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Ousiometrics Analysis Says All Human Language Is Biased

A new tool drawing on billions of uses of more than 20,000 words and diverse real-world texts claims...

Wavelengths Of Light Are Why CO2 Cools The Upper Atmosphere But Warms Earth

There are concerns about projected warming on the Earth’s surface and in the lower atmosphere...

Here's Where Your Backyard Was 300 Million Years Ago

We may use terms like "grounded" and terra firma to mean stability and consistency but geology...

Convergent Evolution Cheat Sheet Now 120 Million Years Old

One tenet of natural selection is a random walk of genes but nature may be more predictable than...

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Fish is good for you. While fish farming takes hold, the legacy way of providing fish, boats and nets, is still in use. But in most parts of the world, it's hard to know how much fish is being caught, and that makes it difficult to engage in proper resource management or justify farmed fish.

Google Earth may be here to help.

Large fish traps in the Persian Gulf could be catching up to six times more fish than what's being officially reported, according to the first investigation of fish catches from space conducted by University of British Columbia scientists.

A recent paper from North Carolina State University found that companies that screen the social media accounts of job applicants alienate potential employees – making it harder for them to attract top job candidates.  

In some cases, social media screening might even increase the likelihood that job candidates may take legal action against the offending company. At least until the real world economy sets in.

In boxing a devastating puncher has heavy hands. On a cosmic scale, the high-speed 'jets' spat out by black holes pack a lot of power because they contain heavy atoms, astronomers have found. Black-hole jets recycle matter and energy into space and can affect when and where a galaxy forms stars.

Astronomers have known for decades that black-hole jets contain electrons, which are low-mass particles, but using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton space telescope and CSIRO's Compact Array radio telescope in northwest NSW, a research team found the first evidence of heavy atoms — iron and nickel — in the jets from a 'typical' black hole known as 4U1630-47.

More pollution causes thunderstorms to leave behind larger, deeper, longer lasting clouds, according to a new paper which can help provide a gauge for the accuracy of weather and climate models.

Researchers had thought that pollution causes larger and longer-lasting storm clouds by making thunderheads draftier through a process known as convection. But atmospheric scientist Jiwen Fan and her colleagues show that pollution instead makes clouds linger by decreasing the size and increasing the lifespan of cloud and ice particles. The difference affects how scientists represent clouds in climate models.

A new paper says that two compounds derived from garlic, diallyl sulfide and ajoene, significantly reduce the contamination risk of Cronobacter sakazakii in the production of dry infant formula powder. 

The discovery could make the product safer to consume, easing the minds of new mothers who can't or opt not to breastfeed.

"A trace dose of these two compounds is extremely effective in killing C. sakazakii in the food manufacturing process," says Xiaonan Lu, corresponding author and assistant professor of food safety engineering at the University of British Columbia. "They have the potential to eliminate the pathogen before it ever reaches the consumer."

Our Galaxy may have been swallowing "pills" — clouds of gas with a magnetic wrapper — to keep making stars for the past eight billion years, according to CSIRO astronomer Dr. Alex Hill and colleagues, in their study of the Smith Cloud, a large gas cloud falling into our Galaxy from intergalactic space.

Named after its discoverer, Gail Bieger (née Smith), the Smith Cloud is at least two million times the mass of our Sun. If it were visible to the naked eye, it would look 20 times wider than the full Moon. The Smith Cloud is one of thousands of "high velocity clouds" of hydrogen gas flying around the outskirts of our Galaxy.