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Yearly Archives: 2020
XMM-Newton discovers scorching gas in Milky Way’s halo
ESA's XMM-Newton has discovered that gas lurking within the Milky Way's halo reaches far hotter temperatures than previously thought and has a different chemical...
How sensitive can a quantum detector be?
Quantum physics is moving out of the laboratory and into everyday life. Despite headline results about quantum computers solving problems impossible for classical computers,...
Human-caused biodiversity decline started millions of years ago
The human-caused biodiversity decline started much earlier than researchers used to believe. According to a new study published in the scientific journal Ecology Letters the process...
Quantum physics: Controlled experiment observes self-organized criticality
Writing in Nature, researchers describe the first-time observation of 'self-organized criticality' in a controlled laboratory experiment. Complex systems exist in mathematics and physics, but also...
New dog, old tricks? Stray dogs can understand human cues
If you have a dog, hopefully you're lucky enough to know that they are highly attuned to their owners and can readily understand a...
Study shows human ancestors could have consumed hard plant tissues without damaging their teeth
Go ahead, take a big bite.
Hard plant foods may have made up a larger part of early human ancestors' diet than currently presumed, according...
Scientists uncover how an explosion of new genes explain the origin of land plants
The new study, led by scientists from the universities of Bristol and Essex and published today in Current Biology, challenge the established view of the...
In death of dinosaurs, it was all about the asteroid—not volcanoes
Volcanic activity did not play a direct role in the mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs, according to an international, Yale-led team of...
Microscopy technique reveals cells’ 3-D ultrastructure in new detail
Inside a cell, tentacled vesicles shuttle cargo for sorting. DNA rearranges in the nucleus as stem cells differentiate into neurons. Neighboring neurons cling to...
‘Living fossil’ may upend basic tenet of evolutionary theory
The field of evolutionary biology has seen its share of spirited debates. But if there's one principle that virtually every expert in the field...
Scientists unexpectedly witness wolf puppies play fetch
When it comes to playing a game of fetch, many dogs are naturals. But now, researchers report that the remarkable ability to interpret human...
