Meet the world’s largest canary.
New Scientist heads to São Tomé to get up close with the island’s grosbeak – a really big bird: Now it turns out the species […]
Science
No, kids – don’t take your seats. Not if you want to learn….
Science of Us looks over recent research showing that schoolkids learn better when they move around in class: “Kids aren’t meant to sit still all […]
Medieval English mutilated their dead – to keep them from rising.
The Guardian unearths the truth about medieval Yorkshire’s drastic measures to prevent the dead from walking: The research published by Historic England and the University […]
Science Art: Head Frames, Figs. 3-6, from The Design of Mine Structures, 1912.
Types of head works for mines. These frames helped draw out the rocks that the miners were busy breaking up deep underground. At the time […]
New tyrannosaur species had a sensitive face.
Science News gets up close and personal with Daspletosaurus horneri, a 9-meter-long prehistoric predator which hunted 75 million years ago with the help of a […]
The government is already paying less for science than you think (probably).
Science News looks at how much Americans *think* the government is paying to fund research. If scientists got what people thought they should get, the […]
Which came first, the sponge or the jelly? (We might have an answer.)
Nature tries to solve a nearly intractable chicken-and-egg problem for evolutionary biologists. Which is the oldest kind of animal, a sponge or a comb jelly? […]
Science Art: Denisova Phalanx distalis
A finger-bone from the other archaic humans – besides Neanderthals, there were Denisovans. And one of the fragments we know them from looked like this, […]
America stopped breeding orcas; China just started.
National Geographic reports on China’s boom in marine parks, including a new program to breed killer whales in captivity: The Chimelong Group, one of the […]
Scale-shedding gecko a nasty mouthful for predators
Science News reveals the unappetizing trick of a newly discovered gecko species. The lizard sheds its large scales to wriggle out of predators’ mouths: All […]
Science Art: Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov, Voskhod 1, 4-kopek stamp, 1964
Click to embiggen This is Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov (or call-sign “Ruby”), the first man to die in space. He’d been denied admission to the space […]
Our noses were shaped by the climate.
Science Daily sniffs out how weather patterns affect the shape of our family’s noses: “We are interested in recent human evolution and what explains the […]
Sharks are teaming up to outwit us.
PhysOrg reports on the discovery that sharks aren’t quite the “lone wolves of the sea” that they seem. In fact, sharks form social networks and […]
Volunteers are healthier. (They also tend to be richer.)
Science Daily finds that those who give back also seem to be getting back – because people who volunteer for causes are in better health […]
Science Art: Longitudinal Section of “Star” Class Four-Cylinder 4-6-0, by AJ Creswell, 1963.
Click to embiggen A train! A big ol’ train! This image is one of many found in H.A.V. Bulleid’s Master Builders of Steam, a book […]