What knowledge contained in what books of science, culture, and civilization would you most want to pass on to the surviving humans of a major planetary catastrophe? You get to choose one book, not the whole Library of Congress.
Unthinkable as it may be, humanity, every last person, could someday be wiped from the face of the Earth. We have learned to worry about asteroids and supervolcanoes, but the more-likely scenario, according to Nick Bostrom, a professor of philosophy at Oxford, is that we humans will destroy ourselves. Bostrom, who directs Oxford’s Future of…
Researchers at Newcastle University have revealed the mechanism by which neurons, the nerve cells in the brain and other parts of the body, age. The research, published in Aging Cell, opens up new avenues of understanding for conditions where the ageing of neurons are known to be responsible, such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease. The…
A new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) highlights the world’s 25 most endangered primates. The report, entitled “Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates, 2012–2014,” was put together by the Primate Specialist Group of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission and the International Primatological Society as well as the Conservation…
Despite government efforts to ban unapproved stem cell treatments, companies around China still offer them openly.
German palaeontologists have dug up the remains of nine turtle pairs that died while mating some 47 million years ago, sinking into poisonous waters while locked in a final embrace, according to a report in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters. The find represents the first-ever fossil record of copulating vertebrates. “Millions of animals live…