List of All Articles with Tag 'science'

Some of the world's greatest scientists have struggled with math—just like the rest of us.

After a live worm was found wriggling around in an Australian woman’s brain recently, you could be forgiven for thanking your lucky stars you don’t have a similar parasite living inside you. But it turns out the chances are much more likely than you might think. More than 1 billion people are thought to have threadworms, a type of invertebrate also known as the pinworm, as per a 2019 study by NCBI. Threadworms grow to around 1cm in length and are specific to human hosts. They infect the small intestine, make your bottom feel itchy and can be passed from person to person. They are a common type of infection in the UK, particularly in children under the age of 10. Threadworms are white and look like small pieces of thread – they are usually spotted in people’s poo. According to the NHS website, they can make people irritable and cause them to wake up at night. When things get really bad, they can cause weight loss. The woman in Australia’s worm, by contrast, was found in her brain, and surgeons needed to get it out manually. “Everyone [in] that operating theatre got the shock of their life when [the surgeon] took some forceps to pick up an abnormality and the abnormality turned out to be a wriggling, live 8cm light red worm," said infectious diseases doctor Sanjaya Senanayake, according to the BBC. If you get threadworms, you won’t need to have brain surgery, fortunately. You can buy medicine (mebendazole) for threadworms from pharmacies, according to NHS online. This is usually a chewable tablet or liquid you swallow. The medicine kills the threadworms, but it does not kill the eggs. Eggs can live for up to 2 weeks outside the body. There are other types of worms you can catch, however. Tapeworms, roundworms and hookworms are all relatively common parasites that you can catch from eating raw or undercooked meat. They can also be caught from inadvertently touching infected poo. Roundworms look more like earthworms, tapeworms are long, pale yellow and flat and hookworms, somewhat horrifically, cause a red, worm-shaped rash beneath the skin. Vincent Ho, associate professor and clinical academic gastroenterologist at Western Sydney University in Australia, said that there are four things you can do to avoid these nasty little critters. “Avoid undercooked or raw pork. Freezing meat first may reduce risks (though home freezers may not get cold enough) and it must be cooked to a high internal temperature. Avoid pork if you are travelling in places with poor sanitation,” he said in an article for The Conversation. “Avoid jumping or diving into warm fresh bodies of water, especially if they are known to carry Naegleria fowleri. Although only a handful of cases are reported each year, you should assume it’s present. “Practise good hand hygiene to reduce the risk of rare and common infections. That means washing hands thoroughly and often, using soap, scrubbing for at least 20 seconds, rinsing and drying well. Clip and clean under fingernails regularly. “To avoid soil-borne parasites, wear shoes outside, especially in rural and remote regions, wash shoes and leave them outside.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Depending on where they originate, these destructive storms go by different names.

Scientists are shocked having found a shark normally found deep in the Arctic, 4,000 miles away in the warm Caribbean. According to findings published in the Marine Biology journal, the Greenland shark turned up off the coast of Belize in Central America while a team of researchers were out on a boat catching and tagging tiger sharks. Devanshi Kasana, a PhD student at Florida International University, was part of the crew working with local fishermen at the time when she realised that a particular fish on the end of their fishing lines looked like a "rather sluggish creature". She added: "At first, I was sure it was something else, like a six-gill shark that are well known from deep waters off coral reefs. I knew it was something unusual and so did the fishers, who hadn’t ever seen anything quite like it in all their combined years of fishing.” Kasana took a photo of the animal and sent it to her advisor, who said it appeared to be a Greenland shark, which was soon confirmed by experts on the specific species. Another expert thought it might be a hybrid between a Greenland and a Pacific sleeper shark. Omar Faux, a fisherman on the boat, said: "I am always excited to set my deep water line because I know there is stuff down there that we haven’t seen yet in Belize, but I never thought I would be catching a Greenland shark." This is the first time that the large shark has been seen in the western Caribbean, off the world's second-largest coral reef, according to the university. The half-blind Greenland shark is rarely seen and is the longest-living vertebrae animal known, with some age estimates between 250 and 500 years old. Weird... Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A man was reportedly rushed to hospital when a passionate kiss with his girlfriend resulted in a painful rupture in his ear. As per Hangzhou TV, the man and his girlfriend were locking lips for ten minutes on Chinese Valentine's Day (22 August) on the idyllic West Lake in China’s eastern Zhejiang province. It was claimed that the man's left ear suddenly became painful and he started to experience a bubbling sound, making it difficult for him to hear. The couple immediately visited the hospital where he was told his eardrum was perforated. Luckily, the man was prescribed antibiotics and was told it would take approximately two months to heal. In more serious cases, surgery may be required. According to the publication, medical professionals said passionate kissing can lead to a rapid change in air pressure inside the ear. While you may find that scenario baffling, one woman's seemingly innocent outfit soon turned into an incredibly unfortunate disaster. TikToker Sam (@imtoooldtobeonthis) ended up in the hospital after her 'wedgie' caused her sepsis. "That night, I noticed that I had a large bump where the chafing had occurred, and as time went on, it started becoming more painful. The pain was isolated to one sport and it felt like a throbbing, stabbing pain," she told Buzzfeed. Sam was rushed to the emergency room when doctors realised it was caused by developing cellulitis - a bacterial skin infection that can become deadly if left untreated. "I was shivering, very breathless, could not walk and had extreme body aches," Sam said. "They admitted me to the ICU, and that’s when I realized this was a bit more serious than I had anticipated." Fortunately, after four days of surgery and being treated, Sam was able to make a full recovery. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A Richard Mille Co. watch is a powerful symbol of wealth for anyone who’s in-the-know enough to recognize

