Since 2019, alliantgroup and the Houston Independent School District have been partnering for the SPARK Award, a program that rewards outstanding HISD science teachers who are increasing student engagement and achievement through innovative lesson plans that emphasize both the importance and fun aspects of science. The overall winner receives a $ 3,500 personal award plus … Read more
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Whether you need a new villain or an old Spider-Man, your sci-fi movie will sound more scientifically respectable if you use the word multiverse. The Marvel multiverse puts different versions of our universe “out there”, … Read more
For 65,000 years, Bininj – the local Kundjeihmi word for Aboriginal people – have returned to Madjedbebe rock shelter on Mirarr Country in the Kakadu region (in the Northern Territory). Over this immense span of time, the environment around the rock shelter has changed dramatically. Our paper, published last week in Quaternary Science Reviewsuses ancient … Read more
For years, Ahna Skop did not feel like she fit the mold of a scientist. She comes from a family of artists. Her father, Michael Skop, was a pupil of a famous Croatian artist, Ivan Meštrović, and her dad brought in students from all over the world to an art school they had at their … Read more
In early December 2021, I was seeing a physical therapist for a shoulder injury. During one of my visits, the therapist was alternating between me and another patient on an adjacent bed, who had a knee replacement. While the therapist worked on the other patient’s leg, stretching it and bending the knee, I eavesdropped on … Read more
A recently proposed aquaculture octopus farm in the Canary Islands would raise 3,000 metric tons of octopus a year, which means almost 275,000 individual octopuses will be killed annually. My research examines animal minds and ethics, and to me, the phrase “octopus culture” brings to mind Octopolis and Octlantis, two communities of wild octopuses in … Read more
Archaeologists excavating the well-preserved surface at the Xiamabei site, northern China, showing stone tools, fossils, ocher and red pigments. Credit: Fa-Gang Wang A well-preserved Paleolithic site in northern China reveals a new and previously unidentified set of cultural innovations. The discovery of a new culture suggests processes of innovation and cultural diversification occurring in Eastern … Read more
Scientists discovered remnants of an Old Stone Age culture, less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Beijing, where ancient hominins used a reddish pigment called ocher and crafted tiny, blade-like tools from stone. The archaeological site, called Xiamabei, offers a rare glimpse into the life of Homo sapiens and now-extinct human relatives who inhabited … Read more
A magnet holds tiny micrometeorites collected from sediment samples taken from an ancient Hopewell site. Credit: Michael Miller The rapid decline of the Hopewell culture about 1,500 years ago might be explained by falling debris from a near-Earth comet that created a devastating explosion over North America, laying waste to forests and Native American villages … Read more
More than 1500 years ago, a vast culture known as the Hopewell tradition (or Hopewell culture) stretched across what is today the eastern United States. The cause of the culture’s decline has long been debated, with war and climate change two of the possibilities, but now a new avenue of inquiry has opened up: debris … Read more