Bizarre neck bones helped pterosaurs support their giraffe-size necks and huge heads

 Posted on July 13, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  522 words  |  Fernande Dalal

During the dinosaur age, azhdarchid pterosaurs — soaring reptiles that could grow as large as airplanes — supported their absurdly long necks and large heads during flight thanks to a never-before-seen internal bone structure in their neck vertebrae, a new study finds. This unique structure, which looks like the spokes on a bicycle wheel, allowed the largest pterosaurs such as Quetzalcoatlus northropi, which had a wingspan of more than 30 feet (10 meters), to fly with necks that were longer than a giraffe's neck, the researchers found. [Read More]

Fungus-Farming Ants First To Find Natural Pesticides

 Posted on July 13, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  627 words  |  Patria Henriques

Leaf-cutter ants, which use leaves to raise a fungal crop to support a colony of millions, seem to have discovered farming long before humans evolved. They may also have beaten us to natural pesticides by a comfortable margin. Although it's not possible to assign a date to the ants' latter discovery, the results of a new study suggest that fungus-cultivating ants may have co-evolved with bacteria whose antibiotic compounds help them protect their crop. [Read More]

Gorgeous Crater Lake Stuns in This Photo from Space

 Posted on July 13, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  316 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Southern Oregon's idyllic Crater Lake — snow ringed and shade dappled — belies its violent past. This image, taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station, was released July 31 by NASA's Earth Observatory. Crater Lake's midnight-blue waters are mottled only by the shadows cast by clouds and Wizard Island (at right of the frame), stippled in snow. The caldera — the volcanic bowl of the lake — was formed 7,700 years ago after the volcano Mount Mazama erupted, spewing pumice and ash skyward, reaching heights of up to 30 miles (50 kilometers). [Read More]

Revenge Is Bittersweet, Research Finds

 Posted on July 13, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  621 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Revenge is a dish best served cold. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die. The culture is swimming with depictions of revenge: Sometimes it's deeply satisfying, sometimes it injures the avenger, and sometimes it's a little bit of both. And it turns out that people's response to vengeance may be just as complicated in real life, new research shows. [Read More]

Scientists Discover Key to Fashion Trends

 Posted on July 13, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  566 words  |  Patria Henriques

In pop culture, the one constant is change. And according to new research, what’s hot in baby names, dog breeds, clothing “must haves” and chart-topping music is the result of random copy-cats. Whether skinny-leg or boot-cut jeans become all the rage, therefore, is up to chance. If you don’t like the outcome, no worries, since it will be out of fashion lickety-split. The research, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, reveals that fashions come and go at a surprisingly regular and predictable rate, which is fueled by very few innovators amidst millions of people copying each other. [Read More]

The Cold Sore Virus May Help Kids Fight Cancer (Op-Ed)

 Posted on July 13, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  900 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Dr. Timothy Cripe is a pediatric oncologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Parents will go to great lengths to help their kids avoid viruses, but a new approach to battling childhood cancer is based on children getting a certain virus, not avoiding it. It's called viral therapy, and the idea is to take a virus that normally infects healthy tissue and alter it so it lodges inside of tumors, instead. [Read More]

A never-before-seen 'partial supernova' sent this star’s corpse skidding across the galaxy

 Posted on July 12, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  585 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

An intimate pair of distant stars had a violent falling-out, sending both careening millions of miles a day toward opposite ends of the universe. Relationships, huh? In 2015, astronomers discovered one of those stars (named SDSS J1240+6710) cruising across the Milky Way. The star's brightness and composition suggested it was a white dwarf — the decaying, Earth-sized husk of a once-enormous red giant. But something about the runaway star's atmosphere seemed off. [Read More]

Broccoli Extract May Reduce Autism Symptoms

 Posted on July 12, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  952 words  |  Fernande Dalal

A chemical called sulforaphane derived from broccoli sprouts may help improve symptoms in some people with autism, a small new study suggests. The study looked at 40 boys and men with autism, who were between ages 13 and 27. For 18 weeks, 26 of the participants received between 9 and 27 milligrams of sulforaphane daily (depending on their weight), while the remaining 14 participants received a placebo. "We believe that this may be preliminary evidence for the first treatment for autism that improves symptoms by apparently correcting some of the underlying cellular problems," [Read More]

Controversial New Idea: Nerves Transmit Sound, Not Electricity

 Posted on July 12, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  605 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Nerves transmit sound waves through your body, not electrical pulses, according to a controversial new study that tries to explain the longstanding mystery of how anesthetics work. Textbooks say nerves use electrical impulses to transmit signals from the brain to the point of action, be it to wag a finger or blink an eye. "But for us as physicists, this cannot be the explanation," says Thomas Heimburg, a Copenhagen University researcher whose expertise is in the intersection of biology and physics. [Read More]

Crikey! Refrigerator-Size Dinosaur Footprints Discovered in Australia

 Posted on July 12, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  744 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Refrigerator-size dinosaur footprints are just some of the trackways that make the western coast of Australia the most diverse place on Earth for dinosaur footprints, a new study finds. There are so many kinds of dinosaur footprints on the Dampier Peninsula — 21 different types in all — that researchers are calling the 15.5-mile (25 kilometers) stretch "Australia's Jurassic Park." (However, that's a bit of a misnomer; the prints were made from about 140 million to 127 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. [Read More]