts About Earth

How much do you know about the beautiful blue marble we call home? From how our planet formed to just how many species there are, here are 100 things you need to know about Earth and life on Earth, adapted from an episode of The List Show on YouTube.. Continue reading

Secrets of Early Animal Evolution Revealed by Chromosome ‘Tectonics’

Large blocks of genes conserved through hundreds of millions of years of evolution hint at how the first animal chromosomes came to be. Chromosomes, the bundles of DNA that star in the mitotic ballet of cell division, play a leading role in complex life. But the question of how chromosomes came to exist and evolve has long been discouragingly hard to answer.. Continue reading

Art Should Be a Habit, Not a Luxury

If someone asked whether you like the arts, you’d probably say you do — at least in theory. According to the advocacy group americans for the arts, more than two-thirds of u.S. Adults say the arts “lift me up beyond everyday experiences.” still, only 30 percent attended a concert of any type in 2017; 23 percent went to an art museum; 6 percent attended a literary event. Fewer than half actively created art of any kind.. Continue reading

Global Economic Development & Facing the Mindset Hypothesis

Looking at failing economies: How do you measure the prosperity levels of any surroundings when economical behaviorism and fiscal management fails to add up anything in proper totals or columns? How one may know if any economy is failing or reaching stars when misinformation surrounds it and mesmerization astounds it? How one may know when to change the game, fix the rules and follow the right paths of recovery?.. Continue reading

Success Should Not Be Defined By Institutions

Students, patients and employees are all tired of being told what success looks like. This was one of the core messages I absorbed while listening to people share their personal stories at a recent 2021 Leadership in the Age of Personalization Summit. This article is part two of a six-part series that features a blend of written content and short videos of individuals from across industries (doctors, professors, executives, deans and more).. Continue reading

How painting can transform communities

Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn create community art by painting entire neighborhoods, and involving those who live there -- from the favelas of Rio to the streets of North Philadelphia. What's made their projects succeed? In this funny and inspiring talk, the artists explain their art-first approach -- and the importance of a neighborhood barbecue.. Continue reading

Analyzing the language of color

Cognitive scientists find that people can more easily communicate warmer colors than cool ones. The human eye can perceive millions of different colors, but the number of categories human languages use to group those colors is much smaller. Some languages use as few as three color categories (words corresponding to black, white, and red), while the languages of industrialized cultures use up to 10 or 12 categories.. Continue reading

Isaac Newton’s life was one long search for God

It is hard to think of a name that has been more influential in science than Isaac Newton. Sure, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Darwin, Curie, and [add your favorite here] are all spectacular scientists and deserve the immortality they enjoy. But what makes Newton unique is that his science, as is the case for Darwin’s, is a science we can relate to in our everyday life, as opposed to being either far away in the realm of atoms (quantum physics) or at speeds we are not able to perceive directly (theory of relativity).. Continue reading

Characters for good, created by artificial intelligence

As it becomes easier to create hyper-realistic digital characters using artificial intelligence, much of the conversation around these tools has centered on misleading and potentially dangerous deepfake content. But the technology can also be used for positive purposes — to revive Albert Einstein to teach a physics class, talk through a career change with your older self, or anonymize people while preserving facial communication.. Continue reading

A century of quantum mechanics questions the fundamental nature of reality

Scientists are like prospectors, excavating the natural world seeking gems of knowledge about physical reality. And in the century just past, scientists have dug deep enough to discover that reality’s foundations do not mirror the world of everyday appearances. At its roots, reality is described by the mysterious set of mathematical rules known as quantum mechanics.. Continue reading

The Year in Physics - Quanta Magazine

Puzzling particles, quirky (and controversial) quantum computers, and one of the most ambitious science experiments in history marked the year’s milestones. One of the first articles Quanta Magazine published in 2021 described a cosmic surprise: A long-puzzling smudge of X-ray light was not, as most believed, a nearby cloud of gas, the remnant of some long-ago stellar explosion. Instead, it was the edge of a truly enormous structure, a bubble that towered over our Milky Way galaxy.. Continue reading

2021 Was an Amazing Year for NASA: Mars Landing, First Flight, Artemis, More [Video]

In 2021, NASA completed its busiest year of development yet in low-Earth orbit, made history on Mars, continued to make progress on its Artemis plans for the Moon, tested new technologies for a supersonic aircraft, finalized launch preparations for the next-generation space telescope, and much more – all while safely operating during a pandemic and welcoming new leadership under the Biden-Harris Administration.. Continue reading

