Soft blobs with clear-cut edges (easy to pass). That’s the verdict on the slightly blurry photo of a subaquatic poo I just uploaded from my phone. The Moxie Poop Scanner says it uses AI to determine where on the Bristol Stool Scale – a diagnostic medical tool used to classify human excrement – my poo falls. And it’s a 4.7. Below this evaluation are several headings: ‘what is it?’ in which the app...
If you can’t stand the sound of people chewing or leaky headphones, there could be a neurological explanation. Until now, the condition misophonia was considered the result of a short temper or heightened levels of anxiety, but researchers from Newcastle University believe they have found an underlying, physiological cause. Misophonia causes sufferers to have increased sensitivity to certain...
There’s a dating site for people that like people in uniform, horse-lovers (no not like that and the “country-minded” among us. Hell, there’s even one for anyone with a highly specific hankering for sea captains. In the midst of this madness, Mensa has finally stepped into the breach. Because if it’s okay to discriminate in favour of beauty, muddy boots and salty sea stories, it’s certainly okay...
Forgetfulness is one of the hallmarks of ageing – almost 40 per cent of people aged 65 or older have some form of age-related memory loss. And usually once forgetfulness has set in, things only get worse with age. But now a new kind of brain-zapping treatment might be able to reverse this slow decline. “Everyone reports having worse memory as they get older,” says Joel Voss, associate professor...
On December 20, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai—an underwater volcano in the South Pacific topped with a diminutive and uninhabited island—awoke from a seven-year slumber. The volcano spluttered and crackled, creating a large plume of ash. Ten thousand miles away, in England, Simon Proud, a satellite data researcher at the University of Oxford, began to monitor the twitching volcano using an array of...
A group of amateur astronomers has helped discover a new feature of the Northern Lights using a photograph posted on Facebook. When the mysterious purple streak was first discovered in British Columbia, it appeared to be the first of its kind and, as the Boaty McBoatface debacle proved, when you leave naming something to the public, they do so in style. In this instance, the newly-discovered...
The bioengineer Takuo Aoyagi died in Tokyo in April, around the same time that people began clamouring to panic buy his 1970s invention, the pulse oximeter. Blood oxygen saturation, which pulse oximeters measure by transmitting red and infrared light into, say, your middle finger and comparing how much of each is absorbed by the blood, is considered one of five valuable vital signs, alongside...
Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, women may find men with wide heads more appealing for short-term dates and perceive them to be more masculine than men with narrower offerings. “Our study shows that within three minutes of meeting in real life, women find more dominant, wider-faced men attractive for short-term relationships, and want to go on another...
Researchers from South Korea have used cloning techniques to create a dog that will let off an impressive green glow when a doxycycline antibiotic is slipped into its food. Without the drug, the dog’s superhero powers will fade. The team from Seoul National University made Tegon using the same somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that they used to create to the world’s first cloned dog...
Around the world, scientists and researchers are tackling some of the planet’s biggest problems – such as climate change, environmental degradation and rising sea levels – at their source. In order to achieve this, a series of research facilities and laboratories are being built in extreme environments, such as in the Antarctic, deep underwater and nestled alongside remote ecosystems. The work...