Friday morning 140 residents of the small Japanese island of Kuchinoerabujima fled by boat as Mount Shindake erupted. 30,000 feet worth of dark volcanic ash shot into the sky about 600 miles south of Tokyo. Astonishingly, no deaths and a single minor injury have been reported, and air travel has not been affected in a serious way.
In central Kazakhstan entire herds of saiga antelope lay dead-more than 120,000, or nearly half of the species worldwide. These animals died off within two or three weeks, a shocking pace. This is an unprecedented mass mortality events for saiga antelopes relative to the total population size, and the last case in 2010 saw only 12,000 dead saiga.
When it comes to high-speed collisions, nobody here on Earth has anything on black holes. Astronomers have witnessed a new first: two high-speed knots of matter colliding in a sort of rear-end impact. They saw this after creating a time-lapse video of a super-speed jet of plasma as it shot out of a supermassive black hole. The knots of matter were inside the black hole until it blasted them out-and into each other.
Retired experimental physicist Leon Lederman is now 92 years old and facing serious health problems and memory loss. So he took to an online auction and sold his 1988 Nobel prize for his co-discovery of subatomic particle called the muon neutrino to cover his costs. The price of Nobel fame online? $765,002.
Singer Demi Lovato has struggled with the stigma of mental illness; now she's hoping to ease the way for others. Almost five years after she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in a rehab she entered mid-tour, she is in good health and acting as spokesperson for Be Vocal: Speak Up for Mental Health.
This stunning nebula, called RCW 34 and visualized by the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), is home to young stars that heat gases, causing them to expand outward. In this brightest area of the nebula heated hydrogen bursts into the vacuum outside the gas cloud, "uncorking" the nebula. This kind of process is called a champagne flow, and the entire area provides rich fodder for astronomers as it continuously produces new, brilliant stars.
In what can only be described as a colossal blunder, 26 Department of Defense (DOD) employees were exposed to live anthrax after the US military shipped samples of the live microbe by accident. Thought in error to be dead samples, they were simply shipped via FedEx.
A team of scientists from the University of Sheffield and University of Copenhagen have discovered an enzyme which helps breast cancer spread, and in the process, have found a possible way to prevent the spread of breast cancer-secondary or metastatic cancer-in patients. Bones are the most common routes breast cancer takes as it spreads, involved in about 85 percent of secondary breast cancer cases.
Researchers at Paris's Pierre and Marie Curie University have created robots that can use experiences from simulated lives to "heal" themselves. This makes robots more autonomous, effective, and robust-and more capable of disaster relief work.
Scientists from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) are hoping to help 18 terminally ill patients relieve their anxiety, depression, and fear in the next year during extended psychotherapy sessions enhanced by MDMA (ecstasy). The Marin County-based double-blind trial will see subjects test either full doses of MDMA (125 milligrams) or active placebo doses (30 milligrams).
University of Virginia School of Medicine scientists have unraveled the mystery of a strange virus in the hopes of creating more effective tools in the war against human disease. The secret weapon this virus may offer? "Armor" for disease-fighting DNA courtesy of the SIRV2 virus, who calls acid at almost boiling temperatures home.
You may think a wasp that can zombify its prey with venom in order to eat it alive sounds like the stuff of nightmares, but it's actually the stuff of biodiversity. Called the dementor wasp, this terrifying insect was just discovered last year-along with 138 other new species-in the Greater Mekong Region of Asia, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) reports today.
Upon request of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network's (OWCN) Unified Command, SeaWorld deployed two members of the Animal Rescue Team early Sunday morning to assist with efforts at the Refugio Beach oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast. At 3:45am today SeaWorld deployed a third member of the Animal Rescue Team. All three have specialized training through the OWCN and experience with oiled wildlife.
If the battle of the sexes was fought by mosquitoes, it would already be over. Researchers from Virginia Tech's Fralin Life Science Institute has discovered that male mosquitoes aren't relevant at all, at least in the realm of transmissible diseases.
Ceres' mysterious bright spots are clearer and sharper than ever, thanks to NASA's Dawn mission. The mission will need to get much closer to answer all of our questions and provide all of the details, but these recent views provide some interesting insights.
