Spread the love By >Anne-Marie Hodge, University of Wyoming When it comes to sex among guppies, competition is high for those at the top of the game. To get around this predicament, >a recent study has shown, guppies use trickery. Competition in fish of the Poeciliidae family (fresh-water fish to which guppies belong) is especially intense, because members of the...
Language learning begins in the womb
Spread the love By >Josephine Lethbridge , The Conversation Human foetuses begin to hear sounds outside the womb at about 27 weeks. But whether foetuses can learn from these sounds in ways that shape speech perception and development during infancy has remained unclear. >New research from the University of Helsinki suggests that humans begin to distinguish between sounds before they...
Fake memory implanted in mice with a beam of light
Spread the love If you’ve ever been frustrated by erratic memories, spare a thought for the mice involved in a study published in the journal >Science . Researchers have been able to consistently create a “false memory”, making a mouse fearful of a place it has no reason to fear. The memory was implanted by shining blue light into the...
Albert and Adam rewrite the story of human origins
Spread the love By >Daniel Zadik , Leicester University The DNA of Albert Perry may change the story of human origins. Perry, an African-American, approached a DNA testing company to find out more about his ancestry. >The results would have come as quite a surprise (had he lived to see them), and have raised questions >for geneticists around the world. ...
New theory of general relativity casts doubt on dark matter
Spread the love Astronomers have been searching for a mysterious substance called “dark matter” since the 1930s. Most scientists still believe it exists, despite many fruitless decades. Now we propose a new theory of general relativity that may ultimately get rid of the need for dark matter, and perhaps get physicists to think in terms of things we know exist....
Explainer: what is napalm?
Spread the love By >Simon Cotton , University of Birmingham There are >allegations that a nerve agent was used in Syria recently. According to US officials, it >killed more than 1,400 people, including 400 children. But since then, in a >more recent incident , a bomb dropped on a school caused many children to suffer from burns. The substance used...
Rajya Sabha polls on June 18: NDA may lose seat, Congress set to gain; TVK debut likely
Spread the love NEW DELHI: The BJP-led NDA is likely to lose a seat in the Rajya Sabha while the Congress-led opposition could improve its tally in the upcoming biennial elections for 26 seats across 12 states.The Election Commission on Friday announced that polling for the Rajya Sabha seats will be held on June 18. The seats are falling vacant...
Mega-canyon discovered beneath Greenland ice sheet
Spread the love A previously unknown canyon has been discovered in Greenland, hidden beneath the ice. It is at least 750 kilometres long. To put that in perspective, imagine a ten kilometre wide gorge, up to 800 metres deep, running from the Southern coast of England and into Scotland. This is on the same scale as parts of the Grand...
Mystery solved: meteorite caused Tunguska devastation
Spread the love By >Simon Redfern , University of Cambridge On the morning of June 30 in 1908, a gigantic fireball devastated hundreds of square kilometres of uninhabited Siberian forest around the Tunguska river. The first scientists to investigate the impact site expected to find a meteorite, but they found nothing. Because no traces of a meteorite were found, many...
Silk Road trading helped produce the modern horse
Spread the love By >William Feeney The Silk Road snaked across continents for more than a thousand years, shaping civilisations in East and West. Famously trodden by Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, the trade route brought riches to Europe and plagues to Asia. But it is not just humans who hold its legacy. For new research shows that the...
