In 2018, scientists set out on an expedition to survey the habitat of an endangered bat species in the West African country of Guinea. One night, a trap turned up something unusual: a new species of bat with a fiery orange body strikingly juxtaposed with black wings. “It was kind of a life goal in […]
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Johnson & Johnson expects to release critical results from its Covid-19 vaccine trial in as little as two weeks — a potential boon in the effort to protect Americans from the coronavirus — but most likely won’t be able to provide as many doses this spring as it promised the federal government because of unanticipated […]
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The exercisers were asked to “challenge” themselves during the calisthenics, completing as many of each exercise as they could in a minute, before walking in place, and then moving to the next exercise. After six weeks, all of the volunteers returned to the lab for follow-up testing. And, to no one’s surprise, the exercisers were […]
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Early in the 20th century, a train line opened for service in mountains west of Tokyo. But in 1920, train crews found themselves stopping traffic for an unusual reason. The train tracks, which ran through thick forest, were overwhelmed by swarms of millipedes, each arthropod as white as a ghost. The creatures, which are not […]
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Most symptoms in the Wuhan report were slightly more common among women, with 81 percent reporting at least one health problem, compared with 73 percent of men. Reports about other respiratory diseases, like the 2003 outbreak of SARS, another type of coronavirus, suggest that some Covid survivors may experience aftereffects for months or years. Most […]
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In a small clinical trial, an experimental Alzheimer’s drug slowed the rate at which patients lost the ability to think and care for themselves, the drug maker Eli Lilly announced on Monday. The findings have not been published in any form, and not been widely reviewed by other researchers. If accurate, it is the first […]
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Scientists know that the trillions of bacteria and other microbes that live in our guts play an important role in health, influencing our risk of developing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and a wide range of other conditions. But now a large new international study has found that the composition of these microorganisms, collectively […]
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A paper published today in the journal Scientific Reports by controversial Stanford-affiliated researcher Michal Kosinski claims to show that facial recognition algorithms can expose people’s political views from their social media profiles. Using a dataset of over 1 million Facebook and dating sites profiles from users across Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., Kosinski and […]
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Scans of a subset of its approximately hundreds of vertebrae — some the size of grapefruits — showed the shark had died at the age of 46. The researchers estimated the meg’s life expectancy to be around 88 to 100 years, implying that their specimen had been roughly “middle-aged,” Dr. Shimada said. They also back-calculated […]
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They are also the most versatile and unpredictable of the Panthera crew, at once stealthy and brash, antisocial and plugged in. “They have a bit of attitude to them,” said Alan M. Wilson of the Royal Veterinary College, who has studied leopard movement patterns and athletic performance. If you irritate leopards, he said, “they’ll come […]
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When the British zoologist George Shaw first encountered a platypus specimen in 1799, he was so befuddled that he checked for stitches, thinking someone might be trying to trick him with a Frankencreature. It’s hard to blame him: What other animal has a rubbery bill, ankle spikes full of venom, luxurious fur that glows under […]
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But Dr. Kapany was growing restless in academia, and in 1960 he moved his family to California to start a new company, Optics Technology, to commercialize his research. He based it in Palo Alto, then just emerging as a tech hub, and received funding from Draper, Gaither & Anderson, one of the first venture-capital firms […]
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“Organizations are encouraged to consider prescribing either tocilizumab or sarilumab in the treatment of patients admitted to intensive care with Covid-19 pneumonia,” the new guidance from British health authorities said. Dr. Gordon noted that this is the strongest official advice issued to date on the pair of immune drugs. Some experts outside of Britain are […]
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In a lush, bygone landscape, a hungry Triceratops munches on low-lying ferns and cone-bearing cycad plants to power its 10-ton frame. The animal swallows huge mouthfuls of roughage, seeds and all, before ambling off in search of new feeding grounds. Days later and miles away, the Triceratops empties its bowels, sowing the seeds of the […]
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The versions of the coronavirus that all seven carried were virtually identical genetically — strongly suggesting that one person among them initiated the outbreak. That person, whom the report calls Passenger A, had in fact tested negative four or five days before boarding, the researchers found. Updated Jan. 7, 2021, 5:20 p.m. ET “Four or […]
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Dr. Lahtinen and her colleagues take competition out of the equation. In winter, ice age humans would have had to forego plants, depending on hunting. But people can’t survive on protein alone. Eventually they starve or get protein poisoning. They need fat, so they would have eaten primarily the fatty parts of prey, with some […]
