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Prosthetic Hearing: Soft Brainstem Implant One Step Closer To Human Trials

The cochlear implant has helped many regain hearing functionality and a new study shows a potential...

Duckweed Science May Lead To Food That Farms Itself

Duckweed split into different species 59 million years ago, when the climate was more extreme than...

Sticky Pesticides Reduce Chemicals Needed To Protect Plants

It's easy for Greenpeace employees in cities to talk about farming but in the real world, without...

Genetic Engineering Could Solve Spider Mite Infestations With Fewer Pesticides

The world is producing more food using fewer pesticides than ever, thanks to modern science. The...

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Genetic Engineering Of Barley 100 Years Ago Made Beer And Whiskey Great

Genetic Engineering Of Barley 100 Years Ago Made Beer And Whiskey Great

Sep 11 2024 | comment(s)

In 1929, an experiment with 28 barley varieties showed why barley, one of the world’s most important cereal crops for at least 12,000 years, has been so adaptable, growing everywhere from Norway to the mountains of South America, and why that means the future remains bright for whiskey and beer.

In most cases, random changes to DNA allowed it to survive in each new location so scientists nearly 100 years ago set out to discover the genes that changed to predict which varieties will thrive in which places. Modern work is highlighting for media its implications in a world of future climate change but nothing happening now compares to the rain and drought booms and busts of the past.
Fit Fat: Exercise Helps Even If You Aren't Thin

Fit Fat: Exercise Helps Even If You Aren't Thin

Sep 10 2024 | comment(s)

Influences buoyed by epidemiological claims about gimmick diets can make fitness intimidating but ignore them. Even if you don't lose weight, if you exercise your belly fat is still going to be healthier than someone who does nothing.

It just takes some consistency. 
Robotic Leg With Artificial Muscles Can Walk And Jump Across Unstable Terrain

Robotic Leg With Artificial Muscles Can Walk And Jump Across Unstable Terrain

Sep 09 2024 | comment(s)

Robots have a 200-year-old problem: motors. Even walking robots feature arms and legs that are powered by motors and that is a barrier to helping the living but a new muscle-powered robotic leg can jump and move and fast while detecting and reacting to obstacles. 
The Sound Of Martian Winds

The Sound Of Martian Winds

Aug 13 2024 | comment(s)

Mars is no vacation paradise. The temperatures fluctuate dramatically and average minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The surface is red dust punctuated by craters, canyons, and volcanoes. On the plus side, the atmosphere is extremely thin, comprising only about 1% of the density of Earth’s, and gravity is 60 percent lower, so you can finally dunk a basketball.

With all of those challenges, Martian landers have still been able capture wind measurements — some gauging the cooling rate of heated materials when winds blow over them, others using cameras to image “tell-tales” that blow in the wind. Both anemometric methods have yielded valuable insight into the planet’s climate and atmosphere.

If humans ever intend to go there, we'll need more data first.
Drunk Tree Fall Hard: Older Adult Alcohol Doubles Risk Of Brain Bleeds From Falls

Drunk Tree Fall Hard: Older Adult Alcohol Doubles Risk Of Brain Bleeds From Falls

Aug 08 2024 | comment(s)

Alcohol is the best-marketed carcinogen out there. Cigarettes and obesity only wish they were able to devote the money to positive imaging that alcohol, one of the top three lifestyle killers, receives. Instead, governments devote billions to education and awareness of those two while the only tepid warning about alcohol is not to drive after you roll the dice on cancer.

When it comes to BPA, PFAS, or weedkillers, government epidemiologists say any presence should be considered pathological but say nothing at all about alcohol use despite it being scientifically shown, unlike most epidemiology, and addictive.
When Did Humans Migrate To Australia?

When Did Humans Migrate To Australia?

Jul 29 2024 | comment(s)

Every country has people claiming to be native now, whereas in previous generations if you were born there, you were native. In reality, outside the cradle in Africa, no one is native.

Everyone was an immigrant, and over time everyone calling themselves native to an area now stole land from someone else and colonized it. It's impossible to know who were the first to arrive but science can use inference, and new evidence of human occupation in southeast Indonesia dating back 42,000 years provides some idea of the time and the route taken by some of the first humans to arrive in Australia.