A worm has been found living inside a woman’s brain, in a horror-movie-style world first. Doctors in Canberra, Australia, were left stunned after they pulled the 8cm (3in) parasite from the patient’s damaged frontal lobe tissue during surgery last year. "Everyone [in] that operating theatre got the shock of their life when [the surgeon] took some forceps to pick up an abnormality and the abnormality turned out to be a wriggling, live 8cm light red worm," said infectious diseases doctor Sanjaya Senanayake, according to the BBC. "Even if you take away the yuck factor, this is a new infection never documented before in a human being." Senanayake and his colleagues believe the parasite could have been in there for up to two months. The patient, a 64-year-old woman from New South Wales, was first admitted to her local hospital in late January 2021 after suffering three weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhoea, followed by a constant dry cough, fever and night sweats, The Guardian reports. By 2022, her symptoms extended to forgetfulness and depression, and she was referred to Canberra Hospital, where an MRI scan of her brain revealed “abnormalities” that required surgery. “The neurosurgeon certainly didn’t go in there thinking they would find a wriggling worm,” Senanayake told the paper. “Neurosurgeons regularly deal with infections in the brain, but this was a once-in-a-career finding. No one was expecting to find that.” The team at the hospital sent the worm to an experienced parasite researcher who identified it as an Ophidascaris robertsi. This type of roundworm is commonly found in carpet pythons – non-venomous snakes that are ubiquitous across much of Australia. Writing in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, Mehrab Hossain, a parasitologist, said she suspected that the patient became an "accidental host" to the worm after cooking with foraged plants. The 64-year-old was known to have often collected native grasses from around her lakeside home, Senanayake told The Guardian. He and his co-workers have concluded that the woman was probably infected after a python shed eggs from the parasite via its faeces into the grass. By touching the plants, she may then have transferred the eggs into her own food or kitchen utensils. Fortunately, the unlucky and unique patient is said to be making a good recovery. However, Senanayake told the BBC that her case should serve as an important warning to society more broadly. "It just shows as a human population burgeons, we move closer and encroach on animal habitats. This is an issue we see again and again, whether it's Nipah virus that's gone from wild bats to domestic pigs and then into people, whether its a coronavirus like Sars or Mers that has jumped from bats into possibly a secondary animal and then into humans,” he said. "Even though Covid is now slowly petering away, it is really important for epidemiologists… and governments to make sure they've got good infectious diseases surveillance around." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Viasat Inc. has more than $1 billion of orbiting satellites in trouble, and space insurers are girding for

A London-based money manager has just attached an ESG label to a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, in a move

