Awesome Science: King Tutankhamun died from broken leg made worse by malaria

Scientists have finally discovered how King Tutankhamun died, nearly a century after the boy-pharaoh’s tomb was unearthed in Egypt.

A DNA study revealed today the 19-year-old died from complications from a broken leg that was exacerbated by malaria.

It also found the famous king suffered from a cleft palate and club foot and was a ‘frail king who needed canes to walk.’

Tut, who became pharaoh at the age of 10 in 1333 B.C, ruled for just nine years until his death. He was the last of the royal line from the eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom, one of the most powerful royal houses of ancient Egypt. Read more …

Mind-reading Brain Implant Could Allow Paralysed to Turn Their Thoughts Into Instant Speech

A revolutionary new device that reads a person’s thoughts and turns them into speech could soon change the lives of paralysed patients around the world.

The Neuralynx System is being developed by a team of scientists led by Professor Frank Guenther at Boston University.

Users will simply have to think of what they want to say and a voice synthesizer will translate the thoughts into speech almost immediately.

The patient had a stroke in the brain, which stopped neural signals from travelling through the body. The electrode bypassed these channels and sent the thought signals to an FM receiver outside the body to a speech synthesizer via a neural decoder

They have tested the device on a patient who has ‘locked-in syndrome’, after a stroke stopped neural signals travelling from his brain to the rest of his body.

The rare condition means the person is aware and awake, but cannot move or communicate due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body except for the eyes. Read more …

Ocean in Motion: Surfer Captures Mesmerising World Where Waves Break Against the Shore

Churning up the golden sands, a wave breaks upon the shore in a glorious mix of emerald greens and frothy whites.

The crystal clear shots were taken by photographer Clark Little, who spent two years capturing these remarkable shots in Hawaii.

Featured in his new book, ‘The Shorebreak Art of Clark Little’, he braved the notoriously fierce swell off the coast of the island to illustrate the beauty of the ocean.
waves Read more …

Antplant Ants Are Never Satisfied: Ant House

In tropical forests, certain types of trees serve as homes for ants, providing hollow stems or leaf pouches where the insects can live and raise young. In return, the ants keep hungry herbivores at bay and occasionally kill surrounding vegetation, creating a clearing around the trees. Tropical biologists have now discovered that sometimes these ants branch out farther, invading other types of trees beyond the clearing. But are they out to destroy–or are they just trying to make new friends?

Ant house. Tropical ants have caused giant galls to form in this tree, and they fill the chambers (top inset) with their nesting activities (bottom inset). Read more …

T. rex, Meet Your Great-Grandfather; That’s my Boy! Raptorex has Proven to be a Pint-sized Version of its Famous Descendant, T. rex.

Tyrannosaurus rex now has his “mini me.” Paleontologists have discovered a creature that matched the famed dinosaur in nearly every respect–but was only one-fifth the size. The fossil, which the team has named Raptorex kriegsteini, may overturn previous thinking about the rise of the most famous predator among the “Terrible Lizards.”

Just about every schoolchild can spot a T. rex–even a stuffed version. The huge head, the powerful jaws bristling with long teeth, the magnificent tail, and the stubby arms–all have been immortalized in photo, story, and screen. Read more …

And the Solar System’s Coldest Spot Is …

What’s the coldest spot in the solar system? For now, that distinction belongs to permanently shadowed craters near the moon’s south pole, according to the first results from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft announced today at a NASA press conference.

Shivering in at a mere 33 degrees above absolute zero, the regions are likely places to find deposits of water ice, a resource that would be in demand if astronauts ever live on the moon. Another instrument has returned hints of water ice in some of these cold spots, scientists announced at the press conference, but it also showed signs of water ice in impossibly hot places, too. More data are needed, as every scientist in the press conference managed to note. Read more …

Awesome Science: Floppy Wings = Efficient Flight

Next time you’re on an airplane, check out the wings. Every bolt and rivet is flush with the surface, creating an extremely smooth shape. The wings of the desert locust are not nearly as sleek: They’re covered with ridges and veins, and they twist and deform as they flap. But these features make the insect an efficient flier, albeit at lower speeds, according to a new study.

Master flyer. Smoke trails show how air flows over the twisting and efficient wings of the desert locust.

Biologists and engineers have long known that insect wings are more complex than just flat, rigid flapping plates. But most models of insect flight have treated them this way because scientists needed to simplify their calculations and lacked a detailed picture of how the wings actually work. Read more …