What Is Slopestyle?

 Posted on October 7, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  347 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Slopestyle is a new event at the Sochi Winter Olympics 2014. Snowboarders travel down a slope dotted with obstacles, including quarterpipes, rails and progressively higher jumps. On the way, they perform feats of aerial acrobatics, with tricks like the backside triple cork 1440 — three head-over-heels flips and four full revolutions. Snowboarding has a short Olympic history; it became an official event in 1998. Since those Games, the sport has been steadily adding events, with the parallel giant slalom, a race event, beginning in 2002, and snowboard cross, an event that takes place on a course of moguls and jumps starting in 2006. [Read More]

What the Heck Happened to This Yo-Yo Champ's Index Finger?

 Posted on October 7, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  728 words  |  Fernande Dalal

A striking X-ray image shows the dark threads of arteries and veins carrying blood from wrist to fingertip — except in the index finger, which glows with a ghostly white hue. The image is an angiogram — a type of medical imaging technique that reveals veins and arteries after they have been flooded with a special dye. If blood is flowing properly, it carries the dye through the branching networks of blood vessels, which show up as dark lines in the image. [Read More]

Why Are Asian Carp So Fearsome?

 Posted on October 7, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  805 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Invasive Asian carp are inching their way closer to the Great Lakes. Now, one has been found just 6 miles (10 kilometers) from Lake Michigan, according to news reports, and experts worry that they could devastate the ecosystem and fishing industry of the region. Asian carp wreak havoc with their ravenous appetites, high reproduction rates and their ability to survive predators. Two species of Asian carp, the bighead and the silver carp, eat plankton voraciously. [Read More]

10 Weird and Terrifying Medical Instruments from the Past

 Posted on October 6, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  394 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Weird and terrifyingThis article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The UK’s largest medical charity, the Wellcome Trust, has made its vast database of images freely available to all. The collection holds photos of hundreds of years worth of medicine, instruments and scientific culture. For me, the progress of science best described by advances in medicine and the instruments used to practice it. [Read More]

Adorable American Pika Is Disappearing Due to Climate Change

 Posted on October 6, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  484 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

The American pika, a pint-size rabbit relative, is feeling the heat: Hotter summers induced by climate change are threatening these cute creatures' habitats throughout the western United States. The small herbivores make their home in rocky slopes, known as taluses, across the West's mountain ranges. A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that whole populations of the tiny mammal are disappearing due to climate change. The pika's mountainous habitats have become hotter and drier in the summer and harsher in the winter, with less snow cover to insulate their burrows in the ground, the researchers said. [Read More]

Brain's 'Pain Meter' Identified

 Posted on October 6, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  319 words  |  Patria Henriques

The brain's "pain sensor" has been found, researchers say. When you step on a thumbtack or hit your funny bone, this is the part of your brain that lights up. Researchers conducted imaging scans of the brains of people who were experiencing pain waxing and waning over several hours. They identified a region of the brain called the dorsal posterior insula, which became active in response to how much pain a person felt. [Read More]

Death mask of King Henry VII is brought to astonishing life in a digital restoration

 Posted on October 6, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  735 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

The somber face of Britain's King Henry VII was recently given a digital makeover, in an astonishingly photorealistic reconstruction. Graphic artist Matt Loughrey produced the image of the deceased king from Henry VII's death mask, which was cast in 1509. Loughrey is the founder of My Colorful Past, a project that restores and colorizes archival images of historic figures.  Long before the invention of photography, wax masks helped to preserve a person's likeness more accurately than paintings or illustrations did. [Read More]

How Does Latte Art Work?

 Posted on October 6, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  849 words  |  Trudie Dory

Latte art has become a hallmark of many quality coffee shops around the world. If you order a drink made with espresso and steamed milk, such as a cappuccino or a latte, you may find yourself marveling over the elegant, marbled patterns of earthen browns and shimmering white that top your beverage. But how do baristas create such works of art? The designs take shape when a barista pours the drink into a cup; steamed milk over a couple shots of espresso. [Read More]

How Hurricane Irma Became a Monster Storm

 Posted on October 6, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  758 words  |  Patria Henriques

Hurricane Irma has strengthened to a Category 5 storm over the Atlantic Ocean, with maximum winds blowing at an astounding 185 mph (295 km/h). That wind speed puts Irma in rare company. Only four other Atlantic hurricanes on record have had wind speeds of 185 mph or higher, according to Phil Klotzbach, a tropical meteorologist at Colorado State University. Storms tied with Irma include 2005's Wilma, 1988's Gilbert and an unnamed 1935 storm that hit the Florida Keys, Klotzbach wrote on Twitter. [Read More]

Moth with Ultrasonic Hearing Discovered

 Posted on October 6, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  419 words  |  Fernande Dalal

The ubiquitous greater wax moth is ordinary in every way but one: It has the ability to hear the highest-known sound frequency. The greater wax moth's hearing goes up to about 300 kilohertz, nearly 100 kHz higher than the hearing of some bats. "This is the animal with the highest frequency sensitivity yet recorded, there's no other animal that can hear such a high frequency," said study co-author James Windmill, a bioacoustician at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. [Read More]