Science

  Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk is not afraid to shill for his company’s products, but he gets fewer chances with his work at SpaceX. After all, most of us aren’t in the market for space launch services, but we might be interested in satellite internet as an alternative …

A previously unknown species of coral has been discovered in Hannibal Bank, a guyot seamount off Pacific Panama. Psammogorgia pax. Image credit: Hector Guzman / Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Named Psammogorgia pax, the newly-discovered species is a white and fan-shaped octocoral. The colony is made of microscopic bone-like calcium carbonate …

A duo of ornithologists from the United States and Brazil has recorded the loudest bird song (up to 125.4 db) ever documented, made by males of the white bellbird (Procnias albus); the bellbird songs have a sound pressure about 3 times that of the screaming piha (Lipaugus vociferans), an Amazon …

For over a century, excavations in Jerusalem have been uncovering segments of the city’s Roman-period network of streets, particularly the so-called Stepped Street that wended its way from the southernmost gate of the city, alongside the Siloam Pool and towards the Temple Mount. Based on newly-discovered numismatic evidence, archaeologists from …

An international team of researchers from North Carolina State University and CNRS have found that aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) possess pseudothumbs — which consist of both a bony component and a dense cartilaginous extension — that may help them grip objects and branches as they move through trees. An aye-aye (Daubentonia …

Vast longitudinal dunes up to 330 feet (100 m) in height in the equatorial deserts of Saturn’s moon Titan are the Solar System’s most monumental surface structures, but the chemical composition of their dark organics remains a fundamental, unsolved enigma, with acetylene ice detected near the dunes implicated as a …

An international team of ornithologists led by by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History has discovered and scientifically described a new species of flowerpecker from the island of Borneo. The spectacled flowerpecker (Dicaeum dayakorum), an adult female, on March 31, 2019 at the Lanjak Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary, Sarawak, …

Physicists using the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility have created a new compound of plutonium (Pu) with an unexpected, pentavalent oxidation state — Pu (V). The new compound is solid and stable, and may represent a transient phase in radioactive waste repositories. A plutonium dioxide nanoparticle. Image credit: Kristina Kvashnina. One …

According to a new study published in the European Respiratory Journal, fatty tissue accumulates within the airway walls of people who are overweight or obese; it also alters the structure of airways and could be the reason behind the increased risk of asthma. Elliot et al show that fatty tissue …

  One of the most interesting questions of hominin evolution is exactly how much of our vanished cousins remains in us. Between 1-4 percent of the modern human genome is derived from Neanderthals everywhere but sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, between 4-6 percent of the modern Melanesian genome has been shown …