Picture yourself chatting with a friend in a crowded café. The clatter of dishes and hum of voices make it tough to follow the conversation. It might seem like a sign that you need a hearing aid, but new research suggests the issue may be linked to how your brain processes sound rather than your…
Evie LakeNorth East and Cumbria John Millard Rothbury Estate in Northumberland is a 15-sq-mile (30-sq-km) tract of former grouse moor, woodland and farmland Sir David Attenborough has championed a bid by conservationists to raise £30m to buy the entirety of a vast upland estate. The Wildlife Trusts and Northumberland Wildlife Trust are attempting to complete…
Justin RowlattEnvironment Editor BBC It is 1am on 3 June. A near gale force wind is blasting into Scotland. Great weather for the Moray East and West offshore wind farms, you would have thought. The two farms are 13 miles off the north-east coast of Scotland and include some of the biggest wind turbines in…
Rare genetic diseases can now be detected in patients, and tumor-specific mutations identified — a milestone made possible by DNA sequencing, which transformed biomedical research decades ago. In recent years, the introduction of new sequencing technologies (next-generation sequencing) has driven a wave of breakthroughs. During 2020 and 2021, for instance, these methods enabled the rapid…
Mammals vs. birds: Of the 1,176 species analyzed, female mammals lived an average of 13 percent longer than males. In contrast, among birds, males lived about five percent longer than females. Mating strategies matter: In species where competition for mates is intense — as is true for most mammals — males tend to die younger….
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has made the first direct measurements of both the chemical composition and physical conditions of a possible moon-forming disk surrounding a massive exoplanet. The carbon-rich disk encircles the planet known as CT Cha b, located about 625 light-years from Earth. While no moons were detected in the Webb data, the…
A team led by Rice University physicist Frank Geurts has achieved a major milestone in particle physics by measuring the temperature of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) at different stages of its evolution. This plasma is a form of matter thought to have filled the universe only millionths of a second after the big bang, the event…
Detecting dark matter, the invisible substance thought to keep galaxies intact, remains one of the most enduring mysteries in physics. Although it cannot be directly observed or touched, researchers suspect that dark matter leaves behind faint traces. These subtle signals might be detectable using advanced quantum technologies that can sense extremely small disturbances. A team…
Mark PoyntingClimate reporter NOAA via Getty A satellite image of Hurricane Melissa moving over the Caribbean Sea Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest Atlantic storms ever recorded, created “extremely dangerous and life-threatening” conditions in Jamaica, according to the US National Hurricane Center. Climate change is not thought to increase the number of hurricanes, typhoons and…
Patients with advanced lung or skin cancer who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine within 100 days of beginning immunotherapy treatment lived considerably longer than those who were not vaccinated, according to new research. Scientists from the University of Florida and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center made the discovery while studying the potential…
