Antarctic blue whales appear to be creeping back from the brink of extinction after 50 years of protection. A new study estimates the total population at 4,018, up from 418 after the last reported whale catch in 1973.
Octopuses are extraordinarily versatile. From walking across the seabed on their eight arms to jetting through the water, manipulating tools and squeezing through unimaginably tight spaces, the flexibility of octopuses almost defies belief. "Octopuses can change their body
A conversation with comparative cognition researcher Edward Wasserman about learning and the “edge of chaos” The post The Evolutionary Arc From Pigeon Brains to Machine Consciousness appeared first on Nautilus .
In the lab, octopuses used specific moves to slip arms and a bulbous body through tiny holes. The finding could inspire new body plans for soft robots.
A group of genes may give some fire ants an advantage, increasing their chances of growing larger and potentially becoming queens, according to a new study from the University of Georgia.
If you want to see how private schools in the U.K. can reinforce segregation between children of different social classes, the London Borough of Southwark provides a good example.
An outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus that nearly wiped out an Illinois farmer's backyard flock also spread to a domestic cat and wild rats on the farm, an analysis of the animals by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory
A newly published study is changing our understanding of how the protein talin functions at sites where cells attach to their surroundings. The findings uncover a previously unknown mechanism by which mechanical force regulates talin, a key protein controlling cell adhesion and
The clocks have gone back, and suddenly getting dressed feels more difficult. The coat you wore constantly last winter is still hanging in the closet, but it no longer looks quite how you remember. The boots you loved in February don't seem to go with anything, while a sweater
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image provides a lesson in galactic history. The sparkling collection of stars is named Messier 30 (M30) after the French astronomer Charles Messier, who cataloged M30 and other diffuse objects that might be mistaken for comets in the early
How do cells respond to drugs? A new microscopy technique could provide more precise answers to this question in the future. Researchers from Bielefeld University and the University of Vienna have developed a method as part of the European CHEM-SCAN project that makes the
There is magic in the traditional songs of the Awajún, an Indigenous people of northern Peruvian Amazonia. Otago linguist Dr. Simon Overall has been visiting this area for over 20 years and explains what gives these songs their powers.
Research published in the journal Ecology analyzed 12 years of records from a population of degus in central Chile, revealing that these endemic rodents managed to withstand nearly a decade of megadrought but disappeared locally following the extreme drought of 2019.
Ancient Maya communities made extensive use of liquid mercury and a red, mercury-containing pigment called cinnabar to decorate buildings, pottery and burial sites. Unsurprisingly, as previous research has shown, this led to mercury contamination of soils and reservoirs at some
A research team led by Professor Yang Dong from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with Dalian Jiaotong University, has developed a synergistic additive strategy for large-area slot-die coating of
New high-resolution speleothem records from China and India, together with isotope-enabled climate models, show that abrupt glacial ocean circulation recoveries took centuries, not decades—a finding with important implications for how we assess future Atlantic circulation
Hair dyes help people express style and cover gray hair but often contain skin-irritating chemicals.
Over the past 100,000 years, hooved mammals that migrate have experienced a higher rate of extinction compared to nonmigratory species, according to a study being published Nov. 5 in the journal PLOS Biology by Joel Abraham at Princeton University, U.S., and colleagues.
Cannabis is one of the most commonly used psychoactive plants today. However, it is difficult to determine archaeologically how cannabis was used in prehistoric times. Plant parts such as flowers, leaves and resins are perishable and therefore rarely survive. It is known that
Researchers at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, Boston Children's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School (HMS) have developed FIND, a drug discovery platform that searches large libraries for molecules that modulate binding interactions between two proteins. FIND uses
With gravity's effects mitigated, atoms orbiting Earth on China’s space station reached about 10 trillionths of a kelvin.
Take a ride with the spectral cavalcade The post Oldest Evidence of Human Cannabis Use Has a Ghoulish Twist appeared first on Nautilus .
New findings from a Siberian tomb offer the earliest direct evidence for human marijuana use
A previously unrecognized weakness in the immune defenses against certain blood neoplasms could offer a promising target for future treatments. Researchers have discovered that natural killer cells, which normally help the body eliminate malignant cells, remain remarkably
Nanographenes with up to eight helicene units can now be selectively synthesized using a two-step process. Researchers from Science Tokyo have developed a strategy to synthesize multi-helical nanographenes containing up to eight helicene units with controlled handedness.
