lurking

An image depicting an ancient Mayan temple.Mercury exposure may have been a health risk for the ancient Maya.Mesoamerica’s ancient Maya cities never cease to amaze visitors. However, an unexpected danger lurks under the soil’s surface: mercury pollution. Researchers have found in a review article published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science that this pollution is not modern: it is the result of the Maya’s widespread usage of mercury and mercury-containing products between 250 and 1100 CE. There are areas…

Sink drains and plumbing are generally unpleasant places, at least from a human perspective.If you're a fungus, though, you may feel differently. In fact, one reason we're often repulsed by sinks – along with dirty sponges and other sink paraphernalia – is precisely because they're such great habitats for unsavory microbes.In a new study by researchers from the University of Reading and UK Center for Ecology & Hydrology, scientists took a deep dive into this murky ecosystem, investigating more than 250 "restroom sink…

Researchers have uncovered evidence that vast phytoplankton blooms may be lurking beneath Antarctic ice.Scientists using <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>NASA</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is…

Twilight observations with the US Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera at NOIRLab’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile have enabled astronomers to spot three near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) hiding in the glare of the Sun. These NEAs are part of an elusive population that lurks inside the orbits of Earth and Venus. One of the asteroids is the largest object that is potentially hazardous to Earth to be discovered in the last eight years. Credit: DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da…

Knowing jazz standards is your ticket to join ensembles. Credit: Josephine Bevan/Unsplash We are two female jazz singers, jazz researchers and lovers of jazz. And we have discovered jazz gave us another shared experience—sexism. …

For their study, Hinz and her colleagues enlisted the help of the New Zealand customs authority. Staff used probes, which they pushed through the rubber seals of the container doors, to collect gas samples from 490 sealed containers. Hinz also gathered air samples from dozens of other containers herself, tracking how the concentrations of compounds changed in real time as the containers were opened and the air inside allowed to mix with fresh outside air.The investigation revealed plenty of nasty substances. The customs…

There are a lot of asteroids to track in our solar system and many are yet to be discovered.Cloud-Based Astrodynamics Platform To Discover and Track AsteroidsDiscovering and tracking asteroids is critical for planetary defense against killer asteroid impacts. The detailed astronomical data associated with it is also useful for providing new insights for astronomers. Helping with this task is a new algorithm called THOR, which has now proven to be capable of finding asteroids. It has been running on the Asteroid…

Author Sarah Perry’s 2016 novel The Essex Serpent is a story about a fictional village descending into madness as more and more people become convinced that there’s a mythical beast lurking in the nearby waters. But The Essex Serpent also revolved around a complicated romance that Apple seems keen on exploring in its upcoming adaptation of the book — at least judging from the first trailer. The Essex Serpent follows as Cora Seaborne (Claire Danes) and her companion Martha (Hayley Squires) journey to the fictional…