Volunteers armed with chisels, brushes and protective goggles chip away at rock encasing the bones of a massive prehistoric amphibian in a glass-walled laboratory on the ground floor of Warsaw’s Copernicus Science Centre. On the other side of the wall, visitors watch the work unfold on the bones of the nearly six metre (20 foot)-long...
Category: Science & Tech
An eye for an i #660: That’s one small step for man…
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. U.S. President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961 Setting foot on the moon marked the fulfilment of a desire that had probably lasted...
Zoopharmacognosy — when animals medicate themselves
An interesting review by G. Allen et al. in Scientific Reports (16,18690: 2026)reports on how orangutans, which are still present in the Sebangu forest in Central Kalimantan region in Indonesia, treat themselves by mixing saliva with the leaves of a plant botanists that call dracaena (a member of the asparagus family) and applying the mixture...
New planet revealed around a young star after a decade in hiding
Astronomers have discovered a faint, elusive planet orbiting a young star after more than a decade of cosmic hide-and-seek. In an unusual twist, two groups working independently detected the cold gas giant a few days apart late last year using different telescopes. It’s the dimmest planet ever directly imaged from earth, scientists said. A Scottish...
Parts of Assam were once under sea: Study
GUWAHATI A significant swathe of present-day Assam was once under a warm, shallow tropical sea rich in microscopic marine life, a new study has revealed. Two researchers from Nagaland University carried out a geological investigation of the Sylhet Limestone deposits in Karbi Anglong district’s Dillai Parbat to shed light on Assam’s sea link about 50...
India’s rarest heron faces a silent end as new dam ignores its home
The white-bellied heron (Ardea insignis)is among the world’s most elusive birds, nesting along fast-flowing rivers lined with old growth forests. “India has a population of six to nine individuals distributed in three rivers: Noa-Dehing River, Lahm River and Lohit River,” Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bengaluru, project manager Yumlam Benjamin Bida...
What makes the brain the most complicated object in the universe
In the middle of 2023, a study conducted by the HuthLab at the University of Texas sent shockwaves through the realms of neuroscience and technology. For the first time, the thoughts and impressions of people unable to communicate with the outside world were translated into continuous natural language, using a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and brain...
Are new neurons born in the adult human brain? Study revives debate
You were probably taught in high school that new neurons, or brain cells, are not born during adulthood. That it stops during your childhood. The actual picture has been more complicated: scientists have been debating among themselves for a long time as to when neurogenesis stops, although most of them believed it was possible in...
Scientists compile largest meta-dataset of tree inventory studies from India
A new study led by researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and other institutions has compiled InvenTree-meta, the largest meta-dataset of tree inventory studies from India. The database brings together information from 465 published studies conducted between 1991 and 2023, spanning more than 4,650 hectares of forests across all of India’s biomes. Contributing to global...
