From volatile volcanoes to fragile winter landscapes, Icelanders live between wonder and risk as scientists race to understand a land that both sustains and endangers them.
Tag: biology
Experience, stress regulation, and mental rewiring may matter more than raw speed and strength when it comes to staying at the top, and explain why some athletes in their 30s and 40s, like LeBron James or Novak Djokovic, keep dominating.
New technologies that allow researchers to understand DNA and other genetic markers are advancing quickly, but the law surrounding who actually owns the information that researchers collect is not advancing fast enough.
Insects like ants heal their fellow species, and they even perform surgeries. Biologist Erik Frank is researching their methods. He believes that humans can also benefit from them.
Have you ever been torn between two emotions and don’t know why? Research is uncovering how your brain can cause you experience two conflicting emotions at the same time.
Something is awry with daylight savings time. Can research and policy changes help us reset the clocks?
Our Naples-based psychiatrist talks one of her patients through the possible source of his wife’s discontent.
Zoos are often associated with animal cruelty, or at the very least a general animal unhappiness. But on everything from research to education to biodiversity, there is a case to be made for the modern zoo.
Humans and animals have strategies to deal with their surroundings, including the impacts of climate change. But what about trees? Researchers in Spain have identified mechanisms in plant life to learn over time from unfavorable environmental situations.
Struggling to save trapped and injured bats, scientists endure Russian shelling and accusations of spreading bioweapons.
The discovery that earned Japan’s Shinya Yamanaka the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine has paved the way for new research proving that aging is a reversible process. Currently just being tested on lab mice, will the cellular reprogramming soon offer eternal youth?
KAMPALA — Allen Asimwe has dedicated more than two decades to teaching geography at a large public high school in southwestern Uganda. Her retirement age, as a public servant entitled to benefits, is just six years away. She doubts she will wait that long. “I am determined, I want to quit,” she says, calculating that she could earn more by shifting full time to the salon she opened six years ago to supplement her income. “Given the frustration, I cannot continue in class anymore.” For years, she hoped the Uganda National Teachers’ Union would succeed in lobbying for better wages. […]
As people continue to push the boundaries in areas like AI and biotechnology, it’s worth asking what all these advances will do to our minds and bodies.
Two and a half centuries after his birth, the famed German explorer and scientist is still remembered for his brilliant mind and boundary-testing taste for adventure.
In far southern Argentina, writer Pablo Bizón recalls a chance encounter with a woman who followed her passion for science all the way from Kent State to Patagonia.
PARIS — Find the distribution of random paths on a directed graph. Of course, when you say it like that, such a problem will hardly excite the masses. But if you had managed to find this mysterious distribution, you would have obtained the PageRank algorithm. And if you have PageRank, you have Google, now the […]
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Age May Be Just A Number, But Which One?
Age can be measured in more ways than one, say both sociologists and biologists. There is of course chronological age, but there is also cellular and social aging. The search for new definitions of old — and young!
Though the technology now exists to clone humans, and mercenaries are at the ready if allowed, most of the mainstream geneticist community points to other ways to get life-saving stem cells.
Humans aren’t the only living beings able to perceive the emotions of others and respond to them. When it comes to empathy, animals and people are more alike than not.
Though their conclusions have been criticized as racist and fatalistic, a group of researchers argues that civil wars are more likely in countries where there are vast genetic, and therefore aesthetic, differences among populations.
Tiny freshwater hydrae have incredible powers of regeneration. In the quest for human longevity, researchers in Switzerland are trying to learn from their very little and long lives.
Like brain cells, those of the heart were long thought unable to regenerate. Science is showing this to be false, though applying treatment accordingly is still in its infancy.
As demand for organ transplants skyrockets, a new artificial heart and other sophisticated prostheses are among the medical-tech advancements raising troubling questions.
PARIS — Are Nobel Prizes a wicked luxury? This year, like every year for more than a century, Scandinavian juries will honor researchers in physics, chemistry and medicine, an author, and a man or a woman who contributed to peace. The season will end with the presentation of the latest prize, created a little more […]
DIE WELT (Germany), AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MICROBIOLOGY (USA) Worldcrunch BERLIN – The main ingredient in beer is yeast, which is a complex microorganism – a microbe from the fungi kingdom. To make beer, you need microbes, fermentation and bacteria. While this may seem like too much information, here’s the cool truth: beer is actually good […]
GENEVA – The female mice are chasing the males around the cage; they raise their behinds in order to sniff their genitals, some even biting the males’ private parts. It is a strange spectacle, monitored by researchers from the University of Geneva (Unige). The phenomenon is described in an article in the latest issue of […]