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Is Australia's extinct thylacine — a striped, dog-like marsupial commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger — not extinct after all? Recent alleged thylacine sightings convinced scientists at James Cook University in Australia to investigate whether the species is still among the living.  The last wild thylacine was killed between 1910 and 1920, and in 1936, the last known thylacine died in captivity in Hobart, Australia. Since then, no conclusive evidence has emerged to suggest that Tasmanian tigers still exist in the wild, and the species was declared officially extinct in 1986, the Tasmanian Government's Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment reported on the Tasmanian federal Wildlife Management website. [Read More]

Injecting fillers into the forehead to remove wrinkles can have rare but devastating consequences for the eye and cause permanent blindness, according to a new report of three people who lost their vision due to this procedure. Injecting fat, collagen or special cosmetic products under the skin for facial rejuvenation is an extremely common procedure and is fairly safe, with side effects usually limited to bruises or swelling of the skin. [Read More]

The mystery behind several "vampire" burials in Poland has been solved. People who were buried with sickles (curved, sharp farming knives) around their necks, or rocks at their jaws, to prevent their corpses from reanimating were natives to the area in which they were buried, according to a new study. The fact that all the people buried as vampires were local suggests they may have been felled by a cholera epidemic that swept through the region, said study co-author Lesley Gregoricka, a bioarchaeologist at the University of South Alabama. [Read More]

What does British naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough have in common with the Finnish founder of a symphonic metal band? Both recently inspired names for new species. A newly described frog from Peru is the first amphibian named for Attenborough, who has already lent his name to various species of invertebrates, mammals, plants and reptiles, both living and extinct. And a fungus gnat that lives in shadowy environments in the province of Lapland, Finland, is the first creature named for self-proclaimed " [Read More]

Oklahoma earlier this week became witness to the state's biggest November tornado since reliable records began in 1950. The tornado touched down in Tipton, Okla., earlier this week and was upgraded yesterday (Nov. 10) to an EF-4, the second-highest rating on the Enhanced Fujita Tornado damage scale, after a storm survey team analyzed its destruction. "We've had some biggies come through from time to time, but never an EF-4 in November," [Read More]

Maybe you can't make your own body light up like a firefly can, but you can use the motion of your body to generate light, using the STEM Lab's Hand Crank Flashlight. With this build-it-yourself kit, curious kids can explore the power of hand-cranked electricity. The flashlight body and gear box motor can be assembled in about 30 minutes, and when the crank is turned, an electromagnetic coil translates the movement into power, illuminating a glowing white LED. [Read More]

It's hard enough to find fossils of hard things like dinosaur bones. Now scientists have found evidence of 95 million-year-old octopuses, among the rarest and unlikeliest of fossils, complete with ink and suckers. The body of an octopus is composed almost entirely of muscle and skin. When an octopus dies, it quickly decays and liquefies into a slimy blob. After just a few days there will be nothing left at all. [Read More]

There's an 8% chance that Southern California could be rocked by another magnitude 6.0 or above earthquake this week, according to seismologists. The region trembled under the effects of two large quakes last week, one a magnitude 6.4 on July 4 and one a magnitude 7.1 on July 5, both epicentered near Ridgecrest, California. That second temblor demoted the magnitude 6.4 to a mere foreshock. But chances are, the 7.1 magnitude quake is as bad as it's going to get: The U. [Read More]

The genome of the termite has just been sequenced, and it is revealing several clues about how the pests create their rigid social order. For instance, the new genome, detailed today (May 20) in the journal Nature Communications, uncovers some of the underpinnings of termites' caste system, as well as the roots of the males' sexual staying power. Social bugs Like other social insects— such as ants, honeybees and some wasps — termites live in highly structured " [Read More]

You can scratch off the United States from the list of the world's fattest nations, according to an exhaustive country-by-country report on obesity published last week in The Lancet. We're not even in the top-10 anymore. Truth be told, in all these years we thought we were the fattest, we really weren't. The United States was merely the most corpulent industrialized nation. The far fatter island nations of Nauru, Samoa and just about everywhere else in Oceania surpassed the U. [Read More]