Science

Glen Canyon Dam (Image Credit: Canva) For eight days in 1996, the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon experienced something unusual: a deliberately created flood. Scientists working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other agencies used Glen Canyon Dam to release water at rates reaching 45,000 cubic feet per second, creating a massive controlled…

A snake bite in the late 19th century offered little certainty about what would happen next. There were attempts to counter venom with chemicals and other remedies, but no established treatment could directly neutralise the poison. Then, in France in 1894, two research teams arrived at a very different idea. Albert Calmette, working within the…

Quote of the day by Richard Feynman (Image: Wikipedia) Some of the most memorable lines are powerful precisely because they manage to say something genuinely complicated in just a few words. This one, often credited directly to the physicist Richard Feynman, is a genuine example. “To every man is given the key to the gates…

The waters off New York’s Hamptons, once immortalised as shark-infested territory in Jaws, are revealing a very different story. Researchers have confirmed a summer nursery for young great white sharks in the New York Bight, with studies showing juvenile whites repeatedly using the region’s coastal waters during their early years. NOAA lists Long Island among…

Researchers tested saliva and dander from the gene-edited dogs and found no detectable Can f 1 protein. The resulting 25 reconstructed embryos were implanted into a surrogate beagle, which eventually gave birth to Alfie and Bailey. Dogs are often called humans’ best friend, but for people with dog allergies, living with a canine companion can…

For centuries, poets have been fixated on birdsong. They called it nature’s closest approximation to music. John Keats was obsessed with the nightingale’s ‘full-throated ease’, while Percy Bysshe Shelley imagined the skylark pouring forth an ‘unpremeditated art’ of ‘shrill delight’ from the heavens. William Wordsworth heard more than a call in the cuckoo; it was…

Quote of the day by Stephen Hawking Few questions have occupied the human mind for quite as long as why the universe exists, and whether human life actually has any real purpose. For centuries, people have approached these questions through religion, philosophy and science, often arriving at genuinely very different conclusions. Stephen Hawking, one of…

Since time immemorial, humans have been consuming food derived from the land, air and water. From vegetables and birds to even crabs, there is not much we have not used to survive on. But currently, people in New England are feasting on green crabs not to survive themselves but to help the native species subsist….

A fungus that infects house flies has evolved a remarkable way to send spores towards new hosts. Entomophthora muscae grows inside an infected fly and, after the insect dies, it produces microscopic stalks that emerge from its body. Each stalk forms a single spore at its tip. Instead of simply dropping away, the spore is…

In 2003, Nasa researchers reported that freshwater snails carried into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle had mated and reproduced during their mission, allowing their gravity-sensing organs to develop entirely under microgravity. According to the study published in PubMed, tittled ‘Otoliths developed in microgravity‘ formed part of the results of the STS-90 Neurolab Spacelab mission, a…