Using mechanical tools improves our language skills, study finds

Research has revealed a correlation between being particularly proficient in tool use and having good syntactic ability. A new study has now shown that both skills rely on the same neurological resources, which are located in the same brain region. Furthermore, motor training using a tool improves our ability to understand the syntax of complex sentences and -- vice-versa -- syntactic training improves our proficiency in using tools.. Continue reading

Why e, the Transcendental Math Constant, Is Just the Best

Last month, we presented three puzzles that seemed ordinary enough but contained a numerical twist. Hidden below the surface was the mysterious transcendental number e. Most familiar as the base of natural logarithms, Euler’s number e is a universal constant with an infinite decimal expansion that begins with 2.7 1828 1828 45 90 45.. Continue reading

Scientists Say: Your weekly word

Science News for Students highlights a new science word, from absolute zero to zooxanthellae. Each word has a definition and is used in a sentence to help you understand the meaning. There’s even an audio recording, so you can hear exactly how to pronounce the term.. Continue reading

7 ways Einstein changed the world

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is one of the most famous scientists of all time, and his name has become almost synonymous with the word "genius." While his reputation owes something to his eccentric appearance and occasional pronouncements on philosophy.. Continue Reading

Are Women More Cooperative Than Men? A Psychologist Answers

A team of psychologists found that men, compared to women, were more likely to behave either extremely selfishly or extremely altruistically in experiments where people could either choose to make decisions that benefited themselves, benefited others, or benefited the overall good.. Continue reading

Preschool program linked with better social and emotional skills

A preschool enrichment program developed at Penn State helps boost social and emotional skills that still have positive effects years later during middle and high school, according to a new study.. Continue reading

When light and atoms share a common vibe

An especially counter-intuitive feature of quantum mechanics is that a single event can exist in a state of superposition—happening both here and there, or both today and tomorrow. Such superpositions are hard to create, as they are destroyed if any kind of information about the place and time of the event leaks into the surrounding.. Continue reading

A Video Tour of the Standard Model

The Standard Model is a sweeping equation that has correctly predicted the results of virtually every experiment ever conducted, as Quanta explores in a new video. Recently, Quanta has explored the collaboration between physics and mathematics on one of the most important ideas in science: quantum field theory.. Continue reading

The Kármán Line: Where does space begin?

Experts have suggested the actual boundary between Earth and space lies anywhere from a mere 18.5 miles (30km) above the surface to more than a million miles (1.6 million km) away. However, for well over half a century, most — including regulatory bodies — have accepted something close to our current definition of the Kármán Line.. Continue reading

Scientists detect signatures of life remotely

"When light is reflected by biological matter, a part of the light's electromagnetic waves will travel in either clockwise or counterclockwise spirals. This phenomenon is called circular polarization and is caused by the biological matter's homochirality.. Continue reading

No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay in the Air

By far the most popular explanation of lift is Bernoulli’s theorem, a principle identified by Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli in his 1738 treatise, Hydrodynamica. Bernoulli came from a family of mathematicians.. Continue reading

Ten computer codes that transformed science

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope team gave the world the first glimpse of what a black hole actually looks like. But the image of a glowing, ring-shaped object that the group unveiled wasn’t a conventional photograph. It was computed.. Continue reading

If You Say ‘Science Is Right,’ You’re Wrong

One popular move is to insist that science is right—full stop—and that once we discover the truth about the world, we are done. Anyone who denies such truths (they suggest) is stupid, ignorant or fatuous.. Continue reading

Cloud computing expands brain sciences

Examples include a child learning how to read; an athlete recovering from a concussion; or a person turning 50 and wondering where all the time has gone. These are not changes that people perceive on a day-to-day basis. They just suddenly realize they're older, healed, or have a new development skill.. Continue reading

New Research Advances the Treatment of Chronic Pain

Opioid peptides are small proteins that mediate pain relief and emotions, including euphoria, anxiety, stress and depression, by interacting with four classical receptors (“molecular switches”) in the brain.. Continue reading

Physicists report definitive evidence how auroras are created

"Measurements revealed this small population of electrons undergoes 'resonant acceleration' by the Alfven wave's electric field, similar to a surfer catching a wave and being continually accelerated as the surfer moves along with the wave," .. Continue reading

