Babies exposed to air pollution in the womb are more likely to have autism than those whose mothers spend pregnancy in clean air, according to a new study. In the largest study of its kind, UCLA researchers compared levels of air pollutants, mostly related to vehicle traffic, during pregnancy gestation periods of 7,603 children with autism and 75,635 children without […]
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Global warming hits plateau. . . What does that mean for the threat of catastrophic climate change? Why has the warming trend slowed? Climatologists aren’t sure. What they do know is that the average air temperatures at the earth’s surface have risen only about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1998—the hottest year of the 20th century—even as humanity has continued to […]
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For the first time, a mission designed to set its eyes on black holes and other objects far from our solar system has turned its gaze back closer to home, capturing images of our sun. NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has taken its first picture of the sun, producing the most sensitive solar portrait ever taken in high-energy […]
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A huge virus discovered in sediment on the Chilean coast and another in an Australian pond are not only the largest scientists have ever seen, but also among the most baffling. A single so-called pandora virus is 1,000 times the size of the influenza virus and holds 2,556 genes, compared with the flu’s 13. Only 6 percent of its genes […]
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“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” – Albert Einstein
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As the world’s largest land mammals, elephants should suffer one of the highest cancer rates—they simply have far more cells that could potentially mutate and become malignant. But new research reveals that elephants rarely get cancer—and the reason why may help in the search for human treatments. Only about 4.8 percent of elephants die from cancer, compared with up to […]
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Mysterious radio signals from space have been known to repeat, but for the first time, researchers have noticed a pattern in a series of bursts coming from a single source half a billion light-years from Earth. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are millisecond-long bursts of radio waves in space. Individual radio bursts emit once and don’t repeat. But repeating fast […]
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For the first time, scientists have caught a glimpse of a black hole ejecting a hot “flare” of matter after devouring a star the size of our sun. The discovery was made thanks to the quick action of of scientists from John Hopkins University, who worked in conjunction with a team from the University of Oxford. Hubble fellow Sjoert van […]
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They may not crow about it, but if you get on the wrong side of them, they’re not going to forget it in a hurry. Crows have an excellent memory for human faces, a study has revealed. They can tell the difference between a friendly face and a dangerous one, and can warn each other which is which. And the […]
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