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An undated handout image shows a southern sea otter using a rock anvil to break open shells of prey, in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, U.S. | Photo Credit: Reuters Humans are not alone in the use of tools. Chimpanzees, for instance, crack nuts with stones and use sticks to get at…
Read More “Sea otters get more prey and reduce tooth damage using tools” »
A motorcycle drives between baobab trees at baobab alley near the city of Morondava, Madagascar, August 30, 2019. | Photo Credit: Reuters The baobab tree is a distinctive sight on the landscape. When its contorted branches are leafless during the dry season, they resemble jumbled roots emanating from a thick trunk, making it appear as…
Read More “Study reveals history and oceanic voyages of remarkable baobab tree” »
A false-color image obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows the galaxy JADES-GS-z7-01-QU, the universeÕs earliest-known “dead” galaxy, a galaxy that has stopped star formation, in this undated handout picture obtained by Reuters. | Photo Credit: Reuters The James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST for short, is one of the most advanced telescopes ever…
Read More “Could a telescope ever see the beginning of time?” »
People walk on an overpass past office towers in the Lujiazui financial district of Shanghai, China October 17, 2022. | Photo Credit: Reuters Across the world, many cities are slowly sinking. Most are on the coast, including tropical megacities like Jakarta in Indonesia or Manila in the Philippines, or places like New Orleans, Vancouver or…
Read More “More than a third of urban Chinese living in sinking cities, study finds” »
Around five and half millenia ago, northern Africa went through a dramatic transformation. The Sahara desert expanded and grasslands, forests and lakes favoured by humans disappeared. Humans were forced to retreat to the mountains, the oases, and the Nile valley and delta. As a relatively large and dispersed population was squeezed into smaller and more…
A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this decade to 2040. The mission would be the first to try to return rock samples…
Read More “Why NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission has a shaky future” »
The more gender equal a society is, the more similar men and women will be, adopting more similar interests, personality traits and behavioural patterns. Or so many people seem to believe. Statements like this might sound like truisms, but science shows reality may be more complicated. Several studies have found that some psychological sex differences, such as those…
Read More “Sex differences don’t disappear as a country’s equality develops: study” »
Image for Representation | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto Imagine the tap of a card that bought you a cup of coffee this morning also let a hacker halfway across the world access your bank account and buy themselves whatever they liked. Now imagine it wasn’t a one-off glitch, but it happened all the time: imagine…
Read More “The mind-bending maths that could stop ‘quantum hackers’” »
A: Shivering (physical thermogenesis) occurs when the tension of the skeletal muscles rises beyond a critical level or when the body temperature falls below the critical level of 37.1 degrees C. Shivering is actually an involuntary contraction of muscles to maintain body temperature during fever and in cool environments. It involves oscillating skeletal-muscle contractions that…
Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. But over the last four years, even as the hole has shrunk it has persisted for an unusually long time. Our new research found that instead of closing up during November it has stayed open well into December. This…
