Science

Experts have long understood that snakes can feel sound vibrations through the ground – what we call “tactile” sensing – but we’ve puzzled over whether they can also hear airborne sound vibrations, and particularly over how they react to sounds.

In a new paper published in PLOS ONE, we conclude snakes use hearing to help them interpret the world, and finally dispel the myth that snakes are deaf to airborne sound.

Medical laboratory testing is the heartbeat of medicine. It provides critical data for physicians to diagnose and treat disease, dating back thousands of years. Unfortunately, laboratory medicine as a field is poorly understood by both the public and health care communities.

Laboratory medicine, also known as clinical pathology, is one of two main branches of pathology, or the study of the causes and effects of disease. Pathology covers many laboratory areas, such as blood banking and microbiology. Clinical pathology diagnoses a disease through laboratory analysis of body fluids such as blood, urine, feces and saliva. The other branch of pathology, anatomic pathology, diagnoses a disease by examining body tissues.

A major French mental health study has found a huge rise in the number of young people reporting depression, with the most likely cause seen as Covid-19 and restrictions to control the disease.

Public Health France on Tuesday published the results of the latest round of a regular mental health survey which took place in 2021, a year after the most acute stage of the global pandemic.

If women have the "morning after" pill, could men one day have an "hour before" pill?

A new drug candidate renders male mice infertile within an hour and wears off in less than a day, an experimental study said Tuesday, potentially pointing towards a future "on-demand" male contraceptive.

Scientists warned on Tuesday that controversial seabed mining could significantly threaten ocean ecosystems, especially blue whales and other cetaceans already stressed by shipping, pollution and climate change.

A study in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science found that commercial-scale extraction of valuable minerals from the ocean floor, which could begin for the first time later this year, would damage habitats and interfere with the way cetaceans communicate.

For many centuries we have bathed in communal waters. Sometimes for cleanliness but more often for pleasure. Indeed, in ancient Greece, baths were taken in freshwater, or sometimes the sea – which was thought of as a sacred place dedicated to local gods and so was considered an act of worship.

But it was the Romans who created state-sponsored aqueducts to allow for large-scale public baths. These were mainly used for relaxation but also for more private pleasures, too. Yes, the public baths were often where Romans did the dirty deed - sometimes with their bath attendant slaves.

In seeking to tell the story of these experts (prior to their ostracization from the practice), researchers have come up against a number of obstacles. The information available comes primarily from scarce, disparate fragments from biographical sources, as well as economic, legal and administrative ones. Sometimes all that remains is a given name or a surname, such as in the case of the women listed in the Ars Medicina of Florence (a medical treatise) or of the nun apothecary Giovanna Ginori, whose name can be found in the tax records of the pharmacy where she worked in the 1560s.

Such painstaking research has nevertheless helped us better understand how a male-dominated, institutional and hierarchical system has pushed women away from the practice and study of medicine.

One of the most intriguing predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity is the existence of black holes: astronomical objects with gravitational fields so strong that not even light can escape them.

When a sufficiently massive star runs out of fuel, it explodes and the remaining core collapses, leading to the formation of a stellar black hole (ranging from 3 to 100 solar masses).

The spread of misinformation is a major problem impacting many areas of society from public health, to science and even democracy itself.

But online misinformation is a problem that is very difficult to address. Policing social media is like playing an infinite game of whack-a-mole. Even if we could address one type of misinformation, others quickly spring up in its place. Furthermore, there are valid concerns about how governments and corporations might address this problem and the dangers of censorship.

On the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya, a short valley extends south towards the looming Mount Homa. From it have emerged some of the oldest-known stone tools used to butcher large animals, as well as the oldest remains of one of our early cousins, Paranthropus – a genus we think co-existed with our direct ancestors.

Similar tool and fossil discoveries had been made before, in different places and at different times. But to find these all together in one place, as old as they are, is truly extraordinary.

After devastating earthquakes, it’s common to see discussion of earthquake prediction. An earthquake prediction requires, in advance, the specific time, location and magnitude of a future quake.

However, earthquake prediction has never been achieved successfully in a way which could be repeated.