Sign up to our newsletter The Weird Science Drop
The newsletter goes where other, more-sensible publications fear to tread. Every week, it brings the overlooked, under-the-radar and, above all else, most madcap science news, views and research straight to your email.
From the keyboard of Daniel Smith, The Weird Science Drop keeps a close eye on the latest scientific discoveries and research while also unearthing the little-heard strange stories from the past.
Daniel is an experienced journalist who has worked for news websites on both sides of the Atlantic. Back in the furthest reaches of time somewhere near Watford he fancied himself as an astrophysicist but proved to be hopeless. So he put down the telescope and picked up a pen instead.
Daniel was once the author of the Weird Science Blog - one of the top blogs in this media group - and is delighted to get back in the saddle.
He said: 'It's been great to dust off the old white lab coat and bring Weird Science back but this time in a far better, more dynamic fashion with The Weird Science Drop.
'The newsletter will hunt out the choicest morsels of science goodness, where everything from the world's unluckiest scientist who inadvertently tried to end the planet twice to research showing monkeys are the world's best yodellers is put under the microscope.
'I'll try to keep people informed, amazed and astounded, while hopefully provoking the old smile along the way.
'So why not subscribe?'
So what's in The Weird Science Drop?
Each newsletter will feature regular sections such as Weird Science News, Photo of the Week, Infographic Magic, plus a rotating platter of goodness including…
How do I sign up for The Weird Science Drop?
The Weird Science Drop will be published on Substack, an independent platform with no ads, making for a cleaner reading experience than on many other websites.
You can read there on desktop or the app, or simply from your email inbox. So not only do you not have to go searching for the news itself – or wait for the algorithm to decide this is what you might like to see – you don't even have to search for the newsletter. Once it's live it's sent directly to you to read at your leisure.
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The Sun
31-07-2025
- The Sun
Stunning 2,500-year-old TATTOOS from Siberian ‘ice mummy' depicting ‘mythical creatures' revealed in perfect detail
THE intricate tattoos of a 2,500-year-old Siberian "ice mummy" have finally been revealed through high-tech imaging. The designs reveal leopards, tigers, a stag, a rooster and even some long-lost mythical creatures. 7 7 They are so detailed that even a modern tattooist would struggle to reproduce them, according to the researchers behind the discovery. The tattoos belong to a woman who was about 50-years-old when she died. She is thought to have belonged to the nomadic horse-riding Pazyryk culture, which roamed the lands between China and Europe. The scans exposed "intricate, crisp and uniform" tattooing that could not be seen with the naked eye. Over the two millennia, the ink has become all but invisible on the body as the skin darkens with time. "The insights really drive home to me the point of how sophisticated these people were," lead author Dr Gino Caspari from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and the University of Bern, told BBC News. Archaeologists worked with researcher Daniel Riday, a tattooist who reproduces ancient ink on his own body to understand how they were made. Tattooing was likely widespread during prehistory, but few remains from that era are preserved well enough to investigate. 7 But the so-called "ice mummies" of the Altai mountains in Siberia were often encased in ice tombs which preserved the skin. While the tattoos were not visibly on the skin, they were brought back to life using near-infrared digital photography in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia. The high-resolution scans were able to reveal the decorations for the first time in 2,500 years. "This made me feel like we were much closer to seeing the people behind the art, how they worked and learned. The images came alive," said Dr Caspari. On her right forearm, the woman had an image of leopards and tigers around the head of two deer. On the left arm, a mythical griffin-like creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle appears to be fighting with a stag. "Twisted hind bodies and really intense battle scenes of wild animals are typical of the culture," explained Dr Caspari. The "ice mummy" also had a rooster on her thumb, showing "an intriguing style with a certain uniqueness," says Dr Caspari. The design was made with uniform thickness, suggesting sophisticated methods and tools for tattooing. Some lines were created using a multipoint tool, while others were made with a finer, single-point tool, according to the study. The researchers could even see where the ancient tattooist stopped working and picked up again in the overlapping of some lines. "Many cultures around the world traditionally used bundles of plant thorns and spines to tattoo," study co-author Aaron Deter-Wolf, an archaeologist at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology and ancient-tattooing expert, told Live Science in an email. "We envision the multi-point tool as being a tightly clustered bundle of tines, probably bound together with thread or sinew." The tools were made of natural, biodegradable materials, meaning the researchers aren't able to examine the implements themselves. 7 7
North Wales Live
31-07-2025
- North Wales Live
Sign up to our newsletter The Weird Science Drop
A brand new newsletter is bringing back crazy chemistry, bonkers biology and foolish physics in the shape of The Weird Science Drop. The newsletter goes where other, more-sensible publications fear to tread. Every week, it brings the overlooked, under-the-radar and, above all else, most madcap science news, views and research straight to your email. From the keyboard of Daniel Smith, The Weird Science Drop keeps a close eye on the latest scientific discoveries and research while also unearthing the little-heard strange stories from the past. Daniel is an experienced journalist who has worked for news websites on both sides of the Atlantic. Back in the furthest reaches of time somewhere near Watford he fancied himself as an astrophysicist but proved to be hopeless. So he put down the telescope and picked up a pen instead. Daniel was once the author of the Weird Science Blog - one of the top blogs in this media group - and is delighted to get back in the saddle. He said: 'It's been great to dust off the old white lab coat and bring Weird Science back but this time in a far better, more dynamic fashion with The Weird Science Drop. 'The newsletter will hunt out the choicest morsels of science goodness, where everything from the world's unluckiest scientist who inadvertently tried to end the planet twice to research showing monkeys are the world's best yodellers is put under the microscope. 'I'll try to keep people informed, amazed and astounded, while hopefully provoking the old smile along the way. 'So why not subscribe?' So what's in The Weird Science Drop? Each newsletter will feature regular sections such as Weird Science News, Photo of the Week, Infographic Magic, plus a rotating platter of goodness including… How do I sign up for The Weird Science Drop? The Weird Science Drop will be published on Substack, an independent platform with no ads, making for a cleaner reading experience than on many other websites. You can read there on desktop or the app, or simply from your email inbox. So not only do you not have to go searching for the news itself – or wait for the algorithm to decide this is what you might like to see – you don't even have to search for the newsletter. Once it's live it's sent directly to you to read at your leisure.