Researchers at the University of East London (UEL) have developed a new framework for assessing earthquake risks, using AI-assisted technology to examine how soil conditions, ground shaking and structural strength influence a building's ability to withstand seismic activity.
When did you last blink? Every few seconds, we briefly close our eyes, interrupting our view of the world. Most of the time, we do not notice. What is more, these brief interruptions hardly seem to interfere with our everyday activities.
The lining in traditional disposable coffee cups can release plastic particles and be difficult to recycle, but a new plant-based coating can eliminate these issues with your morning brew.
The PREMIER project, a public-private European consortium of research organizations (like Radboud University) and international pharmaceutical companies, has launched a new database to support the environmental risk assessment (ERA) of human pharmaceuticals. The data is
Researchers Dr. Shayma El-Atawneh and professor Amiram Goldblum at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a new computational framework that identified 92 promising candidates for future sugar substitutes from more than 50 million chemical compounds. The study,
Learn more about the scientific community coming into office in January
Physicists at CERN report that they've detected evidence of a rare meson particle decay (B⁰→ µ⁺µ⁻) that occurs when the meson's beauty quark annihilates with a down-type quark. The pair decays into a muon and antimuon, which are particles similar to electrons. Because evidence
A new study has investigated whether challenges faced by educators in teaching statistics could be reduced by changing how it is taught. The findings suggest there is no single "right way," giving educators flexibility to choose how best to teach the subject.
Species reduced to fewer than 50 individuals in the wild are not automatically doomed to extinction, according to a major study co-authored by researchers at the Zoological Society of London and Monash University.
The ocean’s blue and green hues near the infamous zone of debris have gotten brighter over the past 20 years, satellite data show
The way the media reports suicide can be important. It can bring an often-silenced issue into public view and draw attention to the social conditions that may have contributed to a death.
The hunt for the source of Stonehenge's mysterious Altar Stone has entered a new phase after scientists ruled out several previously proposed locations and moved a step closer to identifying its origins.
Our internal body clock helps regulate sleep, alertness and mood, following a roughly 24-hour cycle influenced by light and darkness The post How Your Body Clock Affects Your Mental Health and Ways to Keep It in Sync appeared first on Nautilus .
Rather than being a poverty problem, bedbugs are actually everyone's problem.
How does an octopus remember what it has learned? A new study led by Dr. Ana Luiza Turchetti-Maia, Dr. Tal Shomrat and professor Binyamin (Benny) Hochner—researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ruppin Academic Center—has uncovered a previously unknown molecular
In 2018, something strange happened on sidewalks across America. In 65 cities, thousands of electric scooters appeared seemingly overnight, often with little or no advance notice to local governments. Cease-and-desist orders flew. Scooters were impounded. Even after cities
A new study has revealed how the repurposing of an ancestral gene saved the embryos of cod's ancestors from extinction, enabling them to form the large populations that, millions of years later, would change the course of human history. The codfishes and their relatives in the
Any concept that has a history, philosopher Michel Foucault tells us, cannot have a fixed definition.
On a desolate island at the end of the world, battered by freezing winds, archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a possible 19th-century castaway camp that may have belonged to a renowned Argentine sailor and his shipwrecked crew.
As sea levels creep higher in the Pacific, salt leaches into the soil and reduces the land available to grow food. Ocean warming is damaging coral reefs, reducing fish stocks, and salinity has tainted freshwater supplies.
Newton's theory of gravity has described the tides accurately for centuries. But could a tiny trace of Einstein's general relativity also be hidden in them? In a new study, a mathematician at Freie Universität Berlin has outlined how a targeted approach could be used to search
NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory took its last look at the sky on Oct. 20, 2026, while orbiting about 171 miles (275 kilometers) above Earth. NASA ended the telescope's mission three days later, because Swift had sunk so low that drag from the thin air there meant its
The federal government is pushing for a "digital detox" in schools.
Around 4.5 billion years ago, a planet-sized object collided with the newly formed Earth, throwing out the debris that would later form the moon. The collision left Earth spinning extremely fast, with days lasting just two to five hours. Yet existing models of how Earth's first
A Dutch family doctor named Tibor Poelmann posted a petition on an online forum for general practitioners (GPs) in 2021. He wanted their pension fund to stop investing in oil and gas. It quickly gathered 1,200 signatures.
