Page Type: Middle

Bigger isn’t always better. Scientists say they believe that a massive prehistoric shark called megalodon may have been wiped out by the presence of a smaller shark: the great white shark.

Megalodon was a beast. At 60 feet (18.3 meters) long, it was more than three times the length of the great white shark. Megalodon’s teeth were as big as an adult’s palm. It was probably at the top of the food chain. 

Knowing this, scientists have long wondered why this ancient sea monster went extinct about three million years ago. They think it’s possible that some environmental factors, like sea level changes, helped lead to megalodon’s demise. But they wondered about megalodon’s relationship with the great white shark. After all, the two species co-existed for a while, and the great white shark is still dominating the world’s oceans today.

Researchers examined zinc isotopes (variants) in the teeth of sharks that are both extinct and in existence. Zinc is an element. Zinc in tooth enamel can provide clues about an animal’s diet. Scientists found evidence that ancient megalodons and ancient great white sharks ate many of the same large fish. That means they may have been competing for food. Megalodons could have hunted great white sharks, but so far scientists haven’t found any evidence of that.

But why would the smaller great white shark win a competition against a giant megalodon? The answer may be that megalodons just couldn’t get enough to eat.

“The smaller sized great whites likely did not require as much food as megalodon did, so they would have had the competitive advantage if they were feeding on similar prey items,” geochemist Michael Griffiths told CNN.

Picture it: You bite into a scrumptious burrito and—splat—its contents land all over your lap. This scenario is all too common for fans of folded food. But fear not, fastidious foodies. Engineering students at Johns Hopkins University have come up with a solution to busted burritos. They’ve created edible tape!

The adhesive strips are the creation of Tyler Guarino, Marie Eric, Rachel Nie, and Erin Walsh. The students set out to make an adhesive product with certain qualities. First, it had to be totally safe to eat. Beyond that, the students wanted it to be clear and colorless, with no noticeable taste or texture. It took months to come up with a winning formula.

The team began by studying regular tape—the kind that’s used to hold objects together. They wanted to find out what keeps the tape structure together and what sort of adhesive makes it stick. The next step was to find edible materials that had the same capabilities.

“We tested about 50 different formulations,” Guarino told CNN. Finally, the team came up with the winning formula, which they call Tastee Tape. It can be used on burritos, tacos, gyros, and any other food.

The team can’t reveal the ingredients of Tastee Tape because they’re applying for a patent.

“What I can say is that all its ingredients are safe to consume, are food grade, and are common food and dietary additives,” Guarino told Good News Network. The tape is also vegan and gluten-free.

Currently, the team has a prototype of the tape. It consists of rectangular strips of tape that measure 0.5 inches by 2 inches (1.3 centimeters by 5.1 centimeters) on a wax paper backing. All users need to do is peel a piece of tape from the paper, wet it, and stick it on a piece of food. The team hopes eventually to package Tastee Tape in rolls, like other forms of tape.

Guarino says the team members put their creation to the test on lots of burritos. They’re confident that the tape will hold together even the sloppiest foods. 

“Tastee Tape allows you to put full faith in your tortilla, and enjoy your meal, mess-free,” Guarino told Good News Network.

The experiment is part of scientists’ investigation into space agriculture. Long space missions would require the ability to cultivate food in space. So far, scientists have been able to grow food on the International Space Station. But they aren’t sure whether it’s possible to do so on celestial bodies other than Earth. 

“To explore further and to learn about the solar system we live in, we need to take advantage of what’s on the Moon, so we don’t have to take all of it with us,” said NASA scientist Jacob Bleacher. 

There are still plenty of questions to be answered. Scientists want to find out if there are ways to reduce stress for plants that grow in lunar soil. They also don’t know how well plants would do on the Moon, where the soil is regularly exposed to cosmic rays and solar wind. They’re not sure how the lunar soil would affect the nutritional value of crops, if at all. And they have more questions about how well the soil on the Moon would tolerate having to support crops. Lunar soil is very dry, so crops would need to be watered heavily.

Scientists will keep investigating. Their hope is that, someday, crops on the Moon—and maybe even on Mars—will be a reality.

Goooaaal! The United States Soccer Federation (U.S. Soccer) announced that it has reached an agreement with the U.S. men’s and women’s soccer teams to pay both teams’ players equally. The deal closes a longtime pay gap in which the female players received less pay than the male players.

“This is a truly historic moment,” U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone said in a statement. “These agreements have changed the game forever here in the United States and have the potential to change the game around the world.”

The men’s and women’s teams will be paid equally for all matches, including in the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) World Cup, the biggest international soccer competition. The two teams will pool their prize money from playing in the World Cup, and the money will be split evenly among the men, the women, and the U.S. federation. 

