Science

Astronauts lose decades' worth of bone mass in space that many do not recover even after a year back on Earth, researchers said Thursday, warning that it could be a "big concern" for future missions to Mars.

Previous research has shown astronauts lose between one to two percent of bone density for every month spent in space, as the lack of gravity takes the pressure off their legs when it comes to standing and walking.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said Wednesday the agency will reveal the "deepest image of our Universe that has ever been taken" on July 12, thanks to the newly operational James Webb Space Telescope.

"If you think about that, this is farther than humanity has ever looked before," Nelson said during a press briefing at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the operations center for the $10 billion observatory that was launched in December last year and is now orbiting the Sun a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth.

If you have moved from one country to another, you may have left something behind – be it a relationship, a home, a feeling of safety or a sense of belonging. Because of this, you will continually reconstruct mental simulations of scenes, smells, sounds and sights from those places – sometimes causing stressful feelings and anxiety.

This describes what I have dubbed “cognitive immobility”, outlined in my new research article, published in Culture & Psychology. The study used autoethnography, a research method in which the author is also the topic of investigation. The research was partly based on my feelings, thoughts and experiences while living in the UK and Germany, far from my ancestral home in Igbo land, Africa.

Today marks 15 years since Apple released what’s arguably its flagship device: the iPhone. A decade and a half later, there are few products that have managed to reach a similar level of brand recognition.

Announced to an eager audience in 2007, the iPhone has revolutionised how we communicate and even how we live day to day.

Long ago, almost up until the end of the last ice age, a peculiar giant kangaroo roamed the mountainous rainforests of New Guinea.

Now, research to be published on Thursday by myself and colleagues suggests this kangaroo was not closely related to modern Australian kangaroos. Rather, it represents a previously unknown type of primitive kangaroo unique to New Guinea.

The fossils of our earliest ancestors found in South Africa are a million years older than previously thought, meaning they walked the Earth around the same time as their East African relatives like the famous "Lucy", according to new research.

The Sterkfontein caves at the Cradle of Humankind world heritage site southwest of Johannesburg have yielded more Australopithecus fossils than any other site in the world.

Research revealed Monday that even if global temperatures fall after peaking this century, climate-related risks to wildlife "may remain for decades to centuries."

"Urgent action is needed to ensure we never approach, let alone exceed, the 2°C limit."

Cloaked in darkness and mystery, the creatures of the deep oceans exist in a world of unlikely profusion, surviving on scant food and under pressure that would crush human lungs.

This extremely hostile environment, which will come under the spotlight at a major United Nations oceans summit in Lisbon this week, has caused its inhabitants to develop a prodigious array of alien characteristics and idiosyncratic survival techniques.

My first near-wolf experience was in a forestry cutblock. I heard the wolf’s howl rise like a ghostly siren. I couldn’t see the wolf because it was obscured by dense regrowing aspen saplings in a previously harvested stand.

In Canada’s boreal forest, wolves have to adjust to the widespread landscape changes left by petroleum extraction and forestry. Being smart, wolves have turned these new human-made landscapes to their advantage. Mature forest is replaced by young forests, which provide attractive environments for invading white-tailed deer, bolstering wolf populations.

If you look different to your close relatives, you may have felt separate from your family. As a child, during particularly stormy fall outs you might have even hoped it was a sign that you were adopted.

As our new research shows, appearances can be deceptive when it comes to family. New DNA technology is shaking up the family trees of many plants and animals.

Understanding the human mind and behavior lies at the core of the discipline of psychology. But to characterize how people’s behavior changes over time, I believe psychology alone is insufficient – and that additional mathematical ideas need to be brought forward.

My new model, published in Frontiers in Psychology, is inspired by the work of the 19th-century American mathematician, Norbert Wiener. At its heart is how we change our perceptions over time when tasked with making a choice from a set of alternatives. Such changes are often generated by limited information, which we analyze before making decisions that determine our behavioral patterns.