Polar Bear Body Cam Shows Predator's POV
Posted on June 10, 2023
| 2 minutes
| 415 words
| Patria Henriques
New footage from a polar bear body cam shows how these ursine inhabitants of the Arctic play, swim and hunt.
Just released by the U.S. Geographic Survey, the footage is from a point-of-view camera around the neck of a female polar bear from the southern Beaufort Sea, just north of Alaska. According to the USGS, scientists fitted the female with the camera to track her daily activities, behaviors and feeding rates.
[Read More]Vicious Shark-Tooth Weapons Reveal 2 Lost Species
Posted on June 10, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 636 words
| Trudie Dory
A collection of vicious weapons made of shark teeth reveals that two species of sharks vanished from the reefs of Kiribati before scientists even noticed the species were there.
Until about 130 years ago, residents of the Gilbert Islands, which make up much of the Republic of Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean, used teeth from dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscrus) and spotfin sharks (Carcharhinus sorrah) to make swords, spears, daggers and other fearsome weapons.
[Read More]Where's the Snow?
Posted on June 10, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 583 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Maps of the nation's snow cover show a lot less white stuff covering the country right now compared with this time last year.
In mid-December last year, the Deep South was reeling from an unusually big snowfall. Today, snow is scarce anywhere on the East Coast or in the Midwest. Instead, the powder is falling out West, where Arizona has been transformed into a winter wonderland.
The lack of big snow has folks scratching their heads in the Midwest.
[Read More]Why Stress Makes It Harder to Control Emotions
Posted on June 10, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 542 words
| Patria Henriques
Experiencing mild stress in everyday life may interfere with people's ability to use strategies to control their emotions, a new study suggests.
The findings suggest that certain therapies that teach people how to better regulate their emotions — such as those used to treat social anxiety and other psychiatric conditions — may not work well during stressful situations, the researchers say.
"We have long suspected that stress can impair our ability to control our emotions, but this is the first study to document how even mild stress can undercut therapies designed to keep our emotions in check,"
[Read More]Amazing Migration: Photos of Sandhill Cranes
Posted on June 9, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 737 words
| Fernande Dalal
Found across the worldSandhill Cranes (Grus Canadensis) are large-bodied birds with long legs and tall necks that have a wide distribution over two continents. They are the most common members of the crane family found across the world. Breeding pairs of Sandhill Cranes are found in northeastern Siberia, Canada and the United States. Migratory Sandhill Cranes overwinter from Florida to California with groups traveling as far south as northern Mexico.
[Read More]Bright Idea: Glow-in-the-Dark Dye Could Power Cars
Posted on June 9, 2023
| 5 minutes
| 1044 words
| Arica Deslauriers
If the world one day sees a boom in electric cars and renewable energy, people will need more efficient batteries than are currently available. Now, researchers say a glow-in-the-dark dye used to track chemicals in cells could offer a solution.
The chemical is boron-dipyrromethene, otherwise known as BODIPY, and it consists of a set of carbon rings linked to a boron atom and two fluorine atoms. BODIPY glows under "
[Read More]Bright Idea: How Blue LEDs Changed the World
Posted on June 9, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 710 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
This year's Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three Japanese scientists for the invention of blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), a technology that has touched society in innumerable ways and enabled technologies that Americans take for granted every day.
"Blue LEDs made possible the white-light LEDs you can buy in a hardware store and put in your house," said H. Frederick Dylla, executive director and CEO of the American Institute of Physics in College Park, Maryland.
[Read More]Cocaine, Marijuana in Italian Cities' Air
Posted on June 9, 2023
| 2 minutes
| 395 words
| Fernande Dalal
Rome is known as a heady and stimulating city, but is that because it's a vibrant cultural center where modern life buzzes against a backdrop of thousands of years of history, or because small quantities of cocaine waft through the streets?
Researchers at Italy's Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research have published the results of a year-long study that monitored psychotropic substances in the air of eight Italian cities: Bologna, Florence, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Rome, Turin and Verona.
[Read More]FAA closes investigation of SpaceX's Starship SN9's test-flight crash
Posted on June 9, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 488 words
| Fernande Dalal
SpaceX's latest Starship prototype is a big step closer to liftoff.
Elon Musk's company is gearing up to launch that vehicle, known as SN10, on a 6-mile-high (10 kilometers) test flight from its South Texas site in the near future.
And such preparations can really ramp up now, because SpaceX and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have just concluded an investigation of the last such flight, a Feb. 2 jaunt that ended with SN10's predecessor, SN9, exploding upon touchdown.
[Read More]For Some Male Creatures, Smaller is Better
Posted on June 9, 2023
| 2 minutes
| 271 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Sometimes smaller is better for males and sex, new findings suggest.
Often big males have the advantage in the animal kingdom, as their superior size helps them win more contests with competitors in the never-ending effort to mate. Still, University of Kentucky evolutionary biologist Charles Fox and his colleagues wondered if little guys might win against goliaths when it comes to races to females. For instance, "smaller males are presumably better flyers because it's easier for them to fly,"
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