30 articles from SATURDAY 31.8.2019

Evacuations begin in Bahamas as Category 4 Dorian bears down

Hurricane Dorian shut down most major resorts in the Bahamas and forced authorities to evacuate much of the northern shore and low-lying islands Saturday as the fierce Category 4 storm prepared to unleash torrents of rain but was projected to spin farther away from the coast of the Southeast U.S. next week.

How forecasters track Hurricane Dorian

The path of Hurricane Dorian, which is currently over the Atlantic and heading for the state of Florida, is closely monitored by US weather services with powerful forecasting tools.

If you want to get things done, pause

Taking time out is crucial. Don’t fill up your whole day and you can kickstart a new sense of rhythmMachines work well at a constant speed – and the faster the better. They are designed and built for it. Whether they are spinning cotton or crunching numbers, regular, repetitive actions are what they excel at. Increasingly, our world is designed by machines, for machines. Digital technology...

The greatest threat to life on Earth may come from space

Asteroids and space debris could wreak untold devastation on the planetNext year, Nasa will launch what all involved hope will be the most impactful space mission to date. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) is designed to smash headlong into its target. It’s an attempt to deflect an asteroid as a test of what to do if we spot a similar space rock on a collision course with our...

How forecasters track Hurricane Dorian

The path of Hurricane Dorian, which is currently over the Atlantic and heading for the state of Florida, is closely monitored by US weather services with powerful forecasting tools. On Friday, for example, seven flights by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the US Air Force with aircraft known as "hurricane hunters" were planned in and around Dorian. One of them,...

‘Tardigrades on the Moon Is Not Good’

On April 11, 2019, the Israeli SpaceIL company’s Beresheet (Hebrew for “In the Beginning”) lunar lander crashed on the Moon. Beresheet’s payload, supplied by the non-profit Arch Mission Foundation, was meant to be an informational backup for the Earth. It included a DVD containing 30 million pages of human knowledge, as well as 60,000 etched pages requiring no computer to read, keys to...

Chinese scientists 'make first perfect replica' of tooth enamel

Scientists at a Chinese university say they have discovered the world's first material that can repair damaged tooth enamel once and last for life.A few drops of the liquid solution can fix all invisible cracks and wear on an ageing molar, according to researchers at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, eastern China, whose work was published on Friday in the journal Science Advances.The material,...

Couch potatoes have twice the risk of an early death, major study suggests

Couch potatoes are twice as likely to die early, a major study suggests. Scientists tracked more than 23,000 adults for more than two decades to assess the impact of exercise on health. The research found that those with sedentary lifestyles for the whole period saw their risk of early death rise by 99 per cent.  The chance of a deadly heart attack or stroke was 168 per cent higher than that of...

Fires not the only threat facing Amazon

Raging wildfires have drawn the world's attention to the Amazon but immolation is just one of the dangers facing the world's largest rain forest, environmental experts across the region say.

Handful of nuts twice a week can cut chance of dying from heart disease by almost a fifth, study finds

Eating a handful of nuts at least twice a week could cut the risk of dying from heart disease by almost a fifth, research has found. Experts said they were a good source of unsaturated fat, containing polyphenols which help to prevent heart attacks and strokes. More than 5,000 adults, aged 35 and over, with no history of heart disease, were quizzed about their diet in detail, every two years. Over...

Iran official tweets at Trump after apparent rocket failure

An Iranian official published an image Saturday of a satellite after an apparent rocket explosion at the space center meant to launch it, tweeting at President Donald Trump after the American leader shared online what appeared to be a surveillance photo of the aftermath. The tweet from Iran's Information and Communications Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, including a selfie of...