Category: News

As the psychoactive compound in “magic mushrooms,” psilocybin has proven to be an effective treatment for mental health issues like depression. Unfortunately, a 30-year-old bipolar man in Nebraska tried to treat himself by injecting the mushrooms rather than eating them. Within days, he experienced torturous symptoms and organ failure — while the fungi started to grow in his blood. The... Read More

Since being introduced to chess at the tender age of six, Tanitoluwa “Tani” Adewumi has had one goal. He wants to become the world’s youngest-ever Grandmaster — the highest title a chess player can achieve. The record is currently held by Russian chess player Sergey Alexandrovich Karjakin, who qualified for the title in 2002 at the age of 12 years... Read More

The first level of the original Super Mario Bros game is a piece of cake for most people, but has always represented a major hurdle for robot-kind – until now. According to a new study in the journal Science Advances, researchers have created a 3D-printed robotic hand that has sufficient agility and finesse to operate a video game controller, and... Read More

It was just after lunch on March 11, 2011, when disaster struck Japan’s east coast. A catastrophic magnitude 9.0 earthquake, followed quickly by a massive tsunami, hit Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures and left tens of thousands dead in their wake. Then, as a devastating finale, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Ōkuma suffered a series of explosions, releasing toxic radioactive... Read More

Ever since Star Wars brought podracing and flying motorcycles to the forefront of TV, it’s fair to say most people have wanted to fly one. Luckily, we truly are entering an era of flying vehicles – after all, flying cars will be raced around a track by the end of the year – and flying motorcycles are next on that... Read More

Technology such as self-driving cars will always begin with some wild flaws that need to be ironed out, but when the system places passengers’ lives in its new-age hands, you’d hope those flaws aren’t too bad. Unfortunately for Tesla owners, the new self-driving system has come with an aberrant “feature” that is scaring owners – it keeps mistaking full moons... Read More

The last month has seen lethal, and often unprecedented, extreme weather across the Northern Hemisphere. Climate scientists say human-driven changes to the atmosphere have made events like these more likely, but how much any specific event can be attributed to human activity remains debated. Nevertheless, many regard it as plausible that human activity not only raised the risk of these... Read More

Engineers usually regard heat as “waste energy” since it is hard to efficiently turn into anything useful. However, a new class of thermoelectric materials could change that after researchers opted to try the exact opposite of the usual approach. A paper in Science Advances explains why, speeding the search for even better versions. As the name suggests, thermoelectric materials turn... Read More

The first observations of lethal attacks by chimpanzees against gorillas have been reported. Although this proves our closest relatives can pose a danger to those just a little further genetically removed, a paper in Scientific Reports indicates the ultimate cause may be us. Loango National Park, Gabon, is home to both chimpanzees and western lowland gorillas. For 16 years it... Read More

“If I had a cracker for every question I received about cockies behaving badly,” wrote ornithologist Richard Major, “you’d be calling me ‘Polly’.” Let us translate for the non-Australians in the audience: sulfur-crested cockatoos, the large parrot species native to Australia, New Guinea, and Indonesia, are a pest and a nuisance. They eat crops, keep you up at night with... Read More