Norman Byrd

Researchers in Japan have discovered that a drug called edonerpic maleate has proven effective in aiding laboratory mice and monkeys recover from strokes. The drug helps rewire the damaged brain of stroke victims and aids in improving their recovery. As reported by MedicalXpress this week, several institutions in Japan conducted experiments to ascertain the possibility […]

Phosphorus is one of six chemical elements necessary for life to exist on Earth, and scientists studying supernovae explosions have found a surprising lack of phosphorus in certain parts of the universe. The discovery suggests that alien life may not be very prevalent — or even nonexistent — in these areas. The Royal Astronomical Society […]

Could something as simple as an over-the-counter medication — specifically: ibuprofen — actually be the first effective preventative in the war against the debilitating disease known as Alzheimer’s? According to a recent discovery by Vancouver-based Aurin Biotech, it may well be that ibuprofen could soon be used in staving off the onset or lessening the […]

Hundreds of thousands of protesters and activists hit the streets in the United States and around the world on Saturday, March 24, in a show of solidarity for gun law reform, raising their voices in an effort to prompt governmental legislation geared toward ending gun violence, particularly gun violence occurring in schools. Called the “March […]

Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was interviewed by 60 Minutes and wasted no time in rebuking the idea of training and/or arming school teachers to help protect students in the event of an attack by an active shooter crisis. She told the news […]

A new study suggests that Donald Trump became president of the United States due to a growing neuroticism throughout the American populace and that the neurotic voting trend was not picked up by the usually reliable prediction models because those models did not perceive an inclusion of “irrational” voting behavior. The study further concludes that […]

The flu virus claimed the lives of 17 children in the United States last week. At the same time, it was reported that roughly 4,000 people are dying each week due to pneumonia and variants of the deadly virus. And yet, experts are saying that the deadliest flu season in a decade has peaked and […]

Scientists are working to further develop a life-seeking instrument — a DNA sequencer — that may be used to confirm the existence of alien life on Mars and moons within the Solar System where it is believed living organisms may have emerged. Called the MiniON, the device is portable and will be small enough to […]

Boston Robotics set the Internet afire in 2015 when it debuted its new robot dog, Spot, a seeming gears-and-metal quadruped that uncannily mimicked (in a machine-esque manner) the movements of the all too familiar canine that has become one of mankind’s most cherished companions. Just this past week, the company did it again, releasing a […]

Astronomers are set to get a powerful boost to their capabilities of detecting exoplanets and in determining whether or not said worlds circling faraway stars are Earth-like — and they’ll be provided that boost with a powerful new detection device, a black box known as ESPRESSO. Phys.org has reported that ESPRESSO, a spectrograph whose name […]

The search for signs of alien intelligence in the universe has been ongoing for centuries, with the organized manifestation of that search — SETI, or the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence — by scientists now closing in on roughly a century. The organization that bears the name SETI in its title (the SETI Institute) itself has […]

With all the talk of late about artificial intelligence and a robot takeover of the world (or at least a fairly large portion of the job market of the future), readers of Stylist, a British fashion magazine, were witness to a cover image this month of what it might look like if a robot were […]

Sales of potassium iodide pills, known popularly for their reported ability to ward off radiation sickness, spiked in the wake of nuclear war rhetoric between North Korea and US President Donald Trump that made international headlines in the first few days of the new year. Purchases of the pills also follow a continuing trend of […]

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta have announced that they will be holding a nuclear war response briefing in mid-January in an effort to prepare the American populace for a potential nuclear attack and its aftermath. The idea is to mitigate the likelihood of widespread illnesses due to radiation exposure and brief the […]

A team of more than 200 researchers that includes Tabetha Boyajian, the Louisiana State astronomer that first detected the strangely dimming star that has become known as “Tabby’s Star,” and Jason Wright, the Penn State assistant professor who was part of the research team that originally posited that the star officially designated as KIC 8462852 […]

The current flu season is shaping up to be one of the worst in years, according to health experts, with cases of influenza surging in the past week in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The surge is led by a particularly deadly strain of influenza and, unfortunately for the populations of both […]

Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, speaking on the subject of the recent revelations of a Pentagon-operated UFO investigation program that ran from 2007 through 2012, says that people tend to confuse the mystery presented by UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) with the existence of aliens. He says that the former does not necessitate the latter. And […]

