Bumblebees can process the duration of flashes of light and use the information to decide where to look for food, a new study has found. This is the first evidence of such an ability in insects, according to doctoral student … Read more
A medieval Maya text for predicting solar eclipses has confused Western readers for centuries, but a pair of researchers may have finally cracked how it’s really meant to work. Indigenous civilizations in Mexico and Guatemala kept calendars for more than … Read more
Reactivating a gene that supports memory A second study, published in the Brain Research Bulletin and led by Jarome with doctoral student Shannon Kincaid, focused on IGF2, a growth-factor gene that supports memory formation. As the brain ages, IGF2 activity drops as … Read more
What comes to mind first when you think about the environmental cost of what we wear every day? Fossil-fuel fabrics, overflowing landfills and underpaid labour are often front and centre of the conversation, and rightly so. But what rarely makes … Read more
5 min read Julianne Pepitone is a contributing editor covering consumer tech, cybersecurity, and business. In 1964 the Horn Antenna in Holmdel, N.J., picked up a mysterious buzzing noise that turned out to be cosmic microwave background radiation. It helped … Read more
5 min read The possible path of 50 photons sent through a human head from a laser [left, red] to a detector [right, green]. Extreme Light group/University of Glasgow For the most part, anyone who wants to see what’s going … Read more
Japanese researchers turned to “experimental archaeology” to study how ancient humans navigated powerful ocean currents and migrated offshore. In 1947, against the best navigational advice, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and five crew members set sail from Peru on a … Read more
Replanting forests can help cool the planet even more than some scientists once believed, especially in the tropics. But even if every tree lost since the mid-19th century is replanted, the total effect won’t cancel out human-generated warming. Cutting emissions … Read more
RICHLAND, Wash. — Scientists at Washington State University have found a new way to produce sugar from corn stalks and other crop waste, potentially opening a new pathway to sustainable biofuels. Newly published in Bioresource Technology, their experimental process used ammonium … Read more
Key Takeaways The Liquid Sunlight Alliance is a multi-institutional collaboration working to develop the tools needed to use energy from sunlight to produce liquid fuels. Researchers built a perovskite and copper-based device that converts carbon dioxide into C2 products – … Read more