Every winter and spring, great white sharks that usually dwell off the coast of California gather in a remote section of ocean the size of Colorado — and scientists are slowly piecing together why. ... Read full Story
AGI could be on the horizon thanks to a novel computing architecture that completely redefines how artificial neurons form an intelligent system. ... Read full Story
September could be a prime time to see vibrant auroras, thanks to a quirk of Earth's tilt that leads to more intense geomagnetic activity around the equinox. ... Read full Story
Tiny robots much smaller than blood cells could deliver clot-forming drugs where they're needed most, a study in rabbits suggests. The tech has yet to be tested in humans. ... Read full Story
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick speaks with Science Quickly host Rachel Feltman about how he captures jaw-dropping images from space ... Read full Story
New research harnessed the highly absorbent dye tartrazine, used as the common food coloring Yellow No. 5, to turn tissues in living mice clear—temporarily revealing organs and vessels inside the animals ... Read full Story
New James Webb Space Telescope results have revealed that there may not be a Hubble tension after all. But contradictions within the findings point to a deeper mystery. ... Read full Story
A flowery passage in a 6,000-year-old Hindu text may be the earliest known reference to a solar eclipse, describing the sun as being "pierced" with darkness and gloom and proposing that evil beings had caused the sun's "magic arts to vanish." ... Read full Story
Takara Bio USA, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Takara Bio Inc., today announced the launch of the SmartChip ND™ Real-Time PCR System, an automated, research-use-only (RUO), high-throughput qPCR solution for monitoring antimicrobial resistance (AMR), supporting efforts to ensure environmental safety and sustainability. ... Read full Story
“The eagerness to vilify ‘the other side’—usually on social media—complicates the less reactionary work that defines our mission.” — Jerry Brewer, The Washington Post, 11 June 2024
Did you know?
It seems reasonable to assume that the words vilify and villain come from the same source; after all, to vilify someone is—in some ways—to make them out to be a villain. Such is not the case, however. Although the origin stories of both vilify and villain involve Latin, their roots are quite different. Vilify came to English (via Middle English and Late Latin) from the Latin adjective vilis, meaning “cheap” or “vile.” Someone who has been vilified, accordingly, has had their reputation tarnished or cheapened in such a way that they’re viewed as morally reprehensible. Villain on the other hand, comes from the Medieval Latin word villanus, meaning “villager,” and ultimately from the Latin noun villa, meaning “house.” The Middle English descendent of villanus developed the meaning of “a person of uncouth mind and manners” due to the vilifying influence of the aristocracy of the time, and the connotations worsened from there until villain came to refer to (among other things), a deliberate scoundrel.