Tudor Tarita

1 week ago | zmescience.com | Tudor Tarita |Mihai Andrei

For decades, scientists have tried to peer deep inside the human brain using beams of harmless near-infrared light. The technique, called functional near-infrared spectroscopy, or fNIRS, has become a workhorse for neuroscientists. It’s affordable, noninvasive, and portable—qualities that bulky MRI machines lack. But fNIRS has always faced a stubborn wall: it simply can’t see more than a few centimeters below the surface of the skull.

1 week ago | zmescience.com | Tudor Tarita |Mihai Andrei

In a sterile Stanford lab, a tiny spinning tube with delicate fins whirred to life. The object, no larger than a grain of rice, might seem unassuming. But when placed in a model artery clogged with a blood clot, it performed something outstanding. Within seconds, the once-lethal blockage shrank to a fraction of its size. Blood flow, simulated with saline, resumed almost instantly.

1 week ago | zmescience.com | Tudor Tarita |Mihai Andrei

When NASA’s Perseverance rover touched down in Jezero Crater in 2021, scientists expected to find rocks laid down by an ancient lake. What they didn’t expect was volcanic rock. And certainly not a volcano itself—towering over the landscape, hiding in plain sight. But controversies still remained. Was Jezero Mons, a 1.5-kilometer-high mountain on the crater’s Southeastern rim, really a volcano? A team of researchers are now saying it is.

1 week ago | zmescience.com | Tudor Tarita |Mihai Andrei

By the time the butterflies came, the world was already healing. Roughly 236 million years ago, in the scarred aftermath of Earth’s greatest extinction event, a hippo-sized herbivore ambled through what is now northwestern Argentina. The creature—a dicynodont—was no butterfly. But it may have been the unwitting courier of one. When it defecated, it left behind a microscopic legacy in a “communal latrine”.

1 week ago | zmescience.com | Tudor Tarita |Mihai Andrei

In the ruins of an old Roman city on the Spanish island of Mallorca, a team of archaeologists uncovered an unexpected glimpse into ancient eating habits. Buried in a garbage pit behind what used to be a food stall were dozens of tiny bird bones, mostly from thrushes. These weren’t fancy leftovers from an aristocrat’s dinner. They were tossed-out scraps from everyday street food. The new study suggests that 2,000 years ago, small birds like thrushes weren’t just for the rich.