Aerial view of the bridge. Image Credit: Vegard Thorvaldsen/Statens vegvesen Norway has given old oil-industry material a very different purpose, turning 20 tonnes of aluminium recovered from the decommissioned Gyda oil platform into part of a new pedestrian and cycle bridge in Trondheim. The 55-metre Hangarbrua crosses the railway at Leangen Station and is the…
Billionaire real-estate developer Donald Bren helped turn a significant portion of California’s historic Irvine Ranch into a vast network of protected public lands, with 57,500 acres now preserved as open space and parklands. The scale of the conservation effort has been documented by the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, the City of Irvine and the National Park…
According to a report published by Phys Org, the fossils were originally recovered during the 1920s from Egypt’s roughly 45-million-year-old Mokattam Formation Long before the Great Sphinx became one of Egypt’s most recognisable monuments, the landscape around Cairo was home to a very different kind of long-snouted creature. Now, a fossil discovered from the same…
Reaching for chips, nuts, or crackers right after a bad day is a habit almost everyone recognises. Many people assume the craving is about salt or sugar, yet new research suggests the real driver may be texture. Texture, it seems, matters surprisingly much. Scientists tested how two negative emotions, anger and anxiety, change what the…
African elephants may use visual clues to judge the amount of food available before choosing where to feed, but their ability appears strongest at close range. Researchers tested four semi-tame adult African elephants by showing them circles printed on canvases. The circles represented different tree canopy sizes and leaf densities, allowing the researchers to test…
Scientists have identified a 165-million-year-old mammal predecessor from China that had a broad tail for swimming and throat bones similar to those of modern mammals. Named Megacauda sungei, the Jurassic-era animal could chew and swallow food using specialised structures. Published in Nature, the findings offer new insights into how early mammals developed different feeding abilities….
Burmese python coiled in the grass in the Everglades. Image Credit: Wikipedia Burmese python males in South Florida undergo a marked seasonal change in testosterone as the breeding period approaches, while another hormone linked to stress and energy use follows a less predictable pattern. A study published in General and Comparative Endocrinology tracked testosterone and…
Representative Image (AI-generated) A blood-cancer treatment that Stanford researchers have spent more than two decades developing has now reached an important milestone. Its first commercial patient has been treated following U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. According to the Stanford Cancer Institute, the therapy, known as Orca-T, was given to a patient at Stanford Medicine…
Greenland shark, Image: Saul Goner, SeaPics Greenland became the centre of an unusual dispute over one of the world’s longest-lived vertebrates after the municipal council of Avannaata approved a proposal to cull 1,000 Greenland sharks. Under the scheme, fishermen would have received 300 Danish kroner, about $45, for each shark heart they brought in. The…
One of the most important findings was that not all organs would be affected in the same way. What if scientists could eventually remove almost every major biological process that drives aging, but one problem remained: DNA mutations that accumulate in cells over a lifetime? A new mathematical study suggests that even in that highly…