Do you believe in aliens, or, rather, do you believe that alien life exists on other worlds? If you do, you are not alone. A Dutch study has revealed that roughly two-thirds of humanity believes that some form of life exists on other planets and just a little less than half of those surveyed believed […]

An international organization of space exploration agencies have plans to place a “gateway” orbital platform in low Earth orbit to act as a waystation for future missions to the Moon, targeted asteroids, and Mars. In an updated planning document called the Global Exploration Roadmap, the organization is hopeful that what is being referred to as […]

Plastic pollution has become such a problem in Indonesia that it inspired one entrepreneur to develop and sell edible containers made of seaweed, thus hoping to combat the worsening accumulation of plastic trash in the Asian nation. Evoware, the manufacturers of seaweed containers and packaging, is hoping to put a dent in the country’s plastic […]

The search for alien life may soon be expanded to include a privately funded mission to Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, one that would precede a future trip by NASA by several years. Breakthrough Initiatives, the alien contact project sponsored by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, is currently open to the idea and could, within the next few […]

A common fear for those with heart maladies, not to mention the partners and spouses of said individuals, is that death by heart stoppage — referred to as a cardiac arrest — will occur during the excitable stages of, especially during and immediately after, sex. A new study has revealed that there is very little […]

When we think of robots and the duties they perform (or will one day perform), the images that come to mind are not usually associated with water, but a Swiss robotics company has developed a modular robot that not only resembles an eel, it moves through the water like one and is designed to work […]

Thus far, all pertinent data scientists have gathered up to this point suggests that the universe should not exist, which, by extension, pushes the idea that our understanding of physics is somehow wrong or, at the very least, incomplete. And yet, the universe does exist, exemplified by all the objects that populate the expanding superstructure, […]

Data analyzed from a Japanese space probe has revealed that a gigantic space cave exists on the near side of the Moon. Data indicates that the massive cavern is roughly 328 feet (100 meters) wide, stretches for 31 miles (50 kilometers) and descends some 164 feet (50 meters) under the Moon’s surface at its deepest. […]

Archaeologists using satellite image surveys announced this week that they have discovered at least 400 stone structures — dubbed “gates” for their resemblance to field gates when viewed from above — of unknown origin in remote Saudi Arabia. Located at the edges of dormant volcanoes, researchers are estimating that the formations are thousands of years […]

And still more evidence has been presented to suggest that there are not only the eight known worlds in the solar train of planets but that there exists a yet undiscovered massive world — a Planet X or Planet Nine — that orbits in the outer Solar System. Researchers at the University of Michigan constructed […]

Former Vice President Joe Biden took to Facebook this week to denounce President Donald Trump’s decision to not certify the 2015 nuclear treaty between Iran and the United States, Russia, China, and the European Union (with nations Germany, France, and the United Kingdom as co-signatories as well). Biden, who was a long-time member of the […]

There is increasing evidence that a massive planet — dubbed Planet Nine, or Planet X — far beyond Neptune exists and is perturbing the orbits of an enormous number of objects stretching throughout the Solar System’s Kuiper Belt. Although the massive super-Earth-sized world has yet to be discovered, one proponent of its existence maintains that […]

Research conducted by an Australian team of scientists has concluded that a giant marsupial called diprotodon, a mammal distantly related to today’s koalas and wombats, once roamed the isolated continent in a unique manner — it is the only known marsupial that followed a seasonal migratory pattern. Oddly enough, the discovery resulted from studying the […]

A new longevity study suggests that reducing the alcohol consumption by just one liter per capita, per year would have a significant impact on not only the number of deaths from at least three forms of cancer in males and females, it would decrease the number of deaths from head and neck cancers for all […]

On the September 12 edition of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Comedy Central, contributor Michelle Wolf highlighted a few moments from the latest Miss America Pageant to show how any one of the 51 participants involved in the 2018 contest was better qualified to be president of the United States than its current […]

We are being warned constantly that the next catastrophic asteroid or comet strike could come at any time, but a new study indicates that there are about 10 times fewer “city killer” asteroids hurtling through space than had been previously estimated. Still, the actual number of potentially deadly Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) is still astronomically high. […]

China and Russia are expected to sign a 5-year agreement that would see the two nations embark on a collaborative effort involving manned space missions as well as future missions to the Moon, a Chinese news source reports. The agreement is slated to for an October signing and would be the first of its kind. […]

