businessinsider.com – The origin of the space rock that killed the dinosaurs has been a mystery. A new study suggests it wasn't an asteroid, but a comet fragment.
Source: Amir Siraj, Abraham Loeb. Breakup of a long-period comet as the origin of the dinosaur extinction. Scientific Reports, 2021.
businessinsider.com – Talking expels viral particles that gravity could carry from person to person. Employees standing or leaning over clients might infect them.
Source: Keiko Ishii, Yoshiko Ohno, Maiko Oikawa, Noriko Onishi. Relationship between human exhalation diffusion and posture in face-to-face scenario with utterance. Physics of Fluids, 2021.
zmescience.com – If we'd listen to whales more carefully, we could learn more about the oceans' geology.
Source: Václav M. Kuna, John L. Nábělek. Seismic crustal imaging using fin whale songs. Science, 2021.
livescience.com – Extremists and dogmatists struggle with certain kinds of cognitive processing, but they also tend to be impulsive and risk-loving.
Source: Leor Zmigrod, Ian W. Eisenberg, Patrick G. Bissett, Trevor W. Robbins, Russell A. Poldrack. The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2021.
arstechnica.com – Could a 3rd shot of current COVID vaccines be enough to thwart variants?
Source: Yang Liu, et al. Neutralizing Activity of BNT162b2-Elicited Serum — Preliminary Report. New England Journal of Medicine, 2021.
arstechnica.com – Could a 3rd shot of current COVID vaccines be enough to thwart variants?
Source: Kai Wu, et al. Serum Neutralizing Activity Elicited by mRNA-1273 Vaccine — Preliminary Report. New England Journal of Medicine, 2021.
eurekalert.org – Programmed magnetic nanobeads paired with an off-the-shelf cellphone and plug-in diagnostic tool can diagnose COVID-19 in 55 minutes or less.
Source: Jiran Li, Peter B. Lillehoj. Microfluidic Magneto Immunosensor for Rapid, High Sensitivity Measurements of SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid Protein in Serum. ACS Sensors, 2021.
newscientist.com – Plastic bottles with a capacity of 2.3 litres contain the most liquid for the lowest packaging weight and could reduce plastic waste by thousands of tonnes per year
Source: R. Becerril-Arreola, R. E. Bucklin. Beverage bottle capacity, packaging efficiency, and the potential for plastic waste reduction. Scientific Reports, 2021.
eurekalert.org – A new study published Feb. 24, 2021 in the journal Royal Society Open Science documents the earliest-known fossil evidence of primates. These creatures lived less than 150,000 years after the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event that killed off non-avian dinosaurs and saw the rise of mammals.
Source: Gregory P. Wilson Mantilla, et al. Earliest Palaeocene purgatoriids and the initial radiation of stem primates. Royal Society Open Science, 2021.
eurekalert.org – When the pungent smell of rotting food sends a person running, that disgusted feeling is an evolved response that helps avoid exposure to pathogens, say University of Oregon anthropologists. In a project that blended anthropology, biology and psychology, researchers explored disgust behaviors among Ecuador's indigenous Shuar people.
Source: Tara J. Cepon-Robins, et al. Pathogen disgust sensitivity protects against infection in a high pathogen environment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021.