Science

[ad_1] New Zealand’s critically endangered kākāpō, the world’s heaviest parrot, has reached a remarkable conservation milestone after decades of intensive efforts to pull the species back from the brink of extinction. Its population has climbed to 325 birds after 90 chicks from the 2026 breeding season were officially added to the count, marking the highest…

[ad_1] Quote of the day by Stephen Hawking Few questions have occupied the human mind for quite as long as why the universe exists, and whether human life actually has any real purpose. For centuries, people have approached these questions through religion, philosophy and science, often arriving at genuinely very different conclusions. Stephen Hawking, one…

[ad_1] Since time immemorial, humans have been consuming food derived from the land, air and water. From vegetables and birds to even crabs, there is not much we have not used to survive on. But currently, people in New England are feasting on green crabs not to survive themselves but to help the native species…

[ad_1] Six decades ago, Dutch elm disease swept across the United States, killing an estimated 100 million American elms that once shaded streets, parks and college campuses from coast to coast. The fungus, carried by bark beetles, turned majestic, vase-shaped trees into dead standing skeletons and changed the look of countless towns. Now, in a…

[ad_1] A fungus that infects house flies has evolved a remarkable way to send spores towards new hosts. Entomophthora muscae grows inside an infected fly and, after the insect dies, it produces microscopic stalks that emerge from its body. Each stalk forms a single spore at its tip. Instead of simply dropping away, the spore…

[ad_1] In 2011, conservation teams set out on one of the biggest rat eradications ever on a tropical atoll, targeting an estimated 30,000 invasive rodents on Palmyra Atoll in the central Pacific. The goal was not just to remove a pest, but to restore an entire ecosystem that had been suppressed for more than a…

[ad_1] In 2003, Nasa researchers reported that freshwater snails carried into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle had mated and reproduced during their mission, allowing their gravity-sensing organs to develop entirely under microgravity. According to the study published in PubMed, tittled ‘Otoliths developed in microgravity‘ formed part of the results of the STS-90 Neurolab Spacelab mission,…

[ad_1] In 2005, five thick-toed geckos left Earth aboard the unmanned Russian spacecraft Foton-M2, embarking on a 16-day orbital flight with no access to food or water. The mission, a joint undertaking between Nasa and the Russian Academy of Sciences, was designed to test whether a reptile species could serve as a viable model for…

[ad_1] In January 1960, Nasa launched the rhesus monkey Miss Sam aboard a Little Joe rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia, to test the launch escape system built for Project Mercury. The flight was designed to confirm that the escape tower could pull the capsule clear of its booster during an abort, a safeguard critical to…

[ad_1] Representative Image of Chosha praecursor, an early insect with paddle-like abdominal appendages in a prehistoric landscape (AI-generated image) Today, insects occupy nearly every terrestrial environment on Earth and account for more described species than any other animal group, yet the earliest stages of their evolutionary history remain poorly documented. A newly described species from…