Uncategorized
- Science & Society
Facebook data show how many people left Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria
Conventional surveys can’t track migration after natural disasters in real time. But Facebook data may provide a crude estimate of those who flee.
- Animals
Pandas’ share of protein calories from bamboo rivals wolves’ from meat
The panda gut digests protein in bamboo so well that the animal’s nutritional profile for calories resembles a wolf’s.
- Paleontology
A dinosaur’s running gait may reveal insights into the history of bird flight
In what may have been a precursor to avian flight, a flightless winged dinosaur may have flapped its wings as it jogged.
- Artificial Intelligence
An AI used art to control monkeys’ brain cells
Art created by an artificial intelligence exacts unprecedented control over nerve cells tied to vision in monkey brains, and could lead to new neuroscience experiments.
- Physics
LIGO and Virgo made 5 likely gravitational wave detections in a month
It took decades to find the first gravitational wave event, and now they’re a weekly occurrence.
- Agriculture
Can Silicon Valley entrepreneurs make crickets the next chicken?
Entrepreneurs are bringing automation and data analysis to insect agriculture to build a profitable business that helps feed the planet.
- Animals
Hippo poop cycles silicon through the East African environment
By chowing down on grass and then excreting into rivers and lakes, hippos play a big role in transporting a nutrient crucial to the food web.
- Planetary Science
Water has been found in the dust of an asteroid thought to be bone-dry
Scientists detected water in bits of an asteroid thought to be devoid of the liquid. Such space rocks might have helped create Earth’s oceans.
- Anthropology
A jawbone shows Denisovans lived on the Tibetan Plateau long before humans
A Denisovan jaw is the earliest evidence of hominids on the Tibetan Plateau, and the first fossil outside of Siberia from the mysterious human lineage.
- Physics
How scientists traced a uranium cube to Nazi Germany’s nuclear reactor program
New research suggests that the Nazis had enough uranium to make a working nuclear reactor.
- Earth
Dry sand can bubble and swirl like a fluid
Put two types of sand grains together in a chamber, and they can flow like fluids under the right conditions.
- Astronomy
Skepticism grows over whether the first known exomoon exists
New analyses of the data used to find the first discovered exomoon are reaching conflicting results.
