Giant snails

Miami South Florida is battling a growing infestation of one of the world’s most destructive invasive species: the giant African land snail. At least 1,000 of the snails are being caught each week \ in Miami-Dade County, and a total of 117,000 of the mollusks have been caught since September 2011. They can grow as big as a rat and […]

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Twitter as a learning tool?

■    A Brazilian school is teaching kids proper English by asking them to correct erroneously worded tweets by their favorite celebrities. The school asks its preteen students to point out grammar and spelling errors to the likes of Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, and Charlie Sheen. In April, Bieber tweeted, “That was a long bus ride. But we here.” Maria, 9, […]

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Mapping the infant universe

Mapping the infant universe

Mapping the infant universe is no easy task. New data from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite is giving astronomers their most complete look yet at the very earliest moments of the universe. Planck, which measures microwave radiation, has created a heat map of the temperatures present in the universe a mere 370,000 years after the Big Bang. The data […]

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Turning walks into watts

The average human being generates about eight watts of energy with each step, most of which is expended as vibration. It may not sound like much, but take the 30,000 or more people who pass through a major-city subway hub at rush hour, and suddenly you’ve got serious power. That’s usually a problem for architects and engineers, who have to […]

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Coffee limits liver damage

Drinking three or more alcoholic beverages per day increases the likelihood of developing liver cancer, but research now suggests that drinking coffee may help offset that risk. In an ongoing analysis of cancer rates, scientists from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) looked at data from 34 previous studies involving 8 million adults, including 24,600 diagnosed with liver cancer. They […]

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Astronomical Declaration

Deep space

Scientists have made an astronomical declaration, stating that there is likely ten times the amount of galaxies in our universe than originally expected. The previous amount was believed to be about 200 billion, but now it is believed to be much more. According to astronomers from the University of Nottingham, we are just beginning to learn exactly how vast our […]

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