377 articles from THURSDAY 17.9.2020
Seven footprints may be the earliest evidence of humans on the Arabian Peninsula
Experts say discovery of 120,000-year-old prints could shed new light on spread of Homo sapiens out of AfricaA set of seven footprints made at a lake about 120,000 years ago have been hailed as the earliest evidence of modern humans on the Arabian Peninsula – a discovery experts say could shed light on the spread of our species out of Africa.The path by which Homo sapiens spread around the world...
Forget vitamins: Fauci says the 3 best things 'to keep your immune system working optimally' cost nothing
"If you really want to keep your immune system working optimally, there are things that you do that are normal things," Fauci...
Crackdown on QAnon conspiracy content is working, Twitter says
Twitter said Thursday it has reduced impressions on QAnon-related tweets by more than 50 per cent through its "work to deamplify content and accounts" associated with the conspiracy...
European Space Agency awards Hera asteroid mission to German firm
Deal worth £118m covers design, manufacturing and testing of ESA’s first planetary defence missionThe European Space Agency has awarded a €129m (£118m) contract to the German space company OHB. The deal covers the design, manufacturing and testing of Hera, the ESA’s first planetary defence mission.Hera is the European contribution to an experiment called the asteroid impact and deflection...
NASA finds tropical storm Noul packing a punch
Powerful storms with heavy rainmaking capabilities appeared over the coast of central Vietnam in NASA provided infrared imagery on Sept. 17.
Polarization over energy and climate in Canada
Positive Energy today released new survey results examining Canadians' views on the role of oil and gas in Canada's current and future economy, and the respective roles of federal and provincial governments in the country's energy and climate future. This novel survey explores how party affiliation, ideology, region, gender, and age may influence opinions on these topics. The survey, conducted by...
Race to rescue animals as Brazilian wetlands burn
Wildlife guide Eduarda Fernandes steers a speedboat up the Piquiri river in western Brazil, scanning the horizon for jaguars wounded in the wildfires ripping through the Pantanal, the world's biggest tropical wetlands.
'Cellular compass' guides stem cell division in plants
The stem cells tasked with creating and maintaining biological tissues have a difficult job. They have to precisely divide to form new specialized cells, which are destined to different fates even though they contain identical DNA. An obvious question then is: How do the cells divide in all the right ways to produce a healthy tissue? This was the grand motivating question for Andrew Muroyama, a...
Study shows quizzes improve academic performance
About a year ago, a conversation during a faculty meeting piqued Marcus Crede's interest. A senior faculty member in Iowa State University's Department of Psychology said that he believed frequent quizzes help students better grasp classroom material. Crede, an associate professor of psychology, was skeptical that something as simple as a quiz could positively impact students' academic...
Invasive shrimp-sucking parasite continues northward Pacific expansion
Researchers have identified an invasive blood-sucking parasite on mud shrimp in the waters of British Columbia's Calvert Island. The discovery represents the northern-most record of the parasite on the West Coast and is likely an indication of its ability to spread without human transport.
NASA finds a fading wispy Tropical Depression Vicky
NASA's Terra satellite found Vicky to be a shadow of its former self, devoid of precipitation around its low-level center. Any precipitation had been pushed far to the northeast from wind shear. Vicky looked like a wispy ring of clouds on visible satellite imagery and nearby Hurricane Teddy is not helping.
New method adds and subtracts for sustainability's true measure
From loaning pandas to welcoming tourists to hike to sacred monuments, to regulating the sale of wild animals for meat, policies across the world seek to forge clear paths to sustainability.
Hurricane Sally's Fierce Rain Shows How Climate Change Raises Storm Risks
As hurricanes go, Sally was not especially powerful. Rated a Category 2 storm when it struck the Gulf Coast on Wednesday, it was soon downgraded. But climate change likely made it more dangerous by slowing it down and feeding it more moisture, setting it up to pummel the region with wind and catastrophic rainfall.Sally was crawling at about 3 mph when its eye made landfall early Wednesday near...
New high-speed test shows how antibiotics combine to kill bacteria
Researchers at Uppsala University have developed a new method to determine—rapidly, easily and cheaply—how effective two antibiotics combined can be in stopping bacterial growth. The new method is simple for laboratories to use and can provide greater scope for customizing treatment of bacterial infections. The study is published in PLOS Biology.
The universe likely has trillions of planets made primarily of diamonds, scientists confirmed
Researchers have found that under extreme heat and pressure, materials on carbon-rich planets would become...
Sally leaves trail of destruction across Gulf Coast
Shellshocked residents were cleaning up on Thursday after Hurricane Sally left a trail of destruction in US coastal towns stretching from Alabama to the top of the Florida panhandle.
Lightning storm, easterly wind: How the wildfires got so bad
It began as a stunning light show on a mid-August weekend—lightning bolts crackling in the skies over Northern and Central California, touching down in grasslands and vineyards.
Satellite catches nighttime view of major hurricane Teddy
An early morning infrared image of Hurricane Teddy taken from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite shows the proximity of the strengthening hurricane to the Lesser Antilles island chain and Puerto Rico. Teddy is a major hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
Poop knives, arachnophobic entomologists win 2020 Ig Nobels
Maybe this year's Ig Nobels, the spoof prizes for dubious but humorous scientific achievement, should have been renamed the Ick Nobels. An anthropologist who tested an urban legend by fashioning a knife out of frozen human feces, and a man who found that spiders oddly give scientists who study insects the heebie-jeebies, are among the 2020 winners. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Thursday's...