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Locomotion through the seas can be arduous. Water is more viscous than air, and so underwater creatures must overcome strong frictional resistance as they swim. To make things more difficult, liquid water provides nothing solid to push off against. But lowly jellyfish, which have swum in the world’s oceans for half a billion years, have […]
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It will be difficult “to find and diagnose them within that vanishingly small window,” said Dr. Ilan Schwartz, an infectious disease physician at the University of Alberta who wasn’t involved in the study. “The study looks solid, but not necessarily practical in the real world.” Plasma has additional logistical hurdles, Dr. Titanji, of Emory University, […]
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Yellowstone National Park is an excess of geologic riches, from sweeping volcanic vistas to bubbling caldrons with multicolored irises. But one of its 10,000 thermal features has been capturing everyone’s attention recently: Steamboat Geyser. Steamboat, the world’s tallest active geyser, can launch superheated water almost 400 feet into the sky. These eruptions have been erratic, […]
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With no robust system to identify genetic variations of the coronavirus, experts warn that the United States is woefully ill-equipped to track a dangerous new mutant, leaving health officials blind as they try to combat the grave threat. The variant, which is now surging in Britain and burdening its hospitals with new cases, is rare […]
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With an average height of roughly 16 feet, giraffes are the tallest mammals on Earth. At about 6 feet long, their lanky legs and towering necks stand taller than most humans. Even the shortest giraffe is twice as tall as the average professional basketball player. So when Michael Brown, a conservation science fellow with the […]
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Some states, like Texas and Florida, have already begun offering shots to people 65 and older who are not nursing home residents, and to those of any age with medical conditions that raise their risk of dying if they contract Covid-19. That has led to a desperate scramble among those eager to get vaccinated. “People […]
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AI-powered assistants like Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google Assistant are pervasive. But for these assistants to engage users and help them to achieve their goals, they need to exhibit appropriate social behavior and provide informative replies. Studies show that users respond better to social language in the sense that they’re more responsive and likelier to […]
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“Most of the shark researchers are thinking, not the wrong way, but in an incomplete way,” he said. One of Dr. Clua’s co-authors, John Linnell of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, studies human conflicts with predators on land, and acknowledges that he’s not a “shark person.” Land predators sometimes stalk and attack humans until […]
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michael barbaro Hey, It’s Michael. This week, The Daily is revisiting our favorite episodes of the year, listening back and then hearing what’s happened in the time since they first ran. Today: Genie Chance and the Great Alaska Earthquake. It’s Thursday, December 31. archived recording Well, I suppose you want to know where I was […]
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Nobody believes it was ET phoning, but radio astronomers admit they don’t have an explanation yet for a beam of radio waves that apparently came from the direction of the star Proxima Centauri. “It’s some sort of technological signal. The question is whether it’s Earth technology or technology from somewhere out yonder,” said Sofia Sheikh, […]
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For many, 2020 was a year that provided lots of worries that kept us tossing and turning at night. Tara Parker-Pope’s guide, How to Get a Better Night’s Sleep, is packed with advice: We spend about one-third of our lives asleep, and sleep is essential to better health. But many of us are struggling with […]
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Unlike most AI systems, humans understand the meaning of text, videos, audio, and images together in context. For example, given text and an image that seem innocuous when considered apart (e.g., “Look how many people love you” and a picture of a barren desert), people recognize that these elements take on potentially hurtful connotations when […]
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Zipping through water like shimmering arrowheads, cuttlefish are swift, sure hunters — death on eight limbs and two waving tentacles for small creatures in their vicinity. They morph to match the landscape, shifting between a variety of hues and even textures, using tiny structures that expand and contract beneath their skin. They even seem to […]
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Politically, it was a perilous situation for both men. As its trade war with China escalated, the Trump administration had all but eliminated a public health partnership with Beijing that had begun after the debacle of SARS and was intended to help prevent potential pandemics. By pulling out, current and former agency officials say, Washington […]
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The first time Eduardo Sampaio saw an octopus wind up and punch a fish, “I burst out laughing,” he said. That was a problem because he was scuba diving in the Red Sea and nearly choked on his diving regulator. While an octopus curling one of its arms and explosively releasing it into a fish […]
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