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It's rare to get any good news associated with reports of Alzheimer's disease, but neuroscientists have just released word that one drug is dramatically reducing symptoms. It seems to do this by dissolving a protein that builds up in the brain — and it manages to create major improvements within days. More »
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The science of dendrochronology observes changes in the pattern of tree rings in an attempt to create a time line and infer climate changes. Using tree ring data, it is possible to link the past 11,000 years in parts of Germany & Northern Ireland, but only the past few centuries in other parts of the world. More »
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Explanations for why zebras are stripey run a wide gamut: some say camouflage, or that it makes it hard to target individual members of the herd, or even that it's a cooling method. Well, add another one to the list, which at least has some experimentation behind it. More »
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In what can only be described as the most shocking revelation since I learned that tumors can grow teeth, it turns out your pancreas has taste receptors. New research published in the PNAS indicates that there are sweet taste receptors in that organ — and their reaction to fructose may be a cause of diabetes. More »
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Imagine that you're coral at the bottom of the sea — a thrilling fantasy, we know. You're minding your own coral business when suddenly some obnoxious scuba diver ungraciously dumps sediment on you. How do you free yourself from this sand trap? More »
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Ladybugs are the one kind of bug you don't mind crawling on you. They're cute. They're pretty. And they swarm. They swarm by the tens of millions. I had a personal encounter with a smaller swarm when hiking. Find out about my brush with nature's most adorable fury. More »
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This Sensory Substitution Device uses the camera to gather visual data and then uses a rather nifty computer algorithm to translates this data into sound. With a little practice, blind users can identify complex objects, and even read words. More »
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Animals strike up plenty of strange interspecies friendships, but this one in particular is DEFCON 1 adorable. At the Woodland Zoo in Farmington, Pennsylvania, Lil' Bear the grizzly and Tala the wolf have struck up a friendship that has lasted six years. The only thing that could make this tableau any cuter is if the heavens opened up and began raining candy. More »
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This one pretty much does what it says on the tin. The face-morphing, augmented-reality app you see here is the brainchild of New York artist Karolina Sobecka, who calls the interface All the Universe is Full of the Lives of Perfect Creatures. More »
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A heart won't beat once it's been ripped out of the chest Indiana Jones style. But disembodied heart cells, when nurtured in a petri dish, will beat on their own. More »
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In the summer of 1997, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration picked up a sound from deep beneath the Pacific. The sound seemed to come from an animal far larger than any we've ever seen. This was the Bloop. More »
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Leggings, yoga pants, call them what you will — the point is they're everywhere. And while there's something to be said about the marvels of body-shaping attire, the fact remains that ass-hugging tight-pants — which typically come in some form of white, grey, or black — are becoming a bit commonplace... boring, even. More »
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While a huge amount of research has examined how plants and animals looked in the prehistoric past, we know extremely little about what these creatures would have sounded like (Dr. Alan Grant's 3D-printed raptor voice box in Jurassic Park 3 notwithstanding). But now, we finally have some idea of one noise that would have pierced the primeval woodlands 165 million years ago. More »
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Tons of cat owners have Toxoplasma gondii, the common feline parasite. We've known for quite some time that T. gondii makes rats lose their fear of cats, making them more likely to be eaten. We've also known that the parasite causes humans to become more reckless, and in some cases hornier. More »
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Aphrodisiacs have a rich and often-told history — but what about their opposite? Throughout history, people have tried to find ways to suppress sexual desire. People have used methods ranging from saltpeter to cornflakes to modern-day chemical castration, with mixed success. More »
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If you're a shark, what could you possibly have to fear? You're the ultimate predator, the top of the marine food chain. You can swim around without a care in the world... unless another, even bigger shark is feeling hungry. More »
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Last Sunday, Percy and Connie Emert of the lamentably named Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania discovered a purple squirrel in their backyard. More »
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Science is always good for an awesomely counter-intuitive finding, and this one has to be the mother of them all. Despite the fact that life itself originally came from the sea, the same can't be said of the ocean's current occupants. More »
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Why haven't we cured cancer yet? It seems like almost every day, we hear about another miraculous advance in cancer treatment. Drugs that cause tumors to shrink, gene therapies, and even a possible vaccine. And yet, our loved ones keep dying of cancer. More »
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Australia faces serious ecological threats posed by feral animals and out-of-control wildfires. Non-native species gone wild have contributed to both problems, and one biologist is suggesting that Australia fight fire with fire by introducing more non-native species. More »
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13,000 feet beneath the surface of Antarctica's vast ice sheet rests the otherworldly Lake Vostok. Home to some of the most extreme conditions on Earth, Vostok has remained isolated from the rest of the world for 20 million years, and completely inaccessible to mankind. Until now. More »