Robots that can learn? Yes they can, at least with these new algorithms. A UC Berkeley research team has created algorithms that allow robots to use trial and error to learn motor tasks. This is a process that is much closer to the ways that humans think and learn, making it a major artificial intelligence milestone.
Ironically, despite having the healthier e-cigarette alternative at hand, many are choosing to continue smoking conventional cigarettes. Authorities think this may be because they mistakenly believe that e-cigarettes are as dangerous as their traditional counterparts.
The search for the natural miracle cure to help us all lose weight despite our late night transgressions with snack foods is ongoing. The quest is global, as researchers try to parse out the hidden power of various naturally occurring plants. Now, scientists claim that an extract from the traditional Chinese medicine known as "thunder god vine" causes a dramatic reduction in food intake and a corresponding drop in weight among obese mice.
NASA has seen the most luminous galaxy ever discovered using its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope. The remote galaxy glows with enough light to rival 300 trillion suns.
Oculus VR Inc. founder Palmer Luckey and his company are once again being sued. For this go-round Hawaiian company Total Recall Technologies is accusing Luckey of taking confidential information from TRT in violation of a confidentiality agreement that he signed when he left the company. The complaint also accuses him of passing off that information as his own.
May 22nd is the UN's International Day of Biological Diversity. This year's theme: Biodiversity for Sustainable Development. But instead of making little Pinterest planet Earth cupcakes or watching a movie about wildlife, why not get involved with National Geographic's Great Nature Project and have a real impact contributing to the scientific record?
Most of us have turned to professional and personal networks using social media to get ideas, solve problems, and better understand the things that are on our minds; crowdsourcing is part of our world now. Doctors can do the same thing, and three weeks ago medical crowdsourcing saved a 14 year old boy's life.
Thanks to a new project in human emotion analysis, you may not need a penny for someone's thoughts anymore. Even more interestingly, you may soon be able to not just read emotions on others, but use your own emotions to create art or play next-generation games.
Science has now proven that not only does coffee keep you up at night, it keeps you up at night (if you're a man). Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) have published results indicating that men who consume the caffeine present in two to three cups of coffee daily are less likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction (ED).
Five of the world's major nations have exploited weaknesses in UC Browser in their plan to hack into smartphones via links to Samsung and Google app stores according to a document obtained by CBS News shows. Electronic intelligence gathering agencies in Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US have been planning their hacks for some time, based on an alleged need for intelligence in the war on terror. The countries also hoped to place spyware on certain smartphones during the project, called "Irritant Horn."
At the forefront of the fight against antibiotic resistance, a team of scientists led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital researchers have developed a new weapon. The second-generation antibiotic shows early effectiveness against common bacterial infections that have the potential to develop antibiotic resistance and pose a serious health threat to children and adults.
BP has begun to settle claims related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill with Halliburton and Transocean. This means that as to Halliburton and Transocean only (the litigation is ongoing) the battle is over. The long-term in court battle has centered upon the human costs of the offshore well disaster, which included the deaths of 11 workers. The overall impact of the disaster has been sobering for the scientific community as well; the Deepwater disaster has thus far been the largest offshore oil spill in US history.
Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered that the octopus, uniquely adept with camouflage, can "see" with its skin. The study found that the California two-spot octopus can sense light using light-sensitive proteins, similar to those found in eyes, in its skin.
A team of North Carolina State University (NCSU) researchers have created a reconfigurable liquid metal antenna controlled only by voltage. Liquid metal electronics have held the interest of the scientific community for years, but previous to this discovery these devices were not readily integrated into electronic systems because they required external pumps. This discovery advances the technology past this significant drawback.
In what government officials are calling one of the largest charity fraud cases ever, the Cancer Fund of America and its charities have been charged by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and regulators from 50 states and the District of Columbia. The FTC says that almost all of the nearly $200 million the charities garnered from donors were spent by the cancer-free family and friends of those running the groups—spent on things like meals at Hooters, Caribbean couples’ cruises, subscriptions to dating websites, jet ski rides, and Victoria’s Secret shopping trips.