Decoded smartphone movements reveal transport mode
Planes trains, and automobiles – scientists in Finland have worked out how to use accelerometer data from smartphones to reveal…
Customizing animal scents to manipulate animal behaviors
Animals’ scent posts may seem to be simply stinky, but new molecular surveys show they actually convey a veritable encyclopedia…
Electrosmog harvested to produce electricity
Using inexpensive materials configured and tuned to capture ambient signals from the electromagnetic spectrum, Duke University researchers have designed a…
“Freakish” asteroid resembles rotating lawn sprinkler
Using the Hubble space telescope, astronomers have discovered a “weird and freakish object” resembling a rotating lawn sprinkler in the…
Pop music boosts solar cell efficiency
The acoustic vibrations from pop and rock music can improve the performance of solar cells by as much as 40…
A bad boss can cripple your immune system
A stressful workplace can dramatically change gene expression in our immune system and significantly impact our health, say Ohio State…
Habitable Earth-like planets? New analysis suggests there are billions
Although NASA’s Kepler space telescope is no longer functioning, astronomers examining the data it provided say they now have enough…
Mammals may shrink with warming climate
Mammal body size decreased significantly during two ancient global warming events, say paleontologists from the University of Michigan who believe…
Synaptic transistor learns while it computes
The human brain has around 86 billion neurons, connected by synapses that not only create logic circuits; they also continuously…
Boffins say Internet 2.0 doesn’t need servers
University of Cambridge scientists say their proposal for a revolutionary new Internet architecture could make the Internet more “social” by…
Women’s gazes as objectifying as men’s
Following on from earlier research that showed how people remembered women’s body parts better than their entire bodies, the same…
Snakes on a brain: slithery reptiles leave lingering imprint on primate genes
A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesappears to confirm a theory that the…
Brain’s processing power vastly underestimated, suggests new study
In work that could change the way we think about how neural circuitry functions in the brain, scientists have shown…
Researchers expose Google’s massive network expansion
Google has dramatically increased the number of sites around the world from which it serves client queries, say researchers who…
New titleholder for most distant galaxy hints at universe’s opaque beginnings
Newly discovered galaxy z8-GND-5296 is providing astronomers with an intriguing glimpse of what the universe was like when it was…
Flickr holiday snaps yield tourism data gold
Stanford University scientists have been using the vast number of vacation snaps on photo-sharing site Flickr to measure where and…
Gay insects are just confused, say scientists
Homosexual behaviors in birds and mammals are thought to provide a number of evolutionary benefits, but scientists trying to find…
Ocean currents explain rainfall riddle
Most of the rain on Earth falls in the Northern Hemisphere and scientists have long believed that this was a…
Distant galaxy poses astronomical puzzle
Astronomers have found the most distant gravitational lens yet – a galaxy that (as predicted by Albert Einstein’s general theory…
This bird sings Bach
U.S. and German researchers have found striking parallels between the music of Bach and Haydn and the songs of a…
Human Carriers of mad cow disease double previous estimate
Analyzing thousands of tissue samples from surgical procedures carried out around the United Kingdom (UK), researchers have estimated that the…
Vegetable compound protects against lethal radiation
A compound derived from cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli has been found to offer protection from lethal…
Researchers isolate protein that delivers brain benefits of exercise
A protein produced during endurance exercise has been isolated and given to non-exercising mice, where it switched on genes that…
Water discovered in remnants of destroyed exoplanet
Astrophysicists have found the first evidence of a water-rich rocky planetary body outside our solar system in its shattered remains…
Human longevity linked to loss of species
In a fascinating new study, human life expectancy – which is rarely included in analyses of human impacts on the…
Scientists link DNA to marital satisfaction
Wedded bliss or a miserable marriage? Researchers at UC Berkeley and Northwestern University say that a gene involved in the…
Giant channels discovered under Antarctic ice
Beneath the floating Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in West Antarctica, scientists have discovered huge ice channels that are 800 feet high…
Touch-feedback out of thin air
Using focused ultrasound radiation, scientists have created a human-computer interface that provides haptic (touch) feedback above a computer screen without…
Brain connectivity may have sparked Einstein’s brilliance
A new analysis technique that compared Albert Einstein’s brain to others of the period shows the left and right cerebral…
Evidence for sonar contributing to mass whale strandings
For the first time, a mass stranding of marine mammals has been linked to the high-frequency sonar mapping systems used…