Somewhere between 250 million and 3 billion years ago, Venus’s temperate climate gave way to a runaway greenhouse state. New research reveals how such a scenario could well occur on Earth and possibly turn Earth into a Venus. Venus, Earth’s nearest neighbour and once-potential twin, is a hot mess. Surface temperatures average about 475 degrees […]
Many parents feel guilty when their children play video games for hours on end. Some even worry it could make their children less clever. And, indeed, that’s a topic scientists have clashed over for years. In our new study, we investigated how video games affect the minds of children, interviewing and testing more than 5,000 […]
Martian meteorite suggests no life on Red Planet After examining the remnants of a meteorite knocked loose from Mars 1.3 billion years ago, scientists found the 725-gram rock had only trace amounts of exposure to hydrogen, almost certainly confirming there has not been life on the Red Planet. United Press International It’s our own fault […]
Concluding that the neutrino is a Majorana particle would be really a turning point in our understanding of the universe. It would mean the non-conservation of a magnitude called the leptonic number, one of the key characteristics in a fermion, meaning that there would be an explanation to the matter-anti matter asymmetry: the creation of […]
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating autoimmune condition whereby neurons lose their myelin sheath leading to impaired neural transmission, neural degeneration and motor symptoms. Multiple factors have been considered to influence its development, like vitamin D, but now, a couple of studies have shown that the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is linked to multiple sclerosis. You […]
Machine-learning systems are increasingly worming their way through our everyday lives, challenging our moral and social values and the rules that govern them. These days, virtual assistants threaten the privacy of the home; news recommenders shape the way we understand the world; risk-prediction systems tip social workers on which children to protect from abuse; while […]
Aerosol pollution reduces Pacific’s storm activity Increasing aerosol pollution from China and India has had a cooling effect, leading to reduced storm activity in the Pacific Ocean in recent decades, according to a study that relied on computer simulations. As a result, as the governments of those countries aim to reduce aerosol pollution, they also […]
Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are layered compounds which can be thinned down to the single-layer limit. While mechanical exfoliation generates atomically thin TMD flakes possessing an area of a few square microns, chemical and physical methods provide high-quality monolayers on large-area substrates, which are suitable for actual technological applications. TMDs are a class of van […]
If you follow anything related to genetics, you’re probably thinking that it is old news, as the first draft was already published in 2000, but actually there were still missing parts. Now, thanks to new sequencing technologies, the human genome is completely sequenced. In the journal Science , six papers published back-to-back explain how this […]
Plants that inhabit the Earth have the incredible ability to grow continually for hundreds of years, and always towards the light of the sun, which provides them with the necessary energy to sprout. At the source of this growth are changes in their environment, such as variations in light, temperature and humidity. But new stimuli […]