Home  »  Headline News

On:

Continuing it’s role as our solar system’s cosmic vacuum cleaner, the planet Jupiter swallowed up an object that was estimated to be similar in size to the meteorite that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013 — an incident that reportedly caused property damage and injuries to approximately 1,500 people. But, despite being 674.5 million km (419.1 million miles) away, the spectacular explosion the impact caused was recorded by modest-sized telescopes here on Earth.
read more

On:

Mainstream medicine has traditionally had a heavy reliance on chemical-based pharmaceuticals, drugs designed to alter the molecular pathways within the body, to achieve specific medical results. Despite the benefits provided by many of these drugs, unwanted side effects, some of them quite severe, plague the industry — and some drugs simply aren’t nearly as effective as they’re meant to be. However, over the past few years, researchers may have come up with an alternative to this hit-or-miss practice.
read more

On:

While we’re well aware of the ongoing plight of honeybees that are facing colony collapse disorder, and the potential impact on crops that depend on our little apian allies for pollination, it’s important to remember that there are a large number of plant species that we use for food that rely on species other than bees, both invertebrate and vertebrate. Toward that end, a new study, commissioned by the United Nations, has been released, warning that a shocking number of these alternate pollinators are at risk of extinction.
read more

On:

One of the frustrating aspects that paleontologists face when studying dinosaur fossils is the odd lack of sexual dimorphism in the ancient creatures — being able to tell the difference between male and female individuals based on their physical features. However, one method of telling whether an individual specimen is a female or not has been uncovered, with the confirmation of a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil that came from a pregnant female.

"This analysis allows us to determine the gender of this fossil, and gives us a window into the evolution of egg laying in modern birds," says the study’s lead researcher, North Carolina State University evolutionary biologist Mary Schweitzer.
read more