The Korea Herald

Glacier calves Manhattan-sized iceberg

Jul 18, 2012

(Yonhap News)An island of ice twice the size of Manhattan broke off from Greenland‘s largest glaciers Monday, a U.S. researcher reports.University of Delaware ocean scientist Andread Muenchow blogged the “calving”from the Petermann Glacier, one of the two largest glaciers left in Greenland connecting the great Greenland ice sheet with the ocean via a floating ice shelf.Muenchow, who credits the Ca
Miracle? Dog gives birth to ‘cat’

Jul 18, 2012

A man claimed that his dog gave birth to what looks like a kitten, Yonhap News reported Wednesday.Jeong Pyong-bong, a 63-year-old man from South Jeolla Province said that his dog gave birth to what looks and sounds like a baby cat. “It is unbelievable,” said Jeong. “People from all over the town are coming over after hearing the news.”He said the mother dog seems to have gotten pregnant after wondering around the town since last May.However experts said it is theoretically “impossible for a do
World’s lightest material is created

Jul 18, 2012

German researchers say they’ve created the lightest material in the world, a network of porous carbon tubes they’ve dubbed “Aerographite.”Scientists of Kiel University and Hamburg University of Technology said the tubes, three-dimensionally interwoven at the nano and micro level, create a material that weighs just 0.2 milligrams per cubic centimeter -- which means ordinary Styrofoam is almost 400 times heavier.“Our work is causing great discussions in the scientific community. Aerographite weigh
6-foot lizard loose in Colorado

Jul 18, 2012

This photo is not directly related to this article(Bloomberg)A six-foot-long(1.88 meter) Nile monitor lizard escaped its enclosure and was on the loose in Teller County, Colo., police said Tuesday.Emergency notifications went out to residents in the Woodland West, Westwood Lakes and Rosewood Hills subdivisions between the Colorado communities of Divide and Woodland Park that care needs to be exerc
S. Korea rolls back decision to resume scientific whaling

Jul 17, 2012

South Korea has decided to scrap its plan to resume whaling for scientific research, a senior government official said Tuesday, after the move sparked international criticism.Earlier this month, South Korea notified the International Whaling Commission that it planned to lift an all-out whaling ban and start catching the animal for scientific purposes only in immediate waters surrounding the Korea
Women smarter than men in developed world

Jul 17, 2012

A study has found women in the developed world score higher than men in IQ tests, a researcher in New Zealand said.Women were as much as 5 points behind men when IQ testing began a century ago, but then gap -- which led some psychologists to propose a theory that women‘s brains are genetically inferior to men’s -- has been narrowing in recent years and this year women moved ahead, The Australian r
Ultimate champion of animal kingdom; lion or tiger?

Jul 17, 2012

A lion and a tiger would be fairly evenly matched in a fight, but a tiger will probably come out as the winner, a U.S. scientist said. “If I had to put my money on it, I would give the advantage to the tiger,” said Craig Saffoe, a biologist and the curator of great cats at the Smithsonian Zoo in Washington, D.C.While a male lion is more likely to have more combat experience than a tiger, a tiger’s "killer instinct" may be the deciding factor in a death-match between the giant felines. According
Bees swarm in downtown Stockholm

Jul 15, 2012

(123rf)Thousands of bees swarmed outside the Stockholm headquarters of a major Swedish clothing chain. Annette Rieger, who works in the H&M building, told The Local.se the swarm was outside for about 3 hours Friday afternoon. "I saw them all over the windows. They even got through the first level of glazing," she said. "My colleague was super scared because she is allergic to bees!"Johan Jarbrant,
S. Korean team develops substance that blocks spread of cancer

Jul 12, 2012

A team of South Korean scientists has developed a new substance that helps track and even prevent the spread of cancer cells from a primary tumor to adjacent organs, the science ministry said Thursday.The team, led by Prof. Lee Seong-wook of Dankook University, has developed an RNA aptamer that binds to colorectal cancer cells in a peculiar way that makes the cancer cells easily identifiable, according to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.Easily detectable cancer cells in turn ma
Brain structure linked to altruism: study

Jul 12, 2012

A new study has reportedly found that brains of selfless people are different than those of selfish people, according to a report on Science Daily.“People who behaved more altruistically also had a higher proportion of gray matter at the junction between parietal and temporal lobe,” said researchers from the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Past studies have indicated that the cited brain region is related to a person’s ability to empathize with other people. It has been suspected that altru
Ancient turtle was round like a truck tire

Jul 12, 2012

This photo is not directly related to this story. (AP)A turtle that lived 60 million years ago in what is now northwestern South America was nearly round with a shell the size of a big truck tire, scientists say.Paleontologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and colleagues at North Carolina State University and the Florida Museum of Natural History discovered the new sp
‘Sound' of Higgs boson created

Jul 12, 2012

(123rf)"Sonified" data from experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland makes it possible to "hear" the newly discovered Higgs boson, researchers say.The result, they said, is a melody that resembles the syncopated rhythm of the habanera, a Cuban dance popular in Spain in the early 19th century."As soon as the [Higgs discovery] announcement was made, we begun working on the sonificatio
South Korea hints at scrapping whaling plan

Jul 11, 2012

South Korea said Wednesday it may scrap its fiercely criticized plan to resume "scientific" whaling if experts come up with non-lethal means to study the mammals in its waters."We may not conduct whaling for scientific research if there is another way to achieve the goal," Kang Joon-Suk, a senior official of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, told reporters.South Korea unve
Smart headlights will see 'through' rain

Jul 11, 2012

U.S. researchers say a new "smart" headlight design will help drivers in rainy condition by constantly redirecting light to shine between raindrops.Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh say the system, successfully demonstrated in lab tests, prevents the distracting and dangerous glare of headlight beams reflected by precipitation back toward the driver."If you're driving in a th
Pets boost infant immunity to infections

Jul 11, 2012

(123rf)Infants, who had contact with dogs at home had fewer respiratory tract symptoms or infections than children with no dog contacts, researchers in Finland found.Lead author Dr. Eija Bergroth, a pediatrician who worked at Kuopio University Hospital in Finland at the time of the study, and colleagues at Kuopio University Hospital, the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Kuopio, Finland