Are plastics the devil of the day?
Reading Time: 3 minutesPLASTICS are so versatile and convenient for use in our day-to-day lives – and being cheap – makes them so omnipresent. Being here, there and everywhere used plastic, callously discarded, pose one of the greatest challenges to the natural environment. While many people think that banning or placing a tax on plastic bags will solve the global plastic pollution, research indicates […]
ISAAA appoints M’sian as global coordinator
Reading Time: 6 minutesBY JOSEPH MASILAMANY PETALING JAYA: Malaysian science journalist, Dr Mahaletchumy Arujanan was overwhelmed by mixed feelings when informed of her new role as global coordinator for the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA). Describing her as a world renowned science communicator, ISAAA’s news portal Crop Biotech Update announced the appointment on May 2. In an immediate reaction to the announcement, Mahaletchumy popularly known as Maha in […]
The Philippines yields new species of early human
Reading Time: 2 minutesAN international team of researchers have uncovered the remains of a new species of human in the Philippines, proving the region played a key role in hominin evolutionary history. The new species, Homo luzonensis is named after Luzon Island, where the more than 50,000-year-old fossils were found during excavations at Callao Cave. Co-author and a lead member of the team, Professor Philip Piper […]
Marsupial lived among Arctic dinosaurs
Reading Time: < 1 minuteA RESEARCH team has discovered a previously unknown species of marsupial that lived in Alaska’s Arctic during the era of dinosaurs, adding a vivid new detail to a complex ancient landscape.The thumb- sized animal, named Unnuakomys hutchisoni, lived in the Arctic about 69 million years ago during the late Cretaceous Period. Its discovery, led by […]
Peeling back the darkness of M87
Reading Time: < 1 minuteSUPERCOMPUTERS at The University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) enabled researchers to confirm the accuracy, and interpret features of, the first-of-its-kind image of a black hole obtained by the Event Horizon Telescope. Relativistic simulations of black hole physics, along with ray tracing, helped predict how M87 would appear on Earth, and […]
Researchers Get Humans to Think Like Computers
Reading Time: < 1 minuteCOMPUTERS like those that power self-driving cars, can an be tricked into mistaking random scribbles for trains, fences and even school buses. People aren’t supposed to be able to see how those images trip up computers but in a new study, Johns Hopkins University researchers show most people actually can. The findings suggest modern computers may […]
Boy Or Girl? It’s In The Father’s Genes
Reading Time: < 1 minuteA NEWCASTLE University study involving thousands of families is helping prospective parents work out whether they are likely to have sons or daughters. The work by Corry Gellatly, a research scientist at the university, has shown that men inherit a tendency to have more sons or more daughters from their parents. This means that a man […]
Arsenic-breathing life discovered
Reading Time: < 1 minuteARSENIC is a deadly poison for most living things, but new research shows that microorganisms are breathing arsenic in a large area of the Pacific Ocean. A University of Washington team has discovered that an ancient survival strategy is still being used in low-oxygen parts of the marine environment. “Thinking of arsenic as not just […]
India could meet air quality standards
Reading Time: < 1 minuteINDIA could make a major dent in air pollution by curbing emissions from dirty household fuels such as wood, dung, coal and kerosene, shows a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the India Institute of Technology. Eliminating emissions from these sources—without any changes to industrial or vehicle emissions— would […]
Clean, cheap fuel cells for cars
Reading Time: < 1 minuteADVANCEMENTS in zero- emission fuel cells could make the technology cheap enough to replace traditional gasoline engines in vehicles, according to researchers at the University of Waterloo. The researchers have developed a new fuel cell that lasts at least ten times longer than current technology, an improvement that would make them economically practical, if mass-produced, […]