Category: Technology

Grasshoppers have a bad reputation. They’re not popular with gardeners And locusts, a type of swarming grasshopper, can do huge damage to vegetation and crops when they’re in a feeding frenzy. But more often than not, grasshoppers have more to fear from humans than the other way around. As we increasingly encroach on their habitats, […]

Whether it is enjoyed as creamy milk chocolate truffles, baked in a devilishly dark chocolate cake or even poured as hot cocoa, Americans on average consume almost 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of chocolate in a year. People have been enjoying chocolate for at least 4,000 years, starting with Mesoamericans who brewed a drink from the […]

Technology advances at a furious pace these days. Innovative new software products and hardware devices are conceived daily to connect our increasingly digital world further, and organizations across industries are struggling to keep up. Once thought simply of as trendy ideas or intriguing concepts from the world of science fiction, technologies like the cloud, artificial […]

Why do I feel happier when the sun is out? – Mabli, aged 13, Barry, Wales That is exactly the same question I asked many years ago when I was sitting on a nice sunny beach, far away on a lovely warm island. I remember thinking, “Oh gosh, tomorrow I need to fly back to […]

Marine ecosystems have a valuable role to play in mitigating the effects of climate change. That’s because such ecosystems – and, particularly, vegetated tidal ecosystems like mangroves and salt marshes – capture and store a significant amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂). CO₂ has accumulated in Earth’s atmosphere at unprecedented levels since the industrial revolution. […]

Atmospheric rivers, those long, powerful streams of moisture in the sky, are becoming more frequent in the Arctic, and they’re helping to drive dramatic shrinking of the Arctic’s sea ice cover. While less ice might have some benefits – it would allow more shipping in winter and access to minerals – sea ice loss also […]

An extremely large earthquake has occurred in the southeast of Turkey, near the border with Syria. Data from seismometers which measure shaking of the ground caused by earthquake waves suggest this this event, in the early morning of February 6, was a magnitude 7.8 on the moment magnitude scale. Seismic waves were picked up by […]

It’s a grim and all too common sight for rangers at some of Africa’s nature reserves: the bullet-riddled carcass of an elephant, its tusks removed by poachers. African elephant populations have fallen by about 30% since 2006. Poaching has driven the decline. Some reserves, like Garamba in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Selous in […]

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 […]

It is the most exciting time in genetics since the discovery of DNA in 1953. This is mainly due to scientific breakthroughs including the ability to change DNA through a process called gene editing. The potential for this technology is astonishing – from treating genetic diseases, modifying food crops to withstanding pesticides or changes in […]