Even Harry Stamper would probably like these odds. Recently NASA updated its forecast of the chances that the asteroid Bennu, one of the two most hazardous known objects in our solar system, will hit Earth in the next 300 years. New calculations put the odds at 1 in 1,750, a figure slightly higher than previously thought. The […]

Sepsis occurs when the body works so hard to fight an infection that the over-activated immune system harms a patient’s own tissues as collateral damage. As a result, blood vessels can become leaky and major organs can’t get the oxygen and nutrients they require to sustain life. Sepsis is a major reason that patients, including […]

Neurofibromatosis type 1, or NF1, is the most common cancer predisposition syndrome, affecting 1 in 3,000 people worldwide. People with an inherited condition known as neurofibromatosis type 1, or NF1, often develop non-cancerous, or benign, tumors that grow along nerves. These tumors can sometimes turn into aggressive cancers, but there hasn’t been a good way […]

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) will be home to a cutting-edge quantum network testbed, thanks to a new five-year, $12.5 million funding award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Led by personnel from Berkeley Lab’s Scientific Networking Division/ESnet, UC Berkeley, and Caltech, the R&D collaboration […]

An investigational HIV vaccine tested in the “Imbokodo” clinical trial conducted in sub-Saharan Africa posed no safety concerns but did not provide sufficient protection against HIV infection, according to a primary analysis of the study data. The Phase 2b proof-of-concept study, which began in November 2017, enrolled 2,637 women ages 18 to 35 years from […]

Depending on how it occurs, the development of cellular agriculture — food grown in factories from cells or yeast — has the potential to either accelerate socioeconomic inequality or provide beneficial alternatives to the status quo. That’s the conclusion of a new study led by Penn State researchers, who assessed the potential trajectories for a […]

Compassion helps us relate to and feel sympathy for others as they experience hardships, but a new study suggests some people may actively avoid feeling compassion when given the choice. In a series of studies, the researchers found that when given the option, people often chose to avoid feeling compassion for others and reported that doing so […]

Scientists are less likely to adopt important new ideas in biomedicine introduced by women researchers, a new study has found. Researchers used a novel way of tracing the flow of ideas to find that even some of the most well-known breakthroughs in biomedical research from 1980 to 2008 had a more difficult road to adoption […]

One of the world’s great tourist attractions is the Imperial Observatory in Beijing. Source: Top 12 Best Places to go visiting Beijing The man, who rebuilt it in its current impressive form was the seventeenth century Jesuit mathematician, astronomer, and engineer Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688). Ferdinand Verbiest artist unknown Source: Wikimedia Commons I have no idea […]

Almost exactly 100 years after its invention, leaded petrol is no longer legally available for sale anywhere on Earth. In July this year, Algeria became the last country to stop selling leaded petrol. The UN environment programme has now declared the ‘era of leaded petrol over’, with executive director Inger Andersen describing the move as […]