Moon fests, moon movie and even a full moon mark 55th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing

Moon fests, moon movie and even a full moon mark 55th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing

A footprint left by one of the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission is seen in the soft, powdery surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. Credit: NASA via AP, File The cosmos is providing a full moon for the 55th anniversary of the first lunar landing this weekend, and plenty of other events … Read more

Scientists study monkey faces and cat bellies; another intermediate black hole in the Milky Way

Scientists study monkey faces and cat bellies; another intermediate black hole in the Milky Way

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain This is not a rerun of last week’s roundup; another group of astronomers found a second intermediate-mass black hole in the Milky Way and I can’t avoid highlighting it. They’re cool! They may have formed in the primordial universe, they comprise the seeds of supermassive black holes, and may be formed … Read more

How conspiracy theories polarize society and provoke violence

How conspiracy theories polarize society and provoke violence

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain In today’s technologically interconnected world, the ability to concoct and spread conspiracy theories has become easier than ever before. This became evident after the recent assassination attempt on former U.S. president Donald Trump. Millions flocked to social media to share their interpretations of the event and the would-be assasin’s supposed motives. … Read more

Why the stinky durian really is the ‘king of all fruits’

Why the stinky durian really is the ‘king of all fruits’

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain There’s little else in the food world that brings about as much social turbulence as the durian. This so-called “king of all fruits” is considered a delicacy across its native Southeast Asia, where durian season is currently in full swing. Global interest in the pungent food has also grown considerably in … Read more

Invasive species discovered in Colorado River is capable of wiping out ecosystems, causing costly damage

Invasive species discovered in Colorado River is capable of wiping out ecosystems, causing costly damage

An invasive species capable of wiping out entire aquatic ecosystems and causing millions of dollars in damage to infrastructure has been found for the first time in the Colorado River, the most important river in the American Southwest. Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials on July 16 announced the discovery of zebra mussel larvae in the … Read more

UK village fights to turn back tide of climate change

UK village fights to turn back tide of climate change

Coastal erosion is hitting large parts of England and Wales. Kevin Jordan thought he would spend his retirement listening to the sound of the sea at his home on the Norfolk coast in eastern England. But his dream collapsed in November last year and he lost everything overnight when the house was demolished due to … Read more

AI-powered optical detection to thwart counterfeit chips

AI-powered optical detection to thwart counterfeit chips

RAPTOR uses an attention mechanism for prioritizing nanoparticle correlations across pre-tamper and post-tamper samples before passing them into a residual, attention-based deep convolutional classifier. a) RAPTOR takes the top 56 nanoparticles in descending order of radii to construct the distance matrices D and D′ and radii ρ and ρ′ from the pre-tamper and post-tamper samples. … Read more

Killifish can adjust their egg-laying habits in response to predators, study shows

Killifish can adjust their egg-laying habits in response to predators, study shows

Sequence of development for eggs from high predation (HP) killifish. Each panel shows eggs that are the same age but were reared on peat moss or in water. The left side of the figure shows eggs on days 1, 2 and 4. The right side of the panel displays eggs on days 5, 7 and … Read more

International study highlights large and unequal life expectancy declines in India during COVID-19

International study highlights large and unequal life expectancy declines in India during COVID-19

Credit: CC0 Public Domain A new paper published in Science Advances today finds that life expectancy in India was 2.6 years lower in 2020 than 2019, with women and marginalized social groups suffering the greatest declines. The international study, co-authored by the Department of Sociology and the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science’s Dr. Aashish Gupta … Read more

UK study finds urban residents score the lowest in social and economic satisfaction and well-being

UK study finds urban residents score the lowest in social and economic satisfaction and well-being

Optimal distances with healthiest and most equal responses were observed for family satisfaction, friendship satisfaction financial satisfaction, loneliness, and meaningful life. The optimal distances are illustrated for three cities with different sizes. Credit: Finnemann et al A study conducted by the Center for Urban Mental Health at the University of Amsterdam finds that, in a … Read more