Wasps Wired to Recognize Each Other's Faces
Posted on September 3, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 706 words
| Arica Deslauriers
A species of paper wasp has a special talent for recognizing faces of its own kind, shows a new study.
Scientists have long known that the wasp Polistes fuscatus can distinguish individuals in its colony by recognizing facial markings. In the new study, researchers found that the wasps learn to identify images of P. fuscatus faces faster and more accurately than other types of images.
This is the first time that scientists have discovered this humanlike ability in an insect.
[Read More]1,400 Ancient Cuneiform Tablets Identified from Lost City of Irisagrig in Iraq. Were They Stolen?
Posted on September 2, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 862 words
| Fernande Dalal
About 1,400 cuneiform tablets that were possibly stolen from Irisagrig, a 4,000-year-old lost city in Iraq, have just been revealed.
Even though archaeologists know the tablets originated in that lost Sumerian city, they don't know where the city is now located. Only looters have that location, archaeologists said.
The newly examined tablets describe the palace of Irisagrig and the animals kept on the grounds, including lions and dogs; the tablets also detail a festival held in a temple dedicated to a god of mischief.
[Read More]Ancient 'New York City' of Canada Discovered
Posted on September 2, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 980 words
| Trudie Dory
Today New York City is the Big Apple of the Northeast but new research reveals that 500 years ago, at a time when Europeans were just beginning to visit the New World, a settlement on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in Canada, was the biggest, most complex, cosmopolitan place in the region.
Occupied between roughly A.D. 1500 and 1530, the so-called Mantle site was settled by the Wendat (Huron).
[Read More]Are These Dots Purple, Blue or Proof That Humans Will Never Be Happy?
Posted on September 2, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 721 words
| Patria Henriques
A new optical-illusion study in the journal Science asks whether a series colorful dots is purple, blue or proof that humans are doomed to a lifetime of sadness and poor decisions.
In the study, published June 29, a team of scientists from Harvard, Dartmouth and New York University showed several groups of American college students a series of 1,000 dots that ranged in color from very blue to very purple. (You can see the full spectrum in the video below.
[Read More]During the Last Lunar Eclipse, a Meteor Smacked the Moon in the Face at 38,000 Mph
Posted on September 2, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 455 words
| Fernande Dalal
On January 21, 2019, the full moon passed entirely into Earth's shadow and, well, got smacked in the face pretty hard.
Seconds after the total phase of that night's lunar eclipse began, a meteorite slammed into the moon's surface, causing a brief but bright flash of light visible to amateur astronomers across the Northern Hemisphere. Professional astronomers were watching too — and now, after months of studying impact footage taken by a fleet of eight telescopes in southern Spain, a team of researchers thinks they know just how hard the moon got smacked, and what did the smacking.
[Read More]Earth's Surface 'Recycled' Surprisingly Quickly
Posted on September 2, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 428 words
| Trudie Dory
The ground we stand on seems permanent and unchanging, but the rocks that make up Earth's crust are actually subject to a cycle of birth and death that changes our planet's surface over eons. Now scientists have found evidence that this cycle is quicker than thought: 500 million years instead of 2 billion.
The tectonic plates that make up Earth's crust are constantly jostling against each other: brushing past one another in some places, moving apart in other areas, and butting head-on in still other places.
[Read More]Greenland: Earth's Biggest Island
Posted on September 2, 2022
| 8 minutes
| 1495 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Greenland is the biggest island on Earth and the least-densely populated country, with only around 57,000 residents. Most of the inhabited places are found along the western coast; a thick ice sheet covers the interior of the country. Scientists are growing extremely concerned that global warming is melting the ice too quickly.
Photo galleries:
Greenland's Gorgeous GlaciersGreenland's Ancient LandscapeThese Stunning 3D Images Reveal How a Massive Greenland Clacier Has ChangedGeographyGreenland sits in the North Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Canada.
[Read More]Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It
Posted on September 2, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 576 words
| Patria Henriques
A growing body of psychology research shows that incompetence deprives people of the ability to recognize their own incompetence. To put it bluntly, dumb people are too dumb to know it. Similarly, unfunny people don't have a good enough sense of humor to tell.
This disconnect may be responsible for many of society's problems.
With more than a decade's worth of research, David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, has demonstrated that humans find it "
[Read More]Sabertooth Cats May Have Feasted on Early Humans
Posted on September 2, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 560 words
| Fernande Dalal
Two fearsome, newfound species of saber-toothed cats might once have stalked the earliest ancestors of humanity, researchers suggest.
However, the feline predators might have also proven to be a boon to these distant forerunners by leaving behind meat from which our ancient relatives could have scavenged, scientists added.
The new fossils were uncovered in the vast, flat, windy Djurab desert in northern Chad in central Africa. This is also where what may be the earliest member of the human lineage known so far was discovered — the 6.
[Read More]Simplifying Pi?: Article a Hoax, But Hits Close to Home
Posted on September 2, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 684 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
A satiric article by Ian Squires at the Huffington Post claims that Republican congresswoman Martha Roby is sponsoring a bill, allegedly named HR 205: The Geometric Simplification Act, that would legally define pi as 3 (instead of 3.14159…), to "make math easier for our children." Of course "The Onion"-esque article is fake, but it almost hits too close to home.
"Hopefully the government wouldn't actually get involved in this," said Samuel Rankin, associate executive director of the American Mathematical Society.
[Read More]