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Cosmos Magazine (Austrália) online
Em 2025: 3 notícias
Desde 1995: 13 notícias
Microplastics even infiltrate the world’s most protected marine areas
Publicado em 01 de junho de 2025
The world is being inundated with microplastics. They are in our drinking water, soil, and air. They’re deep in the Mariana Trench, on the top of Everest, and in our bodies. Now, they are being found in fully protected marine areas.
A new study led by Brazilian and Australian scientists reveals that even Areas of Integral Protection (API) – the most restrictive class of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), where all human activity is prohibited – are contaminated by [...]
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Fossilised Hell ant lives up to its name
Publicado em 28 abril 2025Ants crawl and tunnel their way through almost every landmass on Earth today – except Antarctica and some remote or inhospitable islands. This wasn’t always the case, but new research suggests that ants had made their way into global ecosystems earlier than previously thought. “Our team has discovered a new fossil ant species representing the earliest undisputable geological record of ants,” says Anderson Lepeco from the Museum of Zoology of the University of [...]ver notícia -
Origins of human language: a new genetic analysis
Publicado emComplex language is something that sets humans apart from other animals. But when did this unique capacity for intricate communication emerge? Linguists have postulated that there may be an ancient language that sits at the root of all modern languages. This theory was strengthened in the 19th and 20th centuries with the discovery of links between the Indo-European language groups, leading to the suggestion of an ancient Proto-Indo-European language which would have been spoken up to 7,000 [...]ver notícia -
The amazing world of the miniature flea toad
Publicado em 30 outubro 2024Researchers have discovered a new species of flea toad in which one of the adults measured just 6.95mm in length – the second smallest adult vertebrate ever described. Vertebrates are animals with a spine, which includes all fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. But this new flea toad, Brachycephalus dacnis, which was found in the Atlantic Rainforest in Ubatuba on the coast of Brazil, is tiny. Only one related species of the genus is known to be smaller. “There [...]ver notícia -
Catastrophe might have created the first ant farms
Publicado em 03 outubro 2024When an asteroid slammed into Earth 66 million years ago, it caused a mass extinction. Now researchers have evidence that this catastrophe ushered in the invention of agriculture by ants. “Extinction events can be huge disasters for most organisms, but it can actually be positive for others,” says Ted Schultz, curator of ants at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and senior author of the paper. “At the end of the Cretaceous, dinosaurs did not do very well, [...]ver notícia -
Sperm study recommends quarantine after COVID-19
Publicado em 05 junho 2024Brazilian researchers have discovered the COVID-19 virus in sperm up to 3 months after infection, which they say should make people think carefully about the time babies might be conceived. Details of the new study, in the journal Andrology, revealed the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, can remain inside sperm for up to 3 months following hospital discharge (100-110 days after initial infection). Based on their results, the researchers from the University of São Paulo [...]ver notícia -
Ancient fossil in Brazil genetically similar to modern populations
Publicado em 31 julho 2023Luzio, a 10,000-year-old skeleton from São Paulo, Brazil, has some familiar-looking DNA. He belongs to the same genetic population as all modern-day Indigenous peoples of the Americas, according to new research published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Luzio was previously thought to have possibly belonged to a different, older, population, who settled in modern-day Brazil around 14,000 years ago. “Genetic analysis showed Luzio to be an Amerindian, like the Tupi, [...]ver notícia -
Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment is often depicted wrongly – what does that mean for how we teach science?
Publicado em 02 junho 2023Benjamin Franklin strode outside one day in 1752, flew his kite in a thunderstorm, and discovered electricity when it got struck by lightning. Right? Well, no. There are several inaccuracies in that sentence. Franklin performed the experiment while remaining under shelter, there was no lightning strike, and he certainly didn’t discover electricity – he just confirmed the link between lightning and sparks made by other things he and his peers had been tinkering with, [...]ver notícia -
How asymmetry could make better vaccines
Publicado em 20 abril 2022A group of researchers have found a way to make vaccines 25% more effective – using an old chemical trick. They’ve developed a substance that, at least in a lab-based study, significantly boosts an immune response. The discovery revolves around the concept of chirality. Chiral things are asymmetrical in a way that means they can be physically identical, but visually different. Your hands are the most obvious example of chirality: while your left and right hands are [...]ver notícia -
The not so simple life of barchans
Publicado em 18 dezembro 2020Research uncovers their dynamics and interactions.ver notícia