The Real Spider-Man
Posted on September 13, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 504 words
| Trudie Dory
Uri Gat is no Peter Parker. Crime-chasing strands of silk fail to stream from his wrists when he thrusts them at tall buildings. But Gat, a biologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is as close to a real Spider-Man as they come.
Gat and his colleagues have produced spider web fibers in a lab -- without spiders.
In a feat of genetic engineering that could one day result in tough new industrial materials and commercial products, Gat's team genetically engineered spider web silk.
[Read More]This hot 'stream' of star gas will collide with our galaxy sooner than we thought
Posted on September 13, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 737 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
The Milky Way is playing a violent game of tug-of-war with its two toughest neighbors — the rowdy sibling dwarf galaxies known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. It's hardly a fair contest. With a combined heft of about 17 billion solar masses (nearly 100 times scrawnier than the Milky Way), the two dwarf galaxies are slowly being torn apart by the gravity of our galaxy, and by each other.
[Read More]Why We Feel Nauseous
Posted on September 13, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 255 words
| Patria Henriques
Researchers say queasy lab rats could teach us a thing or two about nausea, a common but poorly understood sensation.
"We know about vomiting. The vomiting reflex is very well characterized, but the experience of nausea is something that little is known about," Linda Parker, a psychologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, said in a statement. "How is it generated? Where is it generated?"
By studying the minds of nauseous lab rats, Parker and her colleagues found the mechanism that is responsible for nausea in the rat brain, which could hold clues about the experience in humans.
[Read More]1,000-Year-Old Toy Viking Boat Unearthed in Norway
Posted on September 12, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 549 words
| Trudie Dory
A wooden toy discovered during an excavation of an Iron Age site in central Norway hints that 1,000 years ago, a child may have imagined ferocious Viking battles by playing with a carved replica of a ship.
Found buried in a dry well at a small farm in the town of Ørland on the coastal tundra, the boat is whittled in a style resembling Viking vessels, with an uplifted prow and a hole in the center that likely held a mast for a sail.
[Read More]A Sweet Way to Test for Pee in the Pool?
Posted on September 12, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 559 words
| Patria Henriques
Testing to see if someone peed in the pool just got a little bit sweeter: Scientists in Canada have developed a new way to test for urine, and it involves measuring how sweet the water is.
That is, the researchers turned to an artificial sweetener called acesulfame potassium. Acesulfame potassium isn’t broken down in the body and is excreted in urine, according to the study. The compound persists in bodies of water and remains stable at various pH levels and temperatures.
[Read More]Armored Spiky Worm Had 30 Legs, Will Haunt Your Nightmares
Posted on September 12, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 726 words
| Arica Deslauriers
A spiky, wormlike creature with 30 legs — 18 clawed rear legs and 12 featherlike front legs that likely helped it filter food from the water — once lived in the ancient oceans of the early Cambrian period, about 518 million years ago, a new study finds.
The critter is one of the first known animals on Earth to develop protective armor and to sport specialized limbs that likely helped it catch food, the researchers said.
[Read More]Aspirin to Zoloft: The Scoop on 5 Medicines
Posted on September 12, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 620 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Ways Medicines WorkMost medicines work by binding to and modifying the actions of proteins, tiny molecular machines that perform important cellular tasks. Details about protein structure and function help scientists develop medicines that block proteins or otherwise interact with them. But even when a drug is designed to target a specific protein, it can sometimes impact others, causing side effects. The way medicines work also can be influenced by how a person's body absorbs and processes them.
[Read More]Brazilian Beauty: The Threatened Atlantic Forest
Posted on September 12, 2022
| 14 minutes
| 2909 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Forest interior
It's the most threatened rainforest in Brazil, a global biodiversity hotspot, and contains around one in 12 of all species on the planet. We must be talking about the Amazon, right? Wrong. It's the Atlantic Forest, which used to run in a continuous strip along the 2,000 miles of Brazil's eastern seaboard, up the steep coastal mountain slopes and, in places, far into the interior, reaching parts of Paraguay and northern Argentina.
[Read More]FBI's High-Tech Surveillance Planes: 4 Things You Should Know
Posted on September 12, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 854 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation controls a fleet of airplanes equipped with technology that could be used to keep tabs on people from above, according to a new report from The Associated Press.
The FBI's surveillance planes are supposedly used only to support the agency's operations on the ground, the AP reports. But in recent months, news outlets (namely the Washington Post and the AP) tracked some of these planes closely and found they made repeated trips over nearly a dozen U.
[Read More]Get Out of My Face! Anxious People Need More Personal Space
Posted on September 12, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 692 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Everybody has a "personal space," or a protective invisible bubble around their body to keep themselves safe from unwanted intrusions — like flying shoes, or perhaps close-talkers.
But how big is this space? A new study shows that the size of the space varies among people, but generally has a boundary that begins 8 to 16 inches (20 to 40 centimeters) in front of the face.
The researchers also found that anxious people tend to need a larger personal space, according to a study published today (Aug.
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