Category: Science

The brain’s mirror neuron network responds differently depending on whether we are looking at someone who shares our culture, or someone who doesn’t.

A thumb’s up for "I’m good." The rubbing of a pointed forefinger at another for "shame on you." The infamous and ubiquitous middle finger salute for - well, you know. Such gestures that convey meaning without speech are used and recognized by nearly everyone in our society, but to someone from a foreign country, they may be incomprehensible.

A Cornell University study of genome sequences in African-Americans, European-Americans and Chinese suggests that natural selection has caused as much as 10 percent of the human genome to change in some populations in the last 15,000 to 100,000 years, when people began migrating from Africa.

A Cornell study of genome sequences in African-Americans, European-Americans and Chinese suggests that natural selection has caused as much as 10 percent of the human genome to change in some populations in the last 15,000 to 100,000 years, when people began migrating from Africa.

Scientists at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Center are using the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to monitor a large dust storm on the Red Planet.

Scientists at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Center are using the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to monitor a large dust storm on the Red Planet. The instrument, a multi-wavelength camera sensitive to five visible wavelengths and 10 infrared ones, is providing Mars scientists and spacecraft controllers with global maps that track how much atmospheric dust is obscuring the planet.

USC’s Space Sciences Center wins a grant to study solar rays that influence weather and radio traffic.

Solar observatories in space have an Icarus problem: the object of their desire is the agent of their demise.

On the eve of the 62nd anniversary of the world's first atomic explosion, the Trinity atomic bomb test, a CDC-led study team has reported new insights on the radiation released at the time of the test. Analyzing the doses that nearby residents received, the CDC team has made preliminary estimates of additional doses that the residents could have ingested in their bodies.

From 1943 through the middle of 1945, while World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific, scientists and engineers at an isolated and top secret scientific laboratory near Santa Fe, New Mexico surmounted unbelievable difficulties to design and produce the world’s first atomic bombs. One type used uranium while another used the newly produced and largely unknown element called plutonium. The scientists were confident that the uranium bomb would work, but they decided it was necessary to test the more complicated plutonium bomb before using it in combat.

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The only color photograph available for the Trinity blast,
taken by Los Alamos scientist and amateur photographer
Jack Aeby from near Base Camp. As Aeby later said,
"It was there so I shot it."

A South Pacific species was able to ward off a deadly parasite infection by developing a new gene in less than a year.

Scientists have reported that they have documented very fast evolution in the butterfly species Hypolimnas bolina. After infection by Wolbachia, the fraction of the population that was male dropped drastically to about 1% of the total population. However, after approximately ten generations (about a year), the male population had rebounded to about 39% of the overall population.

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H. bolina is known colloquially as the Blue Moon Butterfly or Great
or Common Eggfly and is found mainly in the South Pacific.
Public domain photo

A multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers is conducting the first search for life and hot springs on the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. Through the use of the World Wide Web and satellite communications, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and nine partner museums are bringing thousands of students and citizens along with them.

On July 2, WHOI researchers and communications specialists sent the first of 40 days of dispatches and photo-essays from the icebreaker Oden, which researchers are sailing into the ice pack of the Arctic in order to explore the seafloor mountain chain known as the Gakkel Ridge. Reports from the groundbreaking expedition to the world's most isolated ocean are posted daily on the Polar Discovery web site, which also offers podcasts, games, video and audio clips, and a forum for emailing questions directly to researchers at the Pole.

The remains of a baby mammoth has been found in the Yamal Peninsula in Siberian Russia. The baby mammoth, named Lyuba, a female, was six-month-old at the time of death.

The well-preserved remains of a baby mammoth has been found in the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia (Russia). The baby mammoth, named Lyuba, was a six-month-old female at the time of death, approximately 10,000 years ago.

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Mammuthus primigenius (Baby) named "Dima," similar to Lyuba.
Credit: Sikander (public domain)

After a nine month trek through space, the Phoenix Mars Lander is to land in the northern artic plains region, which is believed to have large amounts of water ice just below the surface.

NASA technicians are beginning final launch preparations on the Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft destined for the planet Mars. The unmanned spacecraft is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Florida's east coast on August 3, at around 5:35 a.m. EST. Phoenix will land in the Red Planet's northern polar region to search for signs of life, and analyze the Martian climate from a polar perspective.

New discovery may change how scientists view the geological history of Greenland.

Ice samples retrieved from 1.2 miles (2km) beneath the surface of Greenland have uncovered the oldest known samples of DNA from insects. The samples, estimated to be 450,000-900,000 years old, have also shown that no more than one million years ago, Greenland was once home to forests and animal life.