Science

According to the Insect Museum of West China, locals in a village in China’s Sichuan province handed over “weird insects that resemble giant dragonflies with long teeth” earlier this month. Researchers at the museum identified the insects as an unusually large Dobsonfly.

African elephants may have the most developed sense of smell of any animal. Scientists have discovered that these elephants have 2,000 olfactory receptor (OR) genes, more than twice found in the genome of a dog, and five times that found in the human genome. The findings have been published in the journal Genome Research.

An increase in the number of great white sharks off Cape Cod is having a widely different effect than you might expect. Far from driving people away from the beach, the area has seen a huge boost in the sale of all things shark-related. The 1975 classic Jaws has even been playing in local theaters.

Birds and aeroplanes may follow a similar development path, and the study of technological development may offer an intriguing new way to study evolution due to its speed compared to biological evolution. These are the claims that have been made by Adrian Bejan, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University, published in the Journal of Applied Physics.

In a special recognition for the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon, President Obama celebrated with the surviving crew members of the NASA mission that put the first human steps on the moon. President Obama spoke privately in the oval office with astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, and Carol Armstrong, who was wife of the …

If researchers could watch an embryo’s cells develop in real time, they might be able to understand, track, and ultimately prevent, the formation of mutations and diseases in human infants. Recently, researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus, have taken the first step toward doing just that.

A rare blue-colored red king crab was part of a fisherman’s catch earlier this month in Nome, Alaska.

There’s one thing we definitely have in common with aliens, if they exist, and that’s a need to be near the sea. By creating a computer simulated pattern of ocean movement on a model of a planet much like Earth, scientists at the University of East Anglia were able to study how the presence or absence of an ocean affected …

June was the hottest month worldwide since recordkeeping began in 1880, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said. It marked the third month in a row that global temperature reached a record high, Xinhua news agency reports NOAA as saying in its monthly climate report.

Sixth-grader Lauren Arrington’s science fair project on lionfish showed that they can live in nearly fresh water, which surprised ecologists. Arrington’s results show that if lionfish migrate upstream in rivers, they could damage ecosystems because the lionfish don’t have any predators.

A reptile specialist leading the search for a snake on the loose in Lake Hopatcong now says it is a green anaconda, not a boa constrictor, as officials had maintained. Gerald Andrejcak told NJ.com that he was told by a local animal control officer to keep quiet about the true species to avoid raising public panic.