Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Antarctica is often imagined as the last untouched wilderness. Unfortunately, avian influenza (“bird flu”) is encroaching on the icy continent. The virus has already reached the sub-Antarctic islands between the Antarctic Peninsula and South America. It’s only a matter of time before it reaches the Antarctic continent. So far avian influenza … Read more
Credit: Dr Rebecca Hamilton/The University of Sydney A team of international scientists, led by Dr. Rebecca Hamilton at the University of Sydney, has found that rather than dry savannah in South East Asia dominating during the Last Glacial Maximum more than 19,000 years ago, there was a mosaic of diverse closed and open forest types, … Read more
Pfizer on Friday said it would stop developing the twice-daily version of its experimental weight loss pill after obese patients taking the drug lost significant weight but had trouble tolerating the drug in a mid-stage clinical study. The drugmaker observed high rates of adverse side effects, which were mostly mild and gastrointestinal, among patients. A … Read more
Eleni Stavrinidou, associate professor, and supervisor of the study and Alexandra Sandéhn, Ph.D. student, one of the lead authors, connect the eSoil to a low power source for stimulating plant growth. Credit: Thor Balkhed Barley seedlings grow on average 50% more when their root system is stimulated electrically through a new cultivation substrate. In a … Read more
These images of asteroid Apophis were recorded in March 2021 by radio antennas at the Deep Space Network’s Goldstone complex in California and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. The asteroid was 10.6 million miles (17 million kilometers) away, and each pixel has a resolution of 127 feet (38.75 meters). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech and NSF/AUI/GBO … Read more
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Much has been made of the increasing presence of the “bank of mum and dad” in the lives of Australians. We know financial support from parents to adult children is increasingly used for entering the housing market. But our new research shows parents are also helping their young adult children in … Read more
Credit: Karolina Grabowska from Pexels Watching someone cry often evokes an emotional response—but according to a new study published Thursday, human tears themselves contain a chemical signal that reduces brain activity linked to aggression. The research was carried out by the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and appeared in PLOS Biology, a US science journal. … Read more
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images Pfizer’s twice-daily version of its experimental weight loss pill has now joined a long list of other scrapped drugs that aimed to treat obesity but came with unintended consequences. The drugmaker on Friday said it will stop developing the twice-daily treatment, danuglipron, after obese patients taking the drug … Read more
Side view of the crater Moltke taken from Apollo 10. Credit: Public Domain Japan’s SLIM space probe entered the moon’s orbit on Monday in a major step towards the country’s first successful lunar landing, expected next month. The Smart Lander for Investigating moon (SLIM) is nicknamed the “Moon Sniper” because it is designed to land … Read more
Screenshot of reindeer surveillance. Credit: Current Biology/Furrer et al. Researchers report December 22 in the journal Current Biology that the more time reindeer spend ruminating, the less time they spend in non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep. EEG recordings revealed that reindeer’s brainwaves during rumination resemble the brain waves present during non-REM sleep, and these brainwave … Read more
