Could Reviving Woolly-Mammoth Genes Fight the Effects of Global Warming?

 Posted on May 16, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  716 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Most of the hype so far has focused on bringing these shaggy beasts back to life using their permafrost-preserved DNA. But this time, scientists aren't aiming for a "Jurassic Park" scenario — they're not trying to bring back entire mammoths exactly as they were in the last ice age. Rather, they're hoping to mingle some of the mammoths' ancient genes with those of today's Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), to increase the elephants' tolerance to the cold, said George Church, a Harvard and MIT geneticist who is heading the Harvard Woolly Mammoth Revival team. [Read More]

Deadliest Sea Snake Is 2 Separate Species

 Posted on May 16, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  340 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

The deadliest sea snakes in the world can be found from the Arabian Peninsula to Australia. They like to live in estuaries and lagoons near the shore and have been known to get tangled in fishermen's nets and inflict fatal bites. Their venom is extremely toxic, more potent than that of a cobra. But the deadliest sea snake has a secret — it is actually two sea snake species, as pointed out by Ed Yong in his blog Not Exactly Rocket Science. [Read More]

Discovery of Rare Viking Dragon Pin Solves 130-Year-Old Mystery

 Posted on May 16, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  520 words  |  Patria Henriques

More than 130 years ago, a Swedish farmer discovered a black dragon — or, that is, a Viking carving of one that had a pointy horn on its head and a curled mane down its neck. The soft soapstone carving looked like a mold for casting metals, but the farmer never found any of the little dragons spawned by the mold. But where the farmer flopped, modern scientists triumphed. In 2015, a team of archaeologists in Birka, a Viking archaeological hotspot in Sweden, discovered a Viking-made metal dragon that looks almost exactly like the mold, according to a new study published online today (June 28) in the journal Antiquity. [Read More]

Fake Shark Skin Could Make Navy Fleet Faster

 Posted on May 16, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  724 words  |  Patria Henriques

Few creatures spawn more fear than sharks. But these complex fish also have provided inspiration for several useful technologies. One new idea has captured the interest of the U.S. Navy. Shark skin has been used by many cultures as sandpaper. It's kept shipmates safe in slippery-when-wet conditions. Swimsuits modeled on shark skin are said by Speedo to reduce drag by up to 4 percent. Now, research by two separate groups could lead to synthetic shark skin that would make ships and submarines faster and less expensive to operate. [Read More]

Greatest Mysteries: How Does the Brain Work?

 Posted on May 16, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  678 words  |  Patria Henriques

Editor's Note: We asked several scientists from various fields what they thought were the greatest mysteries today, and then we added a few that were on our minds, too. This article is one of 15 in LiveScience's "Greatest Mysteries" series running each weekday. Our brains can fathom the beginning of time and the end of the universe, but is any brain capable of understanding itself? With billions of neurons, each with thousands of connections, one's noggin is a complex, and yes congested, mental freeway. [Read More]

How Men and Women Focus Differently

 Posted on May 16, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  265 words  |  Trudie Dory

During conversation, men and women fix their eyes on different things and their gaze is pulled away by different types of distractions, finds a new study that examines how men and women focus. Researchers at the University of Southern California studied 34 participants as they watched videos of people being interviewed. Distractions such as pedestrians, bicycles and cars passed in the background within the video frame. The researchers tracked the movement of the participants' pupils as they looked at the screen, and found that men, when focused on the person being interviewed, fixed their eyes on the speaker's mouth. [Read More]

How They Blow: Secrets of Yellowstone's Geysers

 Posted on May 16, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  625 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Despite more than a century of scrutiny, the inner workings of Old Faithful and other Yellowstone National Park geysers remain a mystery. Scientists still hash over the basics, such as how water and steam pressurizes underground before a geyser erupts. Now, a high-tech look at Lone Star Geyser, one of the park's most punctual bubblers, could finally solve some of these long-standing puzzles. The research may also help scientists better understand and predict volcanic eruptions. [Read More]

Medieval Islamic Mosaics Used Modern Math

 Posted on May 16, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  491 words  |  Fernande Dalal

The swirling Arabesque ceramic tiles used in medieval Islamic mosaics and architecture were produced using geometry not understood in the West until the 1970s, a new study suggests. The inlaid patterned tiles grace the walls of many structures worldwide, in patterns of mind-boggling intricacy called "girih." Historians have always assumed that medieval architects meticulously developed the patterns with basic tools.  But manuals written by the architects to share tricks of the trade actually include model tiles—like geometrical tracings—that helped lay out the complex " [Read More]

Mysterious 'Crater' in Antarctica Has Ominous Cause

 Posted on May 16, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  502 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

A "crater" in Antarctica once thought to be the work of a meteorite impact is actually the result of ice melt, new research finds. The hole, which is in the Roi Baudouin ice shelf in East Antarctica, is a collapsed lake — a cavity formed when a lake of meltwater drained — with a "moulin," a nearly vertical drainage passage through the ice, beneath it, researchers found on a field trip to the area in January 2016. [Read More]

Photos: Penguins Barely Survived Antarctic Volcano Eruptions

 Posted on May 16, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  368 words  |  Patria Henriques

Rough lifeA volcano on Antarctica's Deception Island nearly wiped out one of the continent's largest and oldest penguin populations ... not once but three times throughout history. Ash from an 8,500-year-old a sediment core shows that the volcano erupted about 5,300; 4,300; and 3,000 years ago. By measuring guano (bird poop) samples in the core, scientists found that these eruptions nearly decimated the penguin colony. However, the colony was resilient. [Read More]