New Blood Test Tells Your Body’s Time
Each of Earth’s life forms, from animals (including humans), plants, fungi, and even cyanobacteria, has a built-in biological clock that functions over a 24-hour cycle. This so-called circadian clock is a well-structured biological process, which helps keep our bodies healthy and working by regulating tasks such as sleeping, waking, hormone release, body temperature, and other […]
Pre-Solar System Dust Found in the Atmosphere
A research team led by the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology say they have discovered the remains of the formation of the solar system in some interstellar dust. The dust particles, which were gathered in Earth’s atmosphere by NASA aircraft, are thought to have been cast off from […]
Holding Hands May Help Ease Pain
The proverb “love heals all wounds” may have some new scientific support. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and Israel’s University of Haifa say they have found evidence that when one romantic partner holds hands with a partner in pain, the couple’s breathing, heart rate, and brainwaves will synchronize and will help the afflicted […]
Brain Activity May Hasten Death in Cardiac Arrest Patients
A multidisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Michigan has found that when death induced by cardiac arrest is near, the brain bursts into a flurry of activity that may actually play a role in hastening the patient’s death. It is generally thought that the sudden eruption of signals between the brain and heart […]
Predicting the Movies That Will Stand the Test of Time
Nominations for the 2015 Academy Awards were announced last week. And while they may be among the best movies of the year, how many do you think will survive the test of time to become all-time classics. Many movie goers would expect such factors such as a film’s box-office revenue, awards, and critical acclaims to […]
Facebook Likes Reveal Personality Traits
A new Anglo-American study has provided evidence that the ‘digital footprints’ you leave behind on your visits to social media websites such as Facebook can reveal more about your personality than your family or best friends. Researchers at California’s Stanford University and the UK’s University of Cambridge constructed a computer model that mined the Facebook […]
Rising Levels of Human-Caused Water Vapor in Troposphere will Intensify Climate Change Projections
When it comes to greenhouse gases that contribute most to global warming, most people think of substances such as carbon dioxide, methane or even hydrofluorocarbons. But did you know that, for a while now, scientists have considered the vapor of the most important ingredient in sustaining life on Earth – water – as one of […]
New Dating System Could Reveal Secrets of Earth’s Ancient Climate
Scientists have a new tool in the quest to learn more about Earth’s ancient climate, including the mechanisms that plunged our planet into and out of ice ages. The new tool is a scientific technique called radiometric krypton dating, which recently allowed researchers to accurately determine the age of a 120,000-year-old Antarctic ice core sample. […]
Study: Air Pollution Over Asia Found to Impact Global Weather
Researchers from Texas, California and Washington recently compared air pollution data provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the years 1850 through 2000 and found that human-made atmospheric particulates (aerosols) from Asia are having an impact on the Pacific storm track, which is a critical driver of global atmospheric circulation that influences weather […]
Move Over Cleopatra, Chinese May Have Loved Cats Before Ancient Eyptians
Researchers in China and Missouri have traced the origins of today’s domesticated cat back 5,300 years to an ancient Neolithic Chinese agricultural village located in the modern-day Shaanxi Province. Like in the old Mother Goose nursery tale “This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack […]