Why Hurricane Sandy Hit Staten Island So Hard

 Posted on April 9, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  604 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Staten Island drew a very bad hand during Hurricane Sandy. The island, one of the five boroughs of New York City, was the victim not only of geography — it sits at the back of New York Harbor — but of the unfortunate coincidence of Hurricane Sandy's arrival and high tide. The storm led to massive flooding and extensive damage along Staten Island's coastal areas. Neighborhoods there are still struggling to clean up flood damage and restore power. [Read More]

'Disco' tardigrade parties under microscope, wins international photo prize

 Posted on April 8, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  495 words  |  Fernande Dalal

An image of a tardigrade with a psychedelic light show in its guts took home a top prize in an international photo competition. Inside the microscopic and endearingly tubby "water bear," tiny internal and external structures are illuminated in brilliant fluorescent colors that glow like a disco dance floor. The photo was captured by Tagide deCarvalho, manager of the Keith Porter Imaging Facility (KPIF) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and it was a regional winner in the 2019 Olympus Image of the Year Award, contest representatives said in a statement. [Read More]

4,000-Year-Old Mummies Are Half Brothers, DNA Analysis Shows

 Posted on April 8, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  577 words  |  Trudie Dory

Two Egyptian mummies that rested next to each other for nearly 4,000 years are not full brothers, but rather half brothers, finds a new study that used advanced DNA sequencing. The finding settles a 111-year-old mystery that began when excavators exhumed the two mummies in Deir Rifeh, a village 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of Cairo, in 1907. Both mummies — thought to be of noble lineage, based on their luxurious grave goods and the elite placement of their tomb — had the female name " [Read More]

Are There Higgs Bosons In Space?

 Posted on April 8, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  724 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland, report that they're hot on the trail of an elusive elementary particle known as the Higgs boson. It's only a matter of time before they'll have the infamous "God particle" in handcuffs, they say. But after years of particle- and head-bashing at the LHC, one burning question is whether there's an easier way to do this. Instead of constructing an 18-mile-long, high-energy collider to generate a Higgs particle from scratch, couldn't we just go look for one in nature? [Read More]

Bees Recognize People

 Posted on April 8, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  249 words  |  Trudie Dory

Common honey bees can be trained to recognize individual people, according to a paper published by Dr. Adrian Dyer in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The training consisted of showing the bees a series of black-and-white pictures of human faces. The bees got tasty or sour rewards, depending on their performance. The face series is exactly the same one used by psychologists to test human memory. How do bees do it? [Read More]

China's One-Child Policy Creates 'Little Emperors'

 Posted on April 8, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  1037 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Children born under China's one-child policy, which limits most urban families to a single child, are less trusting, more risk-averse and more pessimistic than children born before the policy went into action, a new study finds. The research in some ways confirms stereotypes in the Chinese media about "Little Emperor Syndrome," which is the idea that a generation of only children in the country is growing up coddled and unsocialized. The seeming personality changes could have real-world impacts, the researchers say, creating a relatively risk-averse generation that may hinder innovation. [Read More]

Dogs know where their paws end and the world begins

 Posted on April 8, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  686 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Dogs know where their paws end and the world begins, a new study shows, adding our furry companions to a group of animals that, like humans, recognize themselves as distinct entities from their environment. Called body awareness, this ability is one of the most basic manifestations of self-representation (also known as self-awareness). Humans develop body awareness very early in life: 5-month-old babies can distinguish their own moving legs from a video recording of the same action, for example. [Read More]

Gallery: The BioDigital Human

 Posted on April 8, 2023  |  1 minutes  |  191 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Skeletal systemThe BioDigital Human is a virtual 3D body developed by NYU School of Medicine and the company BioDigital Systems. It's used to teach students about anatomy and health conditions in an interactive, web-based format. Muscular systemThe BioDigital Human lets users display major organ systems like the muscular system, above. Nervous systemShown here is the nervous system, containing the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves. Cardiovascular systemThe cardiovascular system circulates blood from the heart to the lungs and around the body via blood vessels. [Read More]

In Images: Wacky Animals That Lived on Mauritius

 Posted on April 8, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  405 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

The island of Mauritius was home to quite a gang of creatures, from the distinct dodo bird to moody parrots, according to a newly translated report on the ecosystem there. Here are images revealing what those island animals may have looked like so long ago. [Read the full story on the animals of Mauritius] An educated guess This illustration depicts Mauritius Island's extinct raven parrot (Lophopsittacus mauritianus) with a dark-colored body, as Julian Hume thought it looked based on old accounts. [Read More]

King George's Letters Betray Madness, Computer Finds

 Posted on April 8, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  782 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Hundreds of letters written by King George III, the so-called "Mad King," support the modern diagnosis that he suffered from mental illness during his later years, a new study found. Using computer analysis, researchers investigated letters written by George during his 60-year reign over Great Britain and Ireland, from 1760 to 1820. They compared writings from periods in his life when he was thought to be mentally unsound, to letters he wrote when he appeared healthy. [Read More]