Report Warns of Threat to World's Deserts

 Posted on February 26, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  455 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

LONDON (AP)—The world's deserts are under threat as never before, with global warming making lack of water an even bigger problem for the parched regions, a U.N. report released Monday said. The first comprehensive look at deserts around the world said these areas, their wildlife and, most of all, their scarce water supplies are facing dramatic changes. "Deserts are the last great wildernesses and the Cinderellas of the conservation world—out of sight, out of mind,'' said Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program. [Read More]

Restored Scribble May Be Shakespeare's Signature

 Posted on February 26, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  463 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Researchers using high-tech photography have reconstructed a signature that may belong to William Shakespeare — or perhaps a clever forger. It's not yet known who scrawled "Wm Shakespeare" across the title page of the legal treatise "Archaionomia," a collection of Saxon laws published during the reign of Elizabeth I of England. It may never be clear, said Gregory Heyworth, a professor of English at the University of Mississippi. But now, Heyworth and his students have used new technology to reveal the nearly lost scribbles on the old book. [Read More]

Study Reveals Why Infants Can't Walk

 Posted on February 26, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  758 words  |  Patria Henriques

Scientists have figured out the underlying reason why human babies can't walk at birth while foals and other hoofed animals get up and go within hours of being born. Turns out, all mammals essentially take their first steps at the same point in brain development. A team of scientists has come up with a model that can predict the onset of those first steps with information on the weight of that animal's mature brain (which indicates brain development time) and whether the species stands with its heels touching the ground like us or on its tippy toes like cats and horses. [Read More]

Too Hot to Handle: 7 Sizzling Places on Planet Earth

 Posted on February 26, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  784 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Too Hot?Valentine's Day is a hot holiday, romantically speaking. So why not take your beloved on an adventure to a sultry destination? Live Science has put together a list of seven sizzling, unconventional places for your travels and your imagination, as some trips might be challenging, downright dangerous or even impossible to take. Kilauea, HawaiiHawaii's Kilauea volcano has erupted continuously since 1983, so it likely won't disappoint this Valentine's Day. [Read More]

Whooping Cough Outbreaks Traced to Change in Vaccine

 Posted on February 26, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  760 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

The recent outbreaks of whooping cough in the United States may be due, in part, to a change made two decades ago to vaccine ingredients, a new study finds. In 2012, the United States had about 48,000 cases of whooping cough (also called pertussis) — the most cases since 1955. Although the numbers dropped in 2013 and 2014 to about 29,000 cases yearly, there are still far more cases now than in decades past. [Read More]

Why Washing Chicken Before Cooking is Unsafe (Video)

 Posted on February 26, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  584 words  |  Patria Henriques

Rachel Ewing is a news officer for science and health at Drexel University. She contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.  Like most people, you may believe that washing raw chicken prior to cooking is safe, or even prevents food-borne illness. In fact, the opposite is true.  "You should assume that if you have chicken, you have either Salmonella or Campylobacter bacteria on it, if not both," said food safety researcher Jennifer Quinlan, an associate professor at Drexel University. [Read More]

World's Tiniest Engines Could Power Microscopic Robots

 Posted on February 26, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  714 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Scientists have created the world's tiniest practical engines, and these light-powered machines could one day power microscopic robots small enough to enter living cells, the researchers say. As technological innovations make devices smaller and smaller, scientists are developing machines that are only the size of complex molecules — nanometers, or billionths of a meter, in scale. In comparison, the average human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide. One of the main reasons " [Read More]

YardMap Helps Wildlife in Your Backyard, Literally

 Posted on February 26, 2023  |  7 minutes  |  1384 words  |  Fernande Dalal

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. Seventy-five percent of threatened and endangered species live on private lands. What’s more, at current rates, 21 million acres of land — an area the size of West Virginia and Maryland combined — are lost every 10 years to residential landscape. These statistics emphasize the importance of managing private lands — including small backyards, community gardens, parks, school grounds, office grounds, abandoned lots and urban balconies and roofs — in wildlife-friendly ways. [Read More]

830 million-year-old organisms found locked in ancient crystals could be resurrected

 Posted on February 25, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  715 words  |  Trudie Dory

Salt crystals from Central Australia hold ancient microorganisms that became trapped 830 million years ago, new research finds.  And there's a chance that some of the microorganisms might still be alive.  The single-celled organisms are locked in tiny fluid pockets — smaller than the width of a human hair — in halite, or salt, from a formation of sedimentary rocks. The microorganisms lived nearly 1 billion years ago in what was either a shallow, salty marine environment or a shallow, salty lake. [Read More]

A Banana-Killing Fungus Has Reached Latin America. Does This Spell the End for Bananas?

 Posted on February 25, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  351 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Bad news for banana lovers: A fungus that's particularly adept at killing the fruit has finally reached Latin America — a major supplier of the world's bananas — as scientists long feared it would. Recently, officials in Colombia declared a national emergency after confirming the presence of this deadly fungus, known as Fusarium oxysporum Tropical Race 4 (TR4), in the country, according to the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA).  This is the first time the fungus has been detected in Latin America. [Read More]