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Why do we ignore information that could improve our ability to predict the odds of a personal cyberattack? — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com Source link

On the Atlantic coast of the U.S., archaeologists found oyster shells left by Native Americans more than 4,000 years ago. In Morocco, paleontologists excavated the fossils of a dinosaur that roamed Earth 168 million years ago. How did the researchers determine these ages? When examining remnants from the past, experts use radiometric dating, a versatile […]

Sometimes discoveries seem so simple. “You know, basically, we found a bunch of holes in the ground.”   That’s Eduard Reinhardt. He’s an archaeologist and geologist at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. “But ultimately, very important holes in the ground.” Reinhardt and colleagues believe they’ve found some of the first clear evidence of mining activity in […]

After the COVID-19 rules about social distancing went into effect, I developed a morning routine of jogging through the woods near my home. During the first months, I focused on the green branches that stretch upward towards the sky, but recently I started to notice the debris of tree trunks lying on the ground. There […]

When a male mouse senses a territorial threat from another male, an aggressive reaction toward the invader instinctively kicks in. When the same mouse detects a sexually receptive female, however, his reaction tends to be a mating attempt, not an attack. The messages may both begin with the smell and sight of another mouse. But […]

Polarized America agrees on one thing: that the current round of protests against racist police violence may indeed force real reform. President Trump thinks that protesters want to “overthrow the American Revolution” and that the National Guard and regular military must act decisively to “dominate the streets.” Black Lives Matter activists worry that these protests, […]

In recent years wildfires have entered urban areas, causing breathtaking destruction. The 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise and Butte County, California was the deadliest and most destructive fire in California’s history. It took 86 lives and destroyed more than 18,000 structures in a matter of hours. Almost two years later, only a fraction of the […]

Linguists use machine-learning techniques for mining large text corpora to detect how the structure of a language lends meaning to its words. They work on the assumption that terms that appear in close proximity to one another may have similar connotations: dogs turn up near cats more often than canines appear close to bananas. This […]

Being swallowed alive by a frog is a death sentence for most insects, but one beetle species shrugs off being digested and instead finds freedom by sneaking out through its captor’s anus.  When the pond frog Pelophylax nigromaculatus was presented with the aquatic beetle Regimbartia attenuata, it quickly snapped up the beetle, swallowing it whole and alive. But the meals ended […]

In May of last year, a ring of explosives planted around the base of two 500-foot concrete cooling towers at what was once the largest coal-fired power plant in New England brought them down. In 18 seconds, they were reduced to dust and gravel. Then in February, the plant’s four soot-encrusted chimneys were felled like […]