|  Da Vinci's Iconic Bridge Recreated in Ice  | One of Leonardo da Vinci's most stunning engineering plans is getting a decidedly chilly welcome to the modern world. Students in the frigid hinterlands of Finland plan to recreate one of the Renaissance man's many iconic sketches: a massive stone bridge spanning the Bosphorus River. Leonardo da Vinci, who lived between 1452 and 1519, is perhaps most famous for painting the "Mona Lisa." But the polymath also made impressive contributions to the fields of astronomy, engineering and anatomy.
| Read More » Baby Sharks: Sand Tiger Nursery Spotted Off New York Coast  | Shark tots just a few months old are making their way up the Atlantic coast to a nursery off New York, scientists have found. The sand tiger shark nursery, located near the shore of Long Island's Great South Bay, supports the juvenile animals, which range from just months old to 4 or 5 years old and measure 9 inches to 4 feet (23 centimeters to 1.2 meters) long, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society's New York Aquarium. "It's quite interesting, because this is sort of a resident population," said Jon Dohlin, vice president and director of the aquarium.
| Read More » Jurassic 10-Armed 'Squid' Were Speedy Swimmers  | The fossils represent Acanthoteuthis, a genus of squid relatives that lived during the Jurassic period and measured between 9.8 and 15.7 inches (25 and 40 centimeters) long. Acanthoteuthis is a cephalopod, part of the ocean-dwelling group that includes modern octopus, squid and cuttlefish, with an evolutionary history spanning 500 million years. Acanthoteuthis belongs to a group of cephalopods called belemnites, which are particularly abundant in the fossil record — or at least a small part of them is.
| Read More » Africa takes fresh look at GMO crops as drought blights continent  | By MacDonald Dzirutwe HARARE (Reuters) - A scorching drought in Southern Africa that led to widespread crop failure could nudge African nations to finally embrace genetically modified (GM) crops to improve harvests and reduce grain imports. The drought, which extends to South Africa, the continent's biggest maize producer, has been exacerbated by an El Nino weather pattern and follows dry spells last year that affected countries from Zimbabwe to Malawi. Aid agency Oxfam has said 10 million people, mostly in Africa, face hunger because of droughts and poor rains.
| Read More » Ebola Fight: Survivors' Blood Doesn't Help, But Malaria Drug Might Since the latest Ebola outbreak began, researchers have renewed their search for an effective way to fight the deadly virus. Now, a new study finds that giving Ebola patients a drug that is currently used to treat malaria may lower their risk of dying from the virus by almost one-third. Meanwhile, a separate study finds that treating Ebola patients with blood plasma taken from Ebola survivors does not lower their risk of death. Read More » Missing Zzzs: Sleep Problems Common for Single Parents, Women Single parents get less sleep and have more sleep-related problems than adults in households with two parents and adults living without children, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests. "These results are not surprising," said Dr. Stuart Quan, a sleep medicine specialist and researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the research for this report. Read More » Not Your Grandma's Thermometer: 3 New Ways to Take Your Temperature The simple task of taking your temperature is getting a new high-tech twist: Three companies recently announced "smart thermometers" that offer alternative ways to check this vital sign and send the data to a mobile device. It provides a temperature reading that corrects for ambient temperature and skin heat loss, according to Withings, the company that makes the gadget. Thermo transmits the temperature data by Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to an app on a user's smartphone. Read More » | |