Paleontologists have discovered yet another species of titanosaurian dinosaur, this time in Tanzania. But what they found particularly interesting about the new species was that it had more characteristics similar to titanosaurs discovered in South America than it did to its closer geographical cousins in Africa. Phys.org reported this week that the fossil remains of […]

A former spokesman for President Barack Obama has made a clear distinction between the current White House resident, Donald Trump, and his former boss with regard to reports that new Chief of Staff John Kelly is vetting information that gets through to the president. In short, the former spokesman acknowledged that the material Obama saw […]

A recent poll indicates that almost half of Trump supporters — more specifically, Trump voters — would rather have Jefferson Davis, the slave-owning president of the Confederate States of America, as president of the U.S. than former President Barack Obama. Given the accuracy of polls and the disclaimers of a few points for margin of […]

A new poll indicates that almost two-thirds of all President Trump supporters cannot think of anything he could do to shake their loyalty to him. To be clear: six out of 10 people who approve of Trump cannot envision anything that would make them disapprove of the job he is doing as president. Monmouth University […]

A NASA scientist, working on the data gathered through the extensive tracking of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroid Apophis, has concluded that the 400-meter (1312 feet, or just under one-quarter of a mile) wide asteroid poses no serious threat of colliding with the Earth in its next fly-by in 2029. In fact, the odds against the […]

Comedian and former late night talk show host Chelsea Handler took to Twitter this week with what looks like a suggestion for the nation’s military leaders to remove Donald Trump from the presidency. She underscored the suggestion with the comment that the generals would be judged negatively by history should they allow the Trump administration […]

Kayleigh McEnany, the sometimes controversial CNN contributor who was known for her pro-Trump stances, left the news giant this week for a new position — working as the anchor for the video newscasts of the “Real News,” as opposed to what President Donald Trump has disparaged as “fake news,” something he has accused CNN of […]

Iran announced this week that it had successfully carried out the launch of its most advanced satellite-carrying rocket to date, but the news was met by many as a possible violation of its 2015 nuclear treaty and was seen as more of an attempt at developing an intercontinental ballistic missile than furthering Iran’s goals as […]

A new poll has revealed that nearly half of American liberals do not want to be in the same company as Trump supporters. Not only that, a majority of Americans find it stressful to discuss politics with an individual who has a differing opinion on Trump. A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, […]

Two astronomers from Spain have announced that their research has uncovered evidence that corroborates the hypothesis of a potential massive Planet Nine orbiting in the outer Solar System. Using an analysis of the nodes, the two points where a celestial body crosses the plane of said Solar System, the astronomers found that the data supported […]

Kesha is back with new music that the pop singer/songwriter insists was inspired by a UFO sighting she had in the Joshua Tree National Park in California. She also insists that she was totally sober during the encounter and what she saw was multiple “spaceships.” Appearing on the Zach Sang Show, Kesha, now 30, talked […]

A senior astronomer at the SETI (Search for Extraterrrestrial Intelligence) Institute has voiced some doubts as to whether the 1947 Roswell UFO Incident was actually an alien visitation. And he has doubts that the ongoing conspiracy theories concerning a massive military and government cover-up of the reported incident stand up to close inspection as well. […]

In remarks certain to be a bit unpopular among UFO researchers, conspiracy theorists, and “experiencers” (what alien abduction victims call themselves), noted astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson last week firmly insisted that there is no hard scientific evidence that UFOs (unidentified flying objects) have been and/or are presently visiting Earth and its people. He said that […]

President Donald Trump voiced his frustration at the the lack of progress that diplomatic talks and economic sanctions have had on the Kim Jong-un regime in North Korea with regard to the Asian nation’s nuclear program and continuing ballistic missile tests. Speaking alongside South Korea President Moon Jae-in, Trump declared that U.S. “patience is over” […]

Data gleaned from observations taken from the Kepler Space Telescope indicates that there are far more rocky planets like Earth than astronomers previously estimated. And with more exoplanets that could have similar general characteristics to our planet, the only known harbor of living organisms that we know about, the more likely we are to find […]

A direct asteroid impact on Earth that causes catastrophic damage will occur “sooner or later,” an expert has warned, and it is not a matter of if, but when. The worst part? The Earth has the technology and wherewithal to detect, prepare, and defend itself against a potentially devastating asteroid impact but, to date, is […]