asian giant hornets, bees, china, murder hornets, new discoveries, research

‘Murder Hornets’ Add Bite to Bee Population Worries

‘Murder hornets’ have entered the North American landscape and lexicon with horror-film imagery. Vespa mandarina – also known as Asian giant hornets – are thumb-sized carnivores with huge mandibles, outsized appetites, and a venomous sting that will leave a human writhing in pain. But the biggest threat these “murder hornets” pose is to the vulnerable apiary industry ...

Troy Oakes

A murder hornet.

Study Finds Holistic Approach Best When Tackling Non-Medical Drug Use

Health practitioners are constantly developing new ways to help those with drug and alcohol addictions wean themselves from their substance of choice. Most such programs have limited success, however. A new study finds that interventions that take a multidimensional approach — tackling the biological, social, environmental, and mental health obstacles to overcome while also addressing ...

Troy Oakes

A woman meditating at the beach.

An Eclipsing Binary Millisecond Pulsar Discovered by FAST

Using the data obtained by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), a research team led by Prof. Pan Zhichen and Prof. Li Di from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) discovered an eclipsing binary millisecond pulsar in Globular Cluster (GC) Messier 92 (M92). Named PSR J1717+4307A or M92A, it ...

Troy Oakes

An image of GC M92 with the pulsar M92A embedded in the dense core.

New POP Atomic Clock Design Achieves State-of-the-Art Frequency Stability

Chinese researchers have developed a pulsed optically pumped (POP) atomic clock with frequency stability of 4.7 × 10-15 at 104 seconds based on a new design. The achievement is noteworthy because atomic clocks — often considered the most stable frequency standard for timekeeping — are crucial components in global navigation systems and international communication services, ...

Troy Oakes

Waves showing frequency stability.

Straw Can Enhance Soil Fertility and Reduce Ammonia Pollution

Straw incorporation — shredding and burying straw — has been widely promoted as an environmentally-friendly method to increase soil organic carbon stocks and improve soil fertility. Scientists have also found crop straw incorporation could help reduce ammonia volatilization from fertilized fields, which contributes to the formation of fine particles, thereby resulting in serious air pollution. ...

Troy Oakes

Cut straw.

Mysterious Interstellar Object ‘Oumuamua Explained by New Theory

Since its discovery in 2017, an air of mystery has surrounded the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system, an elongated, cigar-shaped body named ‘Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first”). A new scenario based on computer simulations accounts for all of the observed characteristics of the first known interstellar object ...

Troy Oakes

The mysterious 'Oumuamua.

Heavy Iron Isotopes Leaking From Earth’s Core Discovered

Earth’s molten core may be leaking iron isotopes, according to researchers who analyzed how iron behaves inside our planet. The boundary between the liquid iron core and the rocky mantle is located some 1,800 miles (2,900 km) below Earth’s surface. At this transition, the temperature drops by more than a thousand degrees from the hotter ...

Troy Oakes

Earth's core-mantle interaction.

Direct Human Ancestor Homo Erectus Is Older Than We Thought

An unusual skullcap and thousands of clues have created a southern twist to the story of human ancestors, in research published in Science. The rolling hills northwest of Johannesburg are famous for fossils of human-like creatures called hominins. Because of this, the area is known as the Cradle of Humankind. Stephanie Baker, who is a researcher ...

Troy Oakes

A Homo erectus skullcap.

Electron-Eating Neon Causes Star to Collapse

An international team of researchers has found that neon inside a certain massive star can eat so many electrons in the core, a process called electron capture, that it causes the star to collapse into a neutron star and produce a supernova. The researchers were interested in studying the final fate of stars within a ...

Troy Oakes

Electron-eating neon.

Fossil Skull Casts Doubt Over Modern Human Ancestry

Griffith University scientists have led an international team to date the fossil skull of an early human found in Africa, potentially upending human evolution knowledge with their discovery. The Broken Hill (Kabwe 1) skull is one of the best-preserved fossils of the early species Homo heidelbergensis and was estimated to be about 500,000 years old. ...

Troy Oakes

The fossil skull of Homo heidelbergensis.