Daily Mail
21-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Walking just 14 more steps per minute could protect against rising chronic conditions
Walking just 14 more steps a minute could boost your health and protect against deadly diseases, a study suggests. Researchers at the University of Chicago tracked 102 frail adults — weaker individuals who are exhausted by little exercise — in their late 70s who were asked to do a 45-minute walking session three times a week. Over the four-month study, half were asked to continue walking at a 'relaxed and comfortable pace' during the exercise sessions. But the rest were told to walk 'as fast as they safely could'. Participants in the 'fast-walking' group walked 14 more steps every minute on average by the study end, and about 100 steps per minute — equivalent to the average among adults. The fast-walking group achieved a ten percent improvement in their six-minute walking distance, indicating enhanced endurance and cardiovascular health. This improvement also suggested increased muscle mass and a lower risk of falls, the leading cause of injury-related death in adults over 65, as well as improved aerobic fitness, a key predictor for longevity and sustained independence in older age. For comparison, those who walked at a relaxed pace saw no improvement in either measure during the study. Dr Daniel Rubin, an anesthesiologist who led the study, and others wrote: 'We demonstrated that an increase of 14 steps per minute during the intervention sessions increased the odds of an improvement in [endurance]. 'Older adults can increase their [steps per minute] and [steps per minute] can serve as a surrogate measure of activity intensity during walking interventions.' Average adults walk about 100 to 130 steps per minute, according to estimates, while older and frail individuals walk about 82 steps per minute on average. The average American also walks about 5,100 steps per day, well below the recommendation of 10,000 every 24 hours. In the paper, published in PLOS One, researchers recruited adults from 14 retirement homes near the university. The study defined a frail adult as an individual with weight loss, slowness, weakness, exhaustion and someone who undertook little physical activity. Of the participants, only 35 percent were able to walk unaided with the remainder requiring a cane, walker, scooter or wheelchair at times. They were divided into two equal groups for walking sessions, the fast group or the relaxed group, with each led by a trained research assistant. Over the first three sessions, adults were asked to walk 45 minutes at a comfortable pace. In the next eight sessions, participants were asked to walk 40 minutes, and start and end each session with five minutes of stair tapping — stepping and quickly tapping the toes of each foot on the edge of a step. During the walking, those in the fast-walking group were also asked to increase their intensity until they reached 70 percent of their heart rate maximum. The heart rate maximum is the highest number of times the heart can beat in one minute during strenuous physical activity. It is calculated using the formula of 220 minus someone's age. For those in the study, their maximum heart rate would be around 147 beats per minute and 70 percent of this would be 103 beats per minute. Over the remaining sessions, participants were asked to walk for 35 minutes but begin each session with a 10-minute warm up. But those in the exercise group were asked to incrementally increase their speed during the walking sessions to 'as fast as they safely could.' Participants' walking was tracked using an activPAL tracker that was strapped onto their thigh, which measured steps and speed. They were able to stop to rest during the exercises, but this stopped the timer, which would not restart until they began to walk again. Researchers found that among those in the relaxed group, their steps decreased during the study from 82 to 77 steps per minute. For comparison, those in the exercise group saw this rise from 86 to 100 steps per minute on average. Participants were asked to complete the six-minute walk test at the start and end of the study to measure their endurance. In the relaxed group, participants saw a slight improvement, with the distance they walked increasing from 836 to 869 feet. For comparison, however, those in the exercise group saw the distance they walked increase from 843 to 1,033 feet per session - a 10 percent rise. For comparison, the average American adult can walk around 2,100 feet in six minutes. The team concluded: 'The overall exercise dose (frequency, duration, and intensity) between the two groups only differed with respect to the intensity component as frequency and duration were kept constant between the two groups. 'Thus, prefrail and frail older adults engaged in walking interventions can derive further improvement in their functional outcomes by increasing [steps per minute] during a fixed volume of walking exercise.' The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Aging.
