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Inkfish
Finding the Highways for Migrating Birds
When birds set out for a long journey, they don’t need roads and they certainly don’t need road maps. They learn the route from others or intuit it from their DNA, an urge to point their bodies one way at a certain time of year and stop flying a few thousand miles later. To understand these journeys better, researchers mapped the most efficient routes through the world’s winds. The highways that emerged weren’t the shortest paths—but they did strikingly match the behavior of real bi …Seriously, Science?
Flashback Friday: Didn't get that promotion? Maybe your name's to blame.
If your last name is King or Prince, listen up — you might be destined for greatness. In this “field study,” German researchers determined whether people with different last names tend to end up in different jobs. They found that people with noble-sounding names, like “Kaiser”, were more likely to hold managerial positions than people with more blue-collar-job-sounding names, like Koch (“cook”). Whether this is cause (people get promotions because of their names) or effect (people with nobl …ImaGeo
Seen from space: the Indonesian fires producing more CO2 each day than the economic activity of the United States
Huge swaths of Indonesia are burning, blanketing a wide region in thick palls of smoke that threaten the health of millions of Southeast Asians.So far this year, nearly 110,000 fires have broken out in the island nation (as of Oct. 22), most of them in Kalimantan — the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo — and Sumatra. Since September, these blazes, most of them in carbon-rich peatlands, “have generated emissions each day exceeding the average daily emissions from all U.S …
D-brief
For Howler Monkeys, Louder Calls Mean Smaller…
For howler monkeys, it appears the louder the calls, the smaller the — ahem — balls.A research team looking into the monkeys’ incredibly loud and low vocalizations, and the physical structures that support the calls, discovered the correlation. Animals with louder and lower calls had larger hyoids, a bone in the front of the neck that appears to act as an amplifier, but smaller testes. There was significant variation in hyoid size between howler species, but also between male and f …
The Extremo Files
Why Viruses may be a Genome Editor's Secret Weapon
Viruses have a bad reputation. Smallpox, bird flu, Dengue fever, Ebola – some of the most frightening health threats come from the diminutive pseudo-lifeforms, which are often just a few dozen nanometers across. Viruses deposit genetic material into unsuspecting host cells, which ultimately process the new instructions through transcription and translation, running off copies of the invader like an over-caffeinated Xerox. When the virus is ready to make its move, a couple of hundred viral pa …Citizen Science Salon
Help Discovery Go Digital - The Global WeDigBio Challenge Starts Today!
WeDigBio is a global event where citizen scientists help digitize the billions of observations and specimens that are stored in museums and field stations world wide. Check out some of the projects involved on SciStarter – Smithsonian Transcription Center, Herbarium@home and Notes from Nature.Guest post by Meghan Ferriter
You probably know that scientists have explored and documented the natural world for centuries; in their expeditions, they have collected billions of specimens which …
Seriously, Science?
Scientists identify the top 10 relationship deal-breakers
Finally, an expression popularized by the TV show 30 Rock has made it into the scientific literature. In this study, the scientists used surveys to identify and rank the top 10 relationship deal-breakers for both short-term and long-term relationships. The table is reproduced below, and you’ll note some interesting patterns–for example, “is bad in bed” and “smells bad” are only deal-breakers for short-term relationships. People also tended to weigh deal-breakers more heavily than “deal-mak …Drone 360
Drone Photos Reveal a Rebounding Killer Whale Community
Thanks to a drone, researchers received good news about a beloved, yet endangered, killer whale community in the United States.High-definition photographs of 81 endangered southern resident killer whales revealed they are fat, in good health and may be poised to welcome a few new calves to the family. The southern resident killer whale population was recently at a three-decade low, prompting concern from scientists. But these stunning photographs indicate the whales are in good shape, de …
Neuroskeptic
The Selective Laziness of Reasoning
If you could meet yourself, would you always agree with yourself?You might hope so. But according to a new study, many people will reject their own arguments – if they’re tricked into thinking that other people proposed them.
The paper, published in Cognitive Science, is called The Selective Laziness of Reasoning and it’s from cognitive scientists Emmanuel Trouche and colleagues. By “selective laziness”, Trouche et al. are referring to our tendency to only bother scrutinizing argu …
Drone 360
Own a Drone? You'll Probably Need to Register It
The recreational drone industry is in for shake-up.The Federal Aviation Administration announced on Monday that it would require all drones to be registered with the federal government. After hundreds of close calls with commercial aircraft this year, the use of drones near airports has spurred a crackdown on recreational flyers.
Flying these ‘small unmanned aircraft’ near airports isn’t the only concern. Last month, a drone fell out of the sky in Pasadena, Calif., injuring an 1 …

















































































































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