Memory details fade over time, with only the main gist preserved

For this study the researchers developed a simple computerised task that measures how fast people can recover certain characteristics of visual memories when prompted to do so. Participants learned word-image pairs and were later required to recollect different elements of the image when cued with the word.. Continue reading

Cities worldwide dim lights to mark Earth Hour

Cities around the world were turning off their lights Saturday for Earth Hour, with this year's event highlighting the link between the destruction of nature and increasing outbreaks of diseases like Covid-19. In London, the Houses of Parliament, London Eye ferris wheel, Shard skyscraper and neon signs of Piccadilly Circus were among the landmarks flicking the switches.. Continue reading

Warmer climate may make new mutations more harmful

A warmer global climate can cause mutations to have more severe consequences for the health of organisms through their detrimental effect on protein function. This may have major repercussions on organisms' ability to adapt to, and survive in, the altered habitats of the future.. Continue reading

What is the science of mangoes

A perfectly ripe mango is an absolute marvel of nature. There are not enough Michelin stars to award the tree named Mangifera indica. No chef on the planet can concoct a dish that is such an ethereally perfect combination of sweetness, sourness, aroma, texture and just sheer joy. To truly appreciate this, one needs to understand why plants make fruits in the first place.. Continue reading

Researchers demonstrate a quantum advantage

Quantum computing and quantum sensing have the potential to be vastly more powerful than their classical counterparts. Not only could a fully realized quantum computer take just seconds to solve equations that would take a classical computer thousands of years, but it could have incalculable impacts on areas ranging from biomedical imaging to autonomous driving.. Continue reading

Toward next-generation learned robot manipulation

The ever-changing nature of human environments presents great challenges to robot manipulation. Objects that robots must manipulate vary in shape, weight, and configuration. Important properties of the robot, such as surface friction and motor torque constants, also vary over time. . Continue reading

An earthquake lasted 32 years, and scientists want to know how

When a magnitude 8.5 mega-earthquake struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra in February 1861, it caused the land to convulse, stirring up a wall of water that crashed on nearby shores and killed thousands of people. . Continue reading

Trip frequency is key ingredient in new law of human travel

An analysis of mobile-phone tracking data has revealed a universal pattern that describes the interplay between the distances travelled by humans on trips and the frequency with which those trips are made.. Continue reading

Endless scrolling through social media can make you sick

When a dark ashy cloud born from wildfires settled over the Seattle metropolitan area, Jack Riewe was among the millions of people suddenly trapped indoors. It was September 2020, and without access to the outdoors during a pandemic, it became even more difficult for the 27-year-old writer to see other people.. Continue reading

How Scientists Are Using the ISS to Study Earth’s Climate

On Earth, we often look toward the sky longing to know what resides in the rest of the universe. Meanwhile, 250 miles above our planet, the International Space Station is looking back.. Continue reading

Helping students of all ages flourish in the era of AI

A new cross-disciplinary research initiative at MIT aims to promote the understanding and use of AI across all segments of society. The effort, called Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE), will develop new teaching approaches and tools to engage learners in settings from preK-12 to the workforce.. Continue reading

The future of psychedelic science

From treating depression to understanding consciousness, the promise of psychedelics is shifting their study from fringe to frontier neuroscience. In 2019 a small group of researchers at Imperial established the world’s first dedicated centre for research into the action and clinical use of psychedelic compounds.. Continue reading

Origin of life: The chicken-and-egg problem

Life as we know it is based on a complex network of interactions, which take place at microscopic scales in biological cells, and involve thousands of distinct molecular species. In our bodies, one fundamental process is repeated countless times every day.. Continue reading

A new state of light

A single "super photon" made up of many thousands of individual light particles: About ten years ago, researchers at the University of Bonn produced such an extreme aggregate state for the first time and presented a completely new light source. The state is called optical Bose-Einstein condensate and has captivated many physicists ever since, because this exotic world of light particles is home to its very own physical phenomena.. Continue reading

Mammals Can Use Their Intestines to Breathe

Researchers show that both mice and pigs are capable of oxygenating their blood via the colon—a capacity that, if shared by humans, could be leveraged in the clinic to minimize the need for mechanical ventilation.. Continue reading

