Peacock tail feathers are beautiful and iconic, but scientists have long believed that the birds pay a steep price for impressing peahens with their elaborate plumage. Peacocks are not the greatest of flyers, especially when taking off. Their tails are thought to be both too bulky and heavy for the birds to take flight in a hurry, which could be making them more vulnerable to predator attacks. So, do peacoc ...

A recently opened store in Berlin, Germany, is adding to a growing trend of “precycling” shopping, making packaging a thing of the past! Original Unverpackt (“Originally Unpackaged”) was founded by Milena Glimbovski and Sara Wolf, and opened its doors to the public on 13 September. Customers bring their own containers to the store, have them weighed and labelled, and then they shop. When they get to the til ...

How many of us have been to hospital for the smallest thing and had to wear that shapeless hospital gown - wearing nothing underneath - that doesn’t quite meet at the back? In the past, little thought has gone to how these gowns make the patient feel, in regards to their dignity and state of mind. But doctors in Canada have been conducting a study that looks into how the hospital experience could be improve ...

Mechanical engineers in Canada have developed a chin strap that can harness the energy from chewing and convert it into electricity that could one day power hearing aids, earpieces and other small devices. Study co-authors Dr Jeremie Voix and Dr Aidin Delnavaz from Montreal’s École de Technologie Supérieure have previously worked on auditory technology, such as cochlear implants and powered ear-muffs, and w ...

Finally, some good news for sharks and manta rays! On 14 September, new international laws went into effect to provide extra protection for five species of shark and all species of manta ray. Sharks and manta rays are hunted for a variety of reasons - food, medicine, trophies - and have been brought increasingly closer to the brink of extinction over the years. They are not the types of creatures that can b ...

The ozone layer, the Earth's protective shield that absorbs most of the Sun’s cancer-causing UV radiation, has been diminishing for decades. We can all remember the horror stories about how it will only be so long before it dissipates completely. But a new report from the WMO and UNEP (World Meteorological Organisation and United Nations Environment Programme) suggests that after years of depletion, the ozo ...

We all have some things we associate with bad memories - a scent, a place, a song - but what if we could turn the negativity we feel for those things around, so that positivity is ignited instead? Scientists from the Riken-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics (CNCG) in Massachusetts in the US have managed to accomplish just that, without having to return to the place where the memory was first formed, and ...

Believed to have been built at some point between 3000BC and 2000BC (making it more than 4,000 years old!), Stonehenge is one of the most famous sites in the world. And yet, such mystery surrounds not only how it got there, but also why it was built there. And now that mystery has deepened even further since a first-of-its-kind study has found 15 further monuments beneath Stonehenge that have either had the ...

A student from Hampshire has made a scientific breakthrough that could save the lives of people - specifically athletes - with an undiagnosed heart condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). HCM is an inherited condition in which the heart’s muscle wall becomes thickened and stuff. This makes it more difficult for the heart to pump blood out into the rest of the body and can lead to the heart stopp ...

Over the last year, we have told you about the polite conversation of marmoset monkeys and the translated gestures of chimpanzees. And while animals are evidently capable of communicating with each other in their own way, few appear to do so vocally. Now, scientists from the WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and National Institute of Amazonian Research observing Giant South American River Turtles in Brazi ...