A new study by a team of researchers from Israel and Ghana has brought the first evidence of nonrandom mutation in human genes, challenging a core assumption at the heart of evolutionary theory by showing a long-term directional mutational response to environmental pressure. Using a novel method, researchers led by Professor Adi Livnat from the...
In 2022, technology has the potential to both start relationships and keep them alive, even those crossing continents. Lifting a finger, literally, can land someone “face-to-face” with their partner or spouse. This increased accessibility – 81% of Americans own a smart phone and 75% own a computer – also allows for more unhealthy behaviors in relationships....
A bad dye job is bad enough on its own, but an itchy and irritating allergic reaction to it is even worse. And people who become allergic to hair dye can develop reactions to many other common substances, transforming a simple cosmetic treatment into a big problem. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering have...
New high-speed cellphone services have raised concerns of interference with aircraft operations, particularly as aircraft are landing at airports. The Federal Aviation Administration has assured Americans that most commercial aircraft are safe, and AT&T and Verizon have agreed to hold off on installing their new cellphone antennas near airports for six months. But the problem...
As interest in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) continues to grow, a chapter in a new book presents information on how to bring the arts to STEM fields. The chapter outlines a creative exercise that used picture books to help first-year college students explore their ideas, beliefs, and humanistic impulses regarding...
While cybercrime gets a lot of attention from law enforcement and the media these days, I’ve been documenting a less high-tech threat emerging in recent months: a surge in stolen checks. Criminals are increasingly targeting U.S. Postal Service and personal mailboxes to pilfer filled-out checks and sell them over the internet using social media platforms....
As part of an experiment to measure—to an extremely precise degree—the charge-to-mass ratios of protons and antiprotons, the RIKEN-led BASE collaboration at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, has found that, within the uncertainty of the experiment, matter and antimatter respond to gravity in the same way. Matter and antimatter create some of the most interesting problems in...
The spread of misinformation on social media is a pressing societal problem that tech companies and policymakers continue to grapple with, yet those who study this issue still don’t have a deep understanding of why and how false news spreads. To shed some light on this murky topic, researchers at MIT developed a theoretical model...
Rocket scientists and brain surgeons are no smarter than the general population, suggests a study in the Christmas issue of The BMJ. Despite the commonly used phrases “It’s not rocket science” and “It’s not brain surgery” the findings show that both aerospace engineers and neurosurgeons have similar levels of intelligence to those in the general population. As such,...
OneZoom is a one-stop site for exploring all life on Earth, its evolutionary history, and how much of it is threatened with extinction. The OneZoom explorer – available at onezoom.org – maps the connections between 2.2 million living species, the closest thing yet to a single view of all species known to science. The interactive tree of life...