A clock’s accuracy may be tied to the entropy it creates

Today’s most advanced clocks keep time with an incredibly precise rhythm. But a new experiment suggests that clocks’ precision comes at a price: entropy. Entropy, or disorder, is created each time a clock ticks. Now, scientists have measured the entropy generated by a clock that can be run at varying levels of accuracy.. Continue reading

The burdens of informal leadership

Recently published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, the study found that while it's commonly assumed that informal leaders are satisfied by their unique status and recognition from others, they could lose motivation from overwork and a lack of support.. Continue reading

How to declutter your kids’ artwork while keeping what matters

If your kids are anything like mine, they love paper. Cutting paper. Gluing paper. Drawing on paper. Tearing paper. Hanging paper. The mounds of art, scraps, and supplies can be overwhelming, and getting rid of them is not easy—not when even the tiniest doodle could be a treasure you think you’ll cherish dearly when your children grow up.. Continue reading 

7 ways to avoid becoming a misinformation superspreader

The problem of misinformation isn’t going away. Internet platforms like Facebook and Twitter have taken some steps to curb its spread and say they are working on doing more. But no method yet introduced has been completely successful at removing all misleading content from social media. The best defense, then, is self-defense.. Continue reading

What Is Bitcoin And How Does It Work?

Not only is Bitcoin the first cryptocurrency, but it’s also the best known of the more than 5,000 cryptocurrencies in existence today. Financial media eagerly covers each new dramatic high and stomach churning decline, making Bitcoin an inescapable part of the landscape.. Continue reading

Nature can be as engaging as video games

We don’t need to invest in outdoor equipment or an expensive vacation to get started, according to Sampson, also the author of How to Raise A Wild Child. We just need to notice what’s around us, even if we live in a city. “Too often these days, we walk right past amazing natural events,” he says. “It could be a butterfly on a branch, a hawk hunting silently overhead, it could be a beautiful evening sky.. Continue reading

Explainer: Earth - layer by layer

Mountain ranges tower to the sky. Oceans plummet to impossible depths. Earth’s surface is an amazing place to behold. Yet even the deepest canyon is but a tiny scratch on the planet. To really understand Earth, you need to travel 6,400 kilometers (3,977 miles) beneath our feet.. Continue reading

Decoding the age of the ice at Mars' north pole

Mars' north pole contains a large ice cap made up of many layers of frozen water. Like ice cores on Earth, those layers offer a tantalizing record of climate on Mars over the past several million years. The first step in decoding that climate record is to figure out how those layers form and how old each one might be - a difficult task to perform from orbit.. Continue reading

Happiness really does come for free

The researchers set out to find out how people rate their subjective well-being in societies where money plays a minimal role, and which are not usually included in global happiness surveys. They found that the majority of people reported remarkably high levels of happiness.. Continue reading

The DNA regions in our brain that contribute to make us human

With only 1% difference, the human and chimpanzee protein-coding genomes are remarkably similar. Understanding the biological features that make us human is part of a fascinating and intensely debated line of research. Researchers at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the University of Lausanne have developed a new approach to pinpoint, for the first time, adaptive human-specific changes in the way genes are regulated in the brain.. Continue reading

First ever measurements of einsteinium

Since element 99 - einsteinium - was discovered in 1952 at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) from the debris of the first hydrogen bomb, scientists have performed very few experiments with it because it is so hard to create and is exceptionally radioactive.. Continue reading

Loneliness makes our brains crave people

A hungry brain craves food. A lonely brain craves people. A new brain study demonstrates this. After being isolated, it shows, people’s brains perked up at the sight of other people. The action was in the same brain region that revs up when a hungry person sees food.. Continue reading

Explainer: Our atmosphere - layer by layer

Earth’s atmosphere is all around us. Most people take it for granted. But don’t. Among other things, it shields us from radiation and prevents our precious water from evaporating into space. It keeps the planet warm and provides us with oxygen to breathe. In fact, the atmosphere makes Earth the livable, lovable home sweet home that it is.. Continue reading

Technology in higher education: learning with it

Technology has shifted the way that professors teach students in higher education. For example, by uploading recorded lectures online, students can reference a digital copy of the topics discussed in class. However, lecture-based teaching traditionally leaves students as consumers of information solely with little room for student creativity or interaction.. Continue reading

Musicians have brains with stronger connections than non-musician

Years of musical training shape the brain in dramatic ways. A minority of musicians — with Mozart and Michael Jackson in their ranks — also possess absolute pitch, the ability to identify a tone without a reference. But, it remains unclear how this ability impacts the brain.. Continue reading

3 science-based strategies to increase your creativity

The term “hacking” has a bad name. It comes out of coding and refers to someone trying to gain control over a computer system, typically for nefarious purposes. The word then morphed a bit, becoming pop culture shorthand for a “quick fix” or a “shortcut.”

