Here's Why This Man Had a Giant White Mass on His Eyeball
Posted on November 2, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 607 words
| Arica Deslauriers
It looks like a Hollywood special effect: An eye with a bulging white mass where the pupil and iris should be. But this odd eye problem is the result of a rare lesion on a man's eyeball, according to a new report of the case.
The 74-year-old man arrived at an eye clinic with a pearly white, jelly-like mass on his right eye, according to the report, published April 4 in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.
[Read More]How Do Tigers Get Their Stripes? Science Not So Certain Now
Posted on November 2, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 508 words
| Patria Henriques
A decades-old explanation for how tigers get their stripes has come into question as researchers challenge what’s called the morphogen theory. The research does not nix the theory, but science may now have a hypothetical tiger by the tail as they try to figure out this aspect of how Nature works.
The morphogen theory posits that proteins controlling traits are arranged as gradients, with different amounts of proteins activating genes to create specified physical features.
[Read More]In Photos: Discoveries at the Site of the Pequot War in Connecticut
Posted on November 2, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 710 words
| Arica Deslauriers
The Pequot WarThe Pequot War in New England from 1636 until 1638 was an early conflict between English Puritan settlers and native North Americans. The Pequot people lived in what is now southeastern Connecticut before the arrival of Europeans in the area. From the 1620s, the Pequot traded valuable furs, especially beaver, with Dutch traders, in return for European-made goods such as cloth, metal tools, and firearms. [Read more about the Pequot War]
[Read More]Key to Making Egg Cells Mature Found, Researchers Say
Posted on November 2, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 295 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Women whose egg cells do not mature will not become pregnant, and they cannot be helped by in vitro fertilization (IVF), which requires mature egg cells to produce an embryo. Now, researchers in Sweden working with mice say they have found that a protein called Cdk1 plays an important role in egg maturation.
This finding could lead to an increased success rate in IVF, according to the researchers.
"This is the first functional evidence that Cdk1 is a key molecule in mammalian egg maturation.
[Read More]Michelangelo's fingerprint possibly found on butt of wax statue
Posted on November 2, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 660 words
| Trudie Dory
(opens in new tab)A 500-year-old wax sculpture attributed to Michelangelo might hold the famed Renaissance artist's fingerprint, a new analysis finds.
Michelangelo reportedly created the wax sculpture as a study for a larger sculpture he planned for St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, according to a statement from BBC Two, which just released the new season of "Secrets of the Museum" featuring the figurine. However, the larger sculpture was never completed, and now the model belongs to the Victoria and Albert Museum, or the V&A, in London.
[Read More]Physicists link 'quantum memories' in early step toward quantum internet
Posted on November 2, 2022
| 7 minutes
| 1294 words
| Patria Henriques
When the precursor to today's internet carried its first message in 1969, clunky but functional classical computers had already been around for decades. Now, physicists are designing the embryonic threads of a whole new internet for moving and manipulating a radically different type of information: the quantum bit, or "qubit." And this time, they aren't waiting for the corresponding computers to exist first.
Two teams have now demonstrated an ensemble of technologies essential to building the backbone of such a network — devices known as quantum repeaters.
[Read More]Toothy Dinosaur Mowed Earth Like Cow
Posted on November 2, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 476 words
| Arica Deslauriers
A stout sauropod with a shovel-shaped muzzle mowed Earth's greenery about 110 million years ago like a cow with hundreds of tiny teeth, a paleontologist said today.
The first bones from this dinosaur were picked up in the Sahara Desert in what is now Niger by French paleontologists in the 1950s. Then in the late 1990s, Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago, and his colleagues discovered the bulk of the dino's bones, including its skull.
[Read More]Two-Headed Conjoined Porpoises Hauled Up from the Deep
Posted on November 2, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 579 words
| Trudie Dory
Two-headed conjoined porpoises were recently hauled up by a fishing boat in the North Sea, not far off the coast of the Netherlands.
The bizarre-looking creatures were already dead, and the fishermen, who feared trouble from the authorities, took photos and then tossed the duo back overboard.
It's not clear exactly why the porpoises died, but the double-headed creatures likely could not swim, said Erwin Kompanje, a researcher at the Natural History Museum and the Erasmus MC University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who recently wrote up the case in the June 7 issue of the journal Deinsea.
[Read More]Underground City Envisioned in Nevada
Posted on November 2, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 444 words
| Patria Henriques
Sietch Nevada is a fascinating concept exhibited in Innovative Technologies and Climates at the University of Toronto. Fans of the science fiction novel Dune will immediately recognize this proposal - to build semi-subterranean terraced geometries in the Nevada desert.
"In Frank Herbert’s famous 1965 novel Dune, he describes a planet that has undergone nearly complete desertification. Dune has been called the “first planetary ecology novel” and forecasts a dystopian world without water.
[Read More]Waves of Destruction: History's Biggest Tsunamis
Posted on November 2, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 750 words
| Fernande Dalal
Devastating WavesThese series of traveling ocean waves are primarily generated in association with underwater earthquakes (though underwater volcanic eruptions and landslides can also trigger a tsunami). In the deep ocean, the waves can reach hundreds of miles or more from wave crest to wave crest and can exceed speeds of 500 miles per hour (805 kilometers per hour). And they're sneaky, unable to be felt even aboard ships, and undetectable from the air.
[Read More]