In Photos: Flashy Collared Lizards of the North American Deserts

 Posted on March 10, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  1055 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Tall and handsomeNorth America has 155 species of lizards classified into eight families native to the continent. A few of these species that arrived to the continent during the years of conquest are now considered established introduced reptiles. The evolutionary origin of all lizard species arose during the Triassic Period of geological time and lizards today make up the largest living group of the class Reptilia. The tail of an adult collared lizard is usually twice the length of the body. [Read More]

Is 6 feet enough space for social distancing?

 Posted on March 10, 2023  |  6 minutes  |  1070 words  |  Trudie Dory

By now, you've probably heard that to slow the COVID-19 pandemic, people need to adopt social distancing measures — including remaining at least 6 feet (about 1.8 meters) apart from anyone they encounter outside their homes. Where does that number come from? And how should you be applying it in your life?  The reason we need to maintain this kind of distance from each other at all is because of how easily the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the microbe responsible for the illness, spreads between people. [Read More]

Mysterious Hum Driving People Crazy Around the World

 Posted on March 10, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  916 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

It creeps in slowly in the dark of night, and once inside, it almost never goes away. It's known as the Hum, a steady, droning sound that's heard in places as disparate as Taos, N.M.; Bristol, England; and Largs, Scotland. But what causes the Hum, and why it only affects a small percentage of the population in certain areas, remain a mystery, despite a number of scientific investigations. [The Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena] [Read More]

Sunken Treasures: The Curious Science of 7 Famous Shipwrecks

 Posted on March 10, 2023  |  17 minutes  |  3485 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Sunken treasuresThe oceans and coastlines of the world are scattered with thousands of shipwrecks that span thousands of years of history. By some estimates, less than 1 percent of all shipwrecks have been located, and only a small fraction of those have been explored or excavated. For scientists and historians, each shipwreck is a vessel on a voyage from the past that continues with each new discovery — so let’s batten down the hatches and take a look at the science of some of the world’s most famous shipwrecks. [Read More]

Sweaty Hands? New Fingerprinting Method Takes Pore Prints

 Posted on March 10, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  304 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Criminals might not get away so easily, thanks to a new fingerprinting method that may be faster and more reliable than traditional methods, researchers say. The method images the sweat pores in a human hand using a polymer that glows fluorescent and changes color when it comes in contact with tiny droplets of water. Only a small fraction of the fingerprint is needed to identify an individual, according to the new study. [Read More]

Why Does Artificial Intelligence Scare Us So Much?

 Posted on March 10, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  912 words  |  Trudie Dory

When people see machines that respond like humans, or computers that perform feats of strategy and cognition mimicking human ingenuity, they sometimes joke about a future in which humanity will need to accept robot overlords. But buried in the joke is a seed of unease. Science-fiction writing and popular movies, from "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) to "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (2015), have speculated about artificial intelligence (AI) that exceeds the expectations of its creators and escapes their control, eventually outcompeting and enslaving humans or targeting them for extinction. [Read More]

World's Most Extreme Laboratories

 Posted on March 10, 2023  |  6 minutes  |  1077 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Laboratories around the worldThe word "laboratories" tends to conjure images of bespectacled scientists in white lab coats fiddling with beakers or observing lab mice. But there are plenty of other laboratories, many out in some of Earth's most extreme environments. These five laboratories are in some of the most difficult conditions on and off the planet — at the poles, on mountaintops, under the water — where people venture to learn more about the world around us. [Read More]

World's Rarest Boa Snake Seen for 1st Time in 64 Years

 Posted on March 10, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  545 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Brazil's elusive tree boa, Corallus cropanii — also known as Cropan's boa — is one of the world's rarest boas, infrequently sighted and known from only a handful of dead specimens collected after the snake was first seen and described in 1953. However, the species is alive and well, scientists recently discovered. One of the slippery serpents was captured in January — the second living specimen ever seen, and the first glimpsed in 64 years. [Read More]

'Phantom' Archaeopteryx, One of the World's 1st Birds, Could Probably Fly

 Posted on March 9, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  792 words  |  Fernande Dalal

After years spent sitting in private collections, a "phantom" fossil of one of the world's first known birds has finally seen the light of day. Now, scientists have determined that it's a previously unknown species within the famous genus of Archaeopteryx. Archaeopteryx is a transitional fossil in the evolution of dinosaur to bird. Even so, it may come as a surprise to some people that this rare, crow-size creature could likely fly during its lifetime, the researchers said. [Read More]

'Project Leviathan' Watercraft Aims to Break World Speed Record

 Posted on March 9, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  488 words  |  Patria Henriques

An ambitious group of students is building a human-powered water vehicle that they hope will set a new world speed record. With project Leviathan, as the vehicle is known, the students will attempt to reach a blistering pace of 23 miles per hour (37 km/h), breaking the current speed record of 21 mph (34 kph) that was set by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, in 1991. A team of mechanical engineering students at the University of Sherbrooke, in Canada, has been working for the past two years to build the speedy craft, which will make its world record attempt in the summer of 2015, in a 330-foot (100 meters) sprint course. [Read More]