Desert Tortoises Can Hear Better Underwater

 Posted on November 15, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  385 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Desert tortoises, as their name suggests, don't encounter many large bodies of water.  But surprisingly, all turtles, even desert tortoises, can hear better underwater, recent research finds. "If a desert tortoise decided to stick its head underwater, it could hear better," said Katie Willis, a University of Maryland doctoral student and co-author of a study published online this week in the journal PLoS ONE. The findings shed light on the evolution of turtles, suggesting they all share an aquatic ancestor, the researchers said. [Read More]

For Irritable Bowel Syndrome Sufferers, Antibiotic Shows Promise

 Posted on November 15, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  541 words  |  Patria Henriques

An antibiotic called rifaximin has shown promise in treating irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) in two large clinical trials by targeting bacteria in the gut, researchers found. Four weeks after the beginning a two-week-long treatment with the drug, 41 percent of people who took it said they had relief from their IBS symptoms including bloating, abdominal pain and loose and watery stools. Of those who took the placebo, 32 percent reported relief, the study showed. [Read More]

Holy Cow! 'Daisy' Makes Hypoallergenic Milk

 Posted on November 15, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  767 words  |  Trudie Dory

People allergic to whey may be able to drink newly engineered milk without the unpleasant digestive consequences, according to research released today (Oct. 1). A team of New Zealand researchers genetically engineered a cow named Daisy to produce milk free of β-lactoglobulin protein that can cause allergic skin, digestive and respiratory reactions predominantly in infants. "Since the protein is not produced in human milk, it's not surprising that this protein may be recognized as a foreign protein in infants and cause allergies," [Read More]

How long do most species last before going extinct?

 Posted on November 15, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  741 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

The majestic blue whale has plied the seas for about 4.5 million years, while the Neanderthals winked out of existence in a few hundred thousand years. But are those creatures representative of species overall? How long do species usually last before they go extinct? It turns out the answer we find now could be very different than it usually is. Because of habitat destruction, climate change, and a range of other factors, plants and animals are disappearing from the planet faster than all but maybe five other points in history. [Read More]

Humans Will Hear from Intelligent Aliens This Century, Physicist Says

 Posted on November 15, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  682 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Humans will make contact with aliens by the end of the century, theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku told Redditers last week. However, Kaku said he wasn't sure whether we'd be able to communicate directly with this unknown extraterrestrial society — one that could run the gamut from hostile to pacifist, according to Kaku. In his AMA on Reddit, Kaku responded to a question about alien civilizations, saying, "Let me stick my neck out. [Read More]

Men Muscle in on Body Image Problems

 Posted on November 15, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  375 words  |  Trudie Dory

For decades, women with perfect bodies have adorned the covers of fashion magazines and created an ideal that teenage girls aspired to. The obsession with the flawless body has recently crossed genders, causing men to suffer from eating disorders, consider steroid use and to have unhealthy obsessions with weightlifting, new research suggests. "Men see these idealized, muscular men in the media and feel their own bodies don't measure up," said Tracy Tylka, the lead researcher and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University. [Read More]

New Mexico Earthquakes Linked to Wastewater Injection

 Posted on November 15, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  341 words  |  Trudie Dory

An ongoing earthquake swarm in New Mexico and Colorado, which includes Colorado's largest earthquake since 1967, is due to underground wastewater injection, researchers said Friday (April 19) at the Seismological Society of America's annual meeting in Salt Lake City. The earthquakes are concentrated near wastewater injection wells in the Raton Basin, where mining companies are extracting methane from coalbeds. The basin, which is actually a series of rock layers exposed in the Rocky Mountain foothills, stretches from northeastern New Mexico to southern Colorado. [Read More]

Rarest Big Cat on Earth Starting to Make a Comeback

 Posted on November 15, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  543 words  |  Trudie Dory

Things are starting to look up for the rarest big cat on the planet: The critically endangered Amur leopard, which is indigenous to southeastern Russia and parts of northeastern China, has doubled in population since 2007, according to a new report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Census data from Russia's Land of the Leopard National Park, which covers about 60 percent of the Amur leopard's habitat, puts the number of these wild cats at 57. [Read More]

Spanking, Hitting Kids in Public Surprisingly Common, Study Finds

 Posted on November 15, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  536 words  |  Trudie Dory

Parents get physical with unruly children far more in public than they do when they know psychologists or other researchers are looking, a new study finds. In an experiment that involved surreptitiously watching parents discipline their kids in public places such as restaurants, researchers found that in 23 percent of cases, mom or dad resorted to "negative touch" to get their child to comply. Negative touch can include anything from restraining and spanking to pinching and hitting. [Read More]

What If Space-Time Were 'Chunky'? It Would Forever Change the Nature of Reality.

 Posted on November 15, 2022  |  6 minutes  |  1132 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Is our fundamental reality continuous or is it chopped up into tiny, discrete bits? Asked another way, is space-time smooth or chunky? The question cuts to the heart of the most fundamental theories of physics, linking together the way space and time intersect with the material of our everyday existence.  However, experimentally testing the nature of space and time has been impossible, because of the extreme energies needed to probe such tiny scales in the universe. [Read More]