One expert believes he’s “solved” the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. Channel 5’s documentary, Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle, featured an interview with mineral prospector Nick Hutchings. Hutchings said that geology could explain the disappearances of planes and boats. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Bermuda Triangle is in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean and “has captured the human imagination with unexplained disappearances of ships, planes, and people.” The region has also been referred to as ‘The Devil’s Triangle’, with reports of disappearances in the area date as far back as the middle of the 19th century. Reports of distress signals or wreckages resulted in crews and passengers never being heard from again. Many have come up with conspiracy theories in an attempt to explain the bizarre occurrences that happen in and around the Bermuda Triangle. Some believe the lost city of Atlantis is responsible, others think it has something to do with rogue waves, and few go as far to suggest it is a portal to another space and time. But Hutchings has a different theory. This one involves rocks. “Bermuda’s basically a sea mountain - it’s an underwater volcano. 30 million years ago, it was sticking up above sea level,” Hutchings explained. “It has now eroded away and we’re left with the top of a volcano. We have a few core samples, which have magnetite in them. It’s the most magnetic naturally occurring material on Earth.” Using only a small piece of rock and a compass, Hutchings conducted an experiment during the documentary to demonstrate what this meant for ships sailing through the area. When the compass was passed over the rock its needle went berserk, ultimately resulting in the navigational device being completely useless. “You can just imagine the ancient mariners sailing past Bermuda,” he explained. “It would be very disconcerting.” In other words - people travelling through simply got lost. Whilst the Bermuda Triangle may seem to be this mysterious location, scientist at Sydney University, Karl Kruszelnicki, claims the percentage of missing planes and boats is similar to any other high-traffic part of the ocean. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A Nasa scientist has said chemicals found on Mars would be considered signs of ancient life if they were found on Earth, leading to suggestions the Red Planet could potentially have harboured life. Dr Michelle Thaller said: “On Mars we see chemistry that on Earth, if it were here, we would say is due to life. “But the question is, how well do we understand Mars and are we being fooled by something?” It’s not a done deal, of course. Signs of ancient life that we find regularly on Earth may not mean the same thing elsewhere, particularly with the vastly different conditions between the two planets. Dr Thaller told The Sun she is certain there is life out there in our solar system, but did not reveal the exact chemical substance that had been found. Nasa has previously found methane on Mars, which it said “could have supported ancient life”, and the organisation has also revealed plans to look for amino acids that haven’t yet been destroyed by space radiation. Organic chemicals like amino acids are used by archaeologists to determine whether life was present. A blog post from the US space agency said: “Amino acids can be created by life and by non-biological chemistry. “However, finding certain amino acids on Mars would be considered a potential sign of ancient Martian life because they are widely used by terrestrial life as a component to build proteins. “Proteins are essential to life as they are used to make enzymes which speed up or regulate chemical reactions and to make structures.” Alexander Pavlov of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, added: “Our results suggest that amino acids are destroyed by cosmic rays in the Martian surface rocks and regolith at much faster rates than previously thought. “Current Mars rover missions drill down to about two inches (around five centimeters). “At those depths, it would take only 20 million years to destroy amino acids completely.” That may sound like a long time, but Nasa is looking for life that is billions of years old, because scientists think Mars would have been more like Earth back then. Dr Thaller said it was important not to actually say there were signs of life until there is 100 per cent confirmation. “The solar system may be teeming with simple life, microbial life. “We just have to get that 100% certainty to say that we found it and we don’t have that yet.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

With the rise of AI, we've all seen how powerful this new technology can be particularly when it comes to music. As a result, people have been using AI to perfectly replicate the singing voices of different artists such as Drake, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift and Harry Styles in order to make AI covers of different songs. For example, there is a viral AI cover of Harry Styles singing in a duet with Taylor Swift on her track Style which fans have been going crazy about. While AI can also be used to create deep fakes of celebrities too - where the celeb's face is digitally imposed on someone else's body which is often used to spread misinformation or for malicious intent. But what do artists think about this issue? Here are the celebrities who have spoken out so far on the topic of AI: Drake An AI song called "Heart on My Sleeve" that used Drake's and the Weeknd's voices went viral before being taken down by music streaming services. While Drake himself hasn't commented on all the AI songs that have been created, he did express his disapproval of the practice after the rapper responded to an AI-generated cover of him rapping Ice Spice’s “Munch”, writing: “This is the final straw AI.” Grimes Grimes has expressed enthusiasm towards the new AI-generated songs - and has told her fans they can use her voice to create their own tracks. Taking to Twitter, she shared a New York Times article about the viral AI-generated song using Drake and The Weeknd's voice. She wrote: "I'll split 50 per cent royalties on any successful AI-generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist I collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings." "I think it's cool to be fused w a machine and I like the idea of open-sourcing all art and killing copyright," she added. Though, later she did add a clarification on the platform as to what circumstances would cause her to get certain AI songs taken down for copyright - where "rly rly toxic lyrics," are used with her voice. "Ok hate this part but we may do copyright takedowns ONLY for rly rly toxic lyrics w grimes voice: imo you'd rly have to push it for me to wanna take smthn down but I guess plz don't be *the worst*. as in, try not to exit the current Overton window of lyrical content w regards to sex/violence. Like no baby murder songs plz," she wrote. "I think I'm Streisand effecting this now but I don't wanna have to issue a takedown and be a hypocrite later. ***That's the only rule." Rly don't like to do a rule but don't wanna be responsible for a Nazi anthem unless it's somehow in jest a la producers I guess "- wud prefer avoiding political stuff but if it's a small meme with ur friends we prob won't penalize that. Probably just if smthn is viral and anti abortion or smthn like that. Grimes added: "Rly rly don't like adding rules so I apologize but this is the only thing." Most recently, the singer and producer has shared a guide on how to do this, and shared the link in a tweet: "HOW TO MAKE MUSIC FEAT GrimesAI - we can distribute it for you and you can earn royalties from your work." Billie Eilish During an appearance on The Late, Late Show with James Corden back in May this year, Billie Eilish shared her thoughts on AI. "I feel like my approach is not as optimistic, I'm a little bit scared of it," she admitted. "I'm a little scared of what someone could create of me doing something with it." Eilish added: "Scary, scary to me, it just looks so real," as she went on to note how it's "One of the most impressive things I've encountered in my life." The singer's comments come after deepfake porn' of singer Eilish was promoted on people's TikTok in December last year. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.