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If you've ever visited Old Faithful and the other geysers at Yellowstone National Park, you've likely come away with two reactions. First, it's one of the most captivating sights in all of nature. Second, the place stinks like rotting eggs. More »
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With photosynthesis, plants are already busy converting sunlight into usable energy. The question then is how to use plants' natural solar-power abilities to generate energy for us. In this video, an MIT researcher explains how to do just that. More »
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Mammals generally have evolved the same basic, boring way for males to fertilize an egg: just send a bunch of tiny individual sperm into the female reproductive organs. But in insects like the diving beetle, it gets way more insane. More »
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This incredible video captures a showdown between cancer cells and the T cells that act as the shock troops for your immune system. That's right - you're actually watching a T cell defeat cancer. More »
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What you're looking at here is a screenshot from one of the fifty so-called "Spatio-Temporal Exploratory Model" or "STEM" Maps published over on ebird.org — some of the most advanced models of birds' migratory patterns ever released. More »
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This awesome photo is of a newly discovered deep sea worm, Swima fulgida. Measuring just over an inch long, this little guy lives 9,000 feet underwater and escapes predators by flinging homemade "bombs" at its enemies. More »
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Posidonia oceanica is found throughout the Mediterranean Sea. It forms massive clonal colonies, in which genetically identical specimens form one giant interconnected super-organism that can last for hundreds of thousands of years. Those colonies are older than human history. More »
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There's only one place in the world where you can view row after row of brains afflicted by mad cow disease, Alzheimer's, and alcoholism. It's Lima's Museo de Cerebros, home to the largest collection of gray matter that can be viewed by the public. More »
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There's a new two-faced character in the world, and he's a lot cuddlier than Aaron Eckhart. Newborn Janus cat Harvey Dent has four eyes, two noses, two mouths, and one appropriate name. More »
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After a hurricane wiped out all the lizard species on certain islands in the Bahamas, scientists re-populated the small islands with two lizards of each kind. They then sat back and watched how those lizards evolved to get an up-close look at the Founder Effect. More »
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It took mountain climber Aron Ralston (and his onscreen counterpart, James Franco) 127 hours to amputate his own limb. It takes mere seconds for this crab to pull off its own claw after an unsuccessful attack on a blue-footed booby chick. More »
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Most of us have experienced the frustration of seeing a film on the computer hacked into different still images because the computer couldn't process the information fast enough to give us a fluid picture of the movie. Once the computer gets up to speed — that speed being twenty-four images flashed at us for every second we're watching — we see motion, not pictures. Sped up a little faster, and we'd still see motion, not pictures. We wouldn't be able to distinguish between one and the other. That is the limit of our temporal resolution, or the number of times our mind and eyes can 'update' the picture we're seeing. More »
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These stunning snapshots are from a series by Japanese photographer Tsuneaki Hiramatsu, who employed a variety of time-lapse techniques to capture the awe-inspiring beauty of fireflies in flight. More »
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Big cats have the ability to roar, but what about purring like a tabby? When they're not giving Siberian tigers catnip, the folks at the Big Cat Rescue sanctuary are making informative videos on feline vocalization. More »
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The microalgae Nitzschia cf pellucida is only a couple of micrometers across, yet this tiny organism has the ability to wage deadly biochemical war to strip its surroundings of competition. More »
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Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is an incredibly complex disease — both in terms of treatment, and society's view of it. While some even go so far as to claim it doesn't exist, there's still a huge amount of research going into the topic, including trying to pick apart what might trigger the disorder. And now, new research published by the Mayo Clinic seems to have spotted one possible cause for the disease. More »
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When you pick a daisy, you are actually picking hundreds of flowers at the same time. That's because daisies have evolved a special trick, which is to hide a whole field of flowers in the head of what seems to be a single bloom. In this video, University of Cambridge plant biologist Beverley Glover shows you a microscopic image of a daisy that reveals the truth about these deceptively plain flowers. More »
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One of the great fears of the early space race was what effect microgravity would have on human explorers — and while we know it won't instantly die when leaving the atmosphere, there's still a lot we don't know about the long term effects of low gravity. If we ever want to set up a long-term space settlement, it'd be good to have some idea what happens to the body in those environments... and according to some new research, it isn't good. More »
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Optical illusions like the one at the top of the page may not actually be bright, but our brains — and now it seems our eyes — think they are. This radial sunburst illusion is known as the Asahi figure, and the researchers analyzed people's eyes while they stared at it, and a number of other similar optical illusions. And just as if they were staring at an actual light source, their pupils contracted. More »
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