An international team of botanists has discovered three new endemic species of the orchid genus Lepanthes in the highlands of Ecuador. Lepanthes oro-lojaensis growing in its natural habitat. Image credit: Francisco Tobar Suarez. Lepanthes is a large genus of orchids with up to 1,000 species distributed in the Neotropics. The …

Search is changing. Most search engines now don’t just bring up a page of 10 search results and two ads at the top when you type in a query. Instead, Google search queries can bring up a whole range of results, and sometimes answer your questions without you ever having …

(Photo: Vedrana Filipovic/Unsplash)Remember how teachers always told us we wouldn’t have a calculator in our back pocket, and then smartphones ruined that particular excuse for learning math? Google is doing the same with the elements through their new interactive periodic table, which allows users to browse and learn about the …

NASA was flummoxed last week when the Perseverance rover attempted to collect its first rock core sample only to find the sample tube empty. The missing core was nowhere to be found, so the team had to take a step back and assess the situation on Mars. Now, NASA believes …

Using data from the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument onboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft, researchers have produced a new infrared map of the Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, combining data from three flybys, including its latest approach on July 20, 2021. This annotated map of Ganymede depicts the areas of the icy …

Apple recently confirmed a report that claimed it was planning to go hunting for illegal materials on iPhones. This, from a company that has long promoted its privacy protections. Condemnation was swift from civil liberties groups, but many have withheld judgment because of Apple’s intended target: images of child sexual …

Fasting before and during exposure to invasive food-borne bacteria protects mice from developing a full-blown gastrointestinal infection, in part through the actions of the gut microbiome, according to new research led by University of British Columbia scientists. Graef et al. highlight how food intake controls the complex relationship between host, …

Archaeologists have uncovered 2,640- to 2,550-year-old clay moulds for casting spade coins as well as fragments of finished spade coins at Guanzhuang in Xingyang, Henan province, China. The technical characteristics of the moulds demonstrate that the site — which was part of the Eastern Zhou period (770-220 BCE) bronze foundry …

Paleontologists in Brazil have unveiled a new species of unenlagiine dromaeosaurid dinosaur from the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous period. An artist’s reconstruction of two individuals of Ypupiara lopai foraging in an alluvial river, the setting of the Marilia Formation during the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous period. Image credit: …

A team of paleontologists has digitally reconstructed the facial skeleton and brain endocast of Ichthyornis dispar, a toothed stem bird that lived in North America during the Late Cretaceous epoch and has traditionally been considered the nearest known well-understood relative of living birds. The ancestors of living birds had a …