None of those definitions apply here. First, the system we’re trying to gain control over is our own neurobiology. Second, when it comes to sustained peak performance, there are no shortcuts.. Continue reading

Study analyses hormone seasonality in humans

A recent study has provided researchers with a dataset of millions of hormone tests from medical records that shows seasonality with a winter-spring peak in hormones for reproduction, growth, metabolism, and stress adaptation. The hormone seasonality indicates that, like other animals, humans may have a physiological peak season for basic biological functions.. Continue reading

Lasting Benefits From Growing Up in a Bilingual Home

New research has found that growing up in a bilingual home can provide unexpected cognitive benefits later in life.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, demonstrates for the first time that adults who acquired their second language as a young child (early bilinguals) are quicker at shifting attention and quicker at detecting visual changes compared to adults who learned their second language later in life (late bilinguals).. Continue reading

Teaching pupils empathy measurably improves creative abilities

Teaching children in a way that encourages them to empathise with others measurably improves their creativity, and could potentially lead to several other beneficial learning outcomes, new research suggests.. Continue reading

How reality is built from a few basic ingredients

As the story is usually told, science began when some deep thinkers in ancient Greece decided to reject the popular mythological explanations for various natural phenomena. Those early philosophers sought logical explanations for things like thunderstorms, rather than attributing them to Zeus throwing temper tantrums in the form of thunderbolts.. Continue reading

Watching decision making in the brain

In the course of deciding whether to keep reading this article, you may change your mind several times. While your final choice will be obvious to an observer -- you'll continue to scroll and read, or you'll click on another article -- any internal deliberations you had along the way will most likely be inscrutable to anyone but you.. Continue reading

Afternoon napping linked to better mental agility

As people age, their sleep patterns change, with afternoon naps becoming more frequent. But research published to date hasn't reached any consensus on whether afternoon naps might help to stave off cognitive decline and dementia in older people or whether they might be a symptom of dementia.. Continue reading

Yoga shown to improve anxiety, study shows

Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, a new study found that yoga was significantly more effective for generalized anxiety disorder than standard education on stress management, but not effective as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the gold standard form of structured talk therapy that helps patients identify negative thinking for better responses to challenges.. Continue reading

Is it better to give than receive?

Young children who have experienced compassionate love and empathy from their mothers may be more willing to turn thoughts into action by being generous to others, a University of California, Davis, study suggests. In lab studies, children tested at ages 4 and 6 showed more willingness to give up the tokens they had earned to fictional children in need when two conditions were present -- if they showed bodily changes when given the opportunity to share and had experienced positive parenting that modeled such kindness.. Continue reading

Data reveals bonds between emissions, pollution and economy

Burning fossil fuels has long powered world economies while contributing to air pollution and the buildup of greenhouse gases. A new analysis of nearly two decades of satellite data shows that economic development, fossil-fuel combustion and air quality are closely linked on the continental and national scales, but can be decoupled at the national level, according to Penn State scientists.. Continue reading

How the brain helps us navigate social differences

Our brain responds differently if we talk to a person of a different socioeconomic background from our own compared to when we speak to someone whose background is similar, according to a new imaging study by UCL and Yale researchers. . Continue reading

Living environment may be key to longevity

When it comes to living to the ripe old age of 100, good genes help but don't tell the full story. Where you live has a significant impact on the likelihood that you will reach centenarian age, suggests a new study conducted by scientists at Washington State University's Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine.. Continue reading

Solar system formation in two steps

An international team of researchers from the University of Oxford, LMU Munich, ETH Zurich, BGI Bayreuth, and the University of Zurich discovered that a two-step formation process of the early Solar System can explain the chronology and split in volatile and isotope content of the inner and outer Solar System.. Continue reading

How does the brain manage its learning?

The study involved mice and rats learning a rather strange brain-based skill. A single neuron in the sensory cortex was stimulated, and the rodent had to show it had felt the buzz by licking a dispenser to receive some sweetened water.. Continue reading