Advice4all

The mystery of how a USB stick came to be found in a frozen sample of leopard seal poop in New Zealand has been solved, and it’s an interesting journey, to say the least. Last week, the world was simultaneously surprised and intrigued when the story of the USB popping up unexpectedly made headlines.   Researchers at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) run a leopard seal program to study the rare seals, and one of the best ways to do this is to look at their scat. It can tell a huge amount about what the seals eat, where they go, and their health. To get it, however, they need volunteers who collect the samples and …

The Earth’s magnetic field is shaped by the complex motion of molten metals in the Earth’s core and by interactions with electric particles coming from the Sun. The boundaries of the field are constantly shifting and researchers have found evidence to suggest that the edge of the magnetosphere can vibrate like a drum. This idea was first proposed 45 years ago. When the outer boundary of the field, known as the magnetopause, is struck by solar plasma, ripples propagate across the surface. When these vibrations reach the poles they are reflected back. This creates an interference pattern known as a standing wave pattern, just like how a drum’s sound is produced. As reported in Nature Communications, this is the first …

Last year, Europe saw 82,596 new cases of measles, three times as many as 2017, and a staggering 15 times more than the record low in 2016. 2018 saw the highest number of people contracting the disease in Europe in a decade. The disease can be fatal, with 72 children and adults dying last year because of it, according to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) report. Ninety-two percent of cases come from just 10 countries. The list, in order of most to least cases, is Ukraine, Serbia, Israel, France, Italy, Russia, Georgia, Greece, Albania, and Romania. Only six out of the 53 countries in the WHO Europe region didn’t have any new cases. Sixty-one percent of people that became infected required hospitalization. The WHO …