Tomato lovers have long known that the red fruit sold by supermarkets tastes like cardboard. A new study has found why: A genetic mutation that gives commercially produced tomatoes their uniform color also prevents the production of sugars and carotenoids that give a proper tomato its taste and health benefits. The mutation “is in literally 100 percent of modern breeds […]
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Why do chimpanzees kill one another? For years, many studies have shown that chimps that were observed killing one another had become more aggressive only when humans encroached on their environment. But new studies have lent weight to an alternative theory: Chimpanzees are, like humans, natural-born killers who use violence as a means of expanding their territory and increasing their […]
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UK researchers have unearthed ancient fossil forests, thought to be partly responsible for one of the most dramatic shifts in Earth’s climate in the past 400 million years. The fossil forests, with tree stumps preserved in place, were found in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago situated in the Arctic Ocean. They were identified and described by Dr Chris Berry of Cardiff […]
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Aerosols, tiny solid and liquid particles suspended in the atmosphere, impact the environment by affecting air quality and alter the Earth’s radiative balance by either scattering or absorbing sunlight to varying degrees. What impact does climate change, induced by greenhouse gases (GHGs), have on the aerosol “burden”–the total mass of aerosols in a vertical column of air? Past research done […]
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The Better to See You With By Midu Hadi Chapter 1 The ophthalmologist plucked the nictitating membrane off the petri dish with a pair of forceps. Syd moved it around a bit until she found the right place for it in Jab’s right eye. A few days before this surgery, Jab’s plica semilunaris had been removed. Jab had […]
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Forty-eight years after British physicist Peter Higgs predicted its existence, the Higgs boson was finally spotted by scientists at the CERN lab in Geneva.The “God particle” explains the existence of mass and backs up the Standard Model, the foundational theory of modern physics. “For physicists, this is the equivalent of Columbus discovering America,” says physicist Themis Bowcock. The Higgs is […]
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It’s not like we really needed to be told again that our planet is getting warmer…. But IT IS!!! Both NASA and NOAA have independently concluded that Earth’s surface temperatures in 2015 were higher than any previous year in recorded history. The hottest year recorded before that? 2014!! The temperatures in 2015 beat the 2014 record by a whopping 32.2 […]
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