The prize for the men’s World Cup teams is significantly larger than the prize for the women’s teams. For example, FIFA awarded a total of $400 million in prize money to the 32 teams at the 2018 Men’s World Cup, but the 24 teams at the 2019 Women’s World Cup received just $30 million in prize money. U.S. Soccer is the first national soccer federation to agree to split the prize money evenly between the men’s and women’s teams.

The teams will also receive equal shares of the players’ portion of the revenue (income) from sponsorship and broadcasts of games.

The deal ends a dispute that dates back to 2019, when the U.S. Women’s National Team filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against U.S. Soccer. The lawsuit claimed that the federation’s pay policy wasn’t fair to the women’s team. In February 2022, the two sides came to a settlement. The federation agreed to pay the players involved in the case $22 million. The settlement also stated that the teams would receive equal pay in the next players’ contract. Now, those contract terms are set. 

Walker Zimmerman, a leader of the union representing the men’s team, believes the U.S. agreement may pave the way for other national federations to make changes.

“We hope this will awaken others to the need for this type of change, and will inspire FIFA and others around the world to move in the same direction,” said Zimmerman.

For now, U.S. women’s players are thrilled that they will be paid fairly for their hard work.

“I am feeling extreme pride,” U.S. Women’s National Team member Becky Sauerbrunn said on the Today show. “To be able to say finally, ‘Equal pay for equal work’ feels very, very good.”

Gabriel Clark loves woodworking. The 12 year old from Cumbria, England, has been making things out of wood ever since he was given his grandfather’s hammer about eight years ago. Recently, Gabriel found a way to use his talent to help children in Ukraine.

Gabriel hatched his idea after his work gained newfound popularity, thanks to a shoutout from his dad. Gabriel was selling handmade bowls and cutting boards and planned to use the money to buy a new mountain bike. To help, his dad posted on Twitter, suggesting his followers might check out Gabriel’s products on Instagram. The post went viral, and Gabriel soon had more than 200,000 Instagram followers. He also had thousands of orders for wooden bowls. Gabriel realized he could use his platform for good.

On April 2, Gabriel announced that he would hold a raffle. The prize would be one of his homemade bowls, and the money would be given to Save the Children’s Children’s Emergency Fund. The fund is currently being used to help children in Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in February. The bowl Gabriel made, which he named “My Bowl For Ukraine,” is etched with blue and yellow rings, in honor of the Ukrainian flag.

On April 17, Gabriel made an announcement on Instagram.

“We have a winner!!” he wrote. “My Bowl For Ukraine has a new home. Even though the raffle is finished, we’ve kept the [donation] page open until next weekend as donations are still flooding in.”

Gabriel had initially set a fundraising goal of 5,000 British pounds (about 6,155 U.S. dollars). As of April 25, he had raised 255,000 pounds (about 313,950 U.S. dollars). “I want to know that I can make other children’s lives better by doing a little bit of something in my own life,” Gabriel told People magazine.

Imagine being able to look back in time to see what the universe was like billions of years ago. Amazingly, powerful space telescopes have allowed scientists to do just that! And with the new James Webb Space Telescope, scientists are poised to get the clearest view yet of the distant past.

Launched in orbit around the Sun in December 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope is a joint project of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The Webb recently produced test images that suggested just how much it will be able to show scientists about the universe. For example, it captured an image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that is a neighbor to our own Milky Way galaxy. When scientists compared the image produced by Webb to an image produced by Spitzer, a now-retired space telescope, they were stunned. Both telescopes were designed to detect infrared light, which can’t be seen by human eyes. But Webb’s image of the Large Magellanic Cloud was much more detailed than the one Spitzer captured. 

“It’s not until you actually see the kind of image that [Webb] delivers that you…go, ‘Wow, just think of what we’re going to learn.’ Spitzer taught us a lot. This is like a whole new world,” said Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for Webb’s near-infrared camera, at a news conference.

The Webb is also considerably more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, which has produced remarkable images of the universe since its launch in 1990.

Webb’s test images are just a preview of things to come. 

Scientists believe that when Webb becomes fully operational, around July 2022, it will be a game changer. In addition to capturing sharper images of stars, the telescope will be able to peer through the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system. Webb’s powerful mirrors will also be able to see the earliest light from galaxies that formed billions of years ago. Webb will be able to give us clear views of this ancient history because the light from stars can take billions of years to reach us. 

“Astronomy is not going to be the same again once we see what [Webb] can do with these first observations,” said Christopher Evans, Webb project scientist at the ESA, at the news conference.

Get ready to meet a woman from the Stone Age.

Nearly 100 years ago, a road construction crew in Sweden found the remains of a woman who had died about 4,000 years earlier. Now, a forensic artist has made a reconstruction of what the woman might have looked like.

The likeness of the woman is on display at Sweden’s Västernorrlands Museum. Scientists used her skeleton to determine that the woman stood about 4 feet, 11 inches (149.9 centimeters) tall and was in her late 20s or early 30s when she died. To figure out what her face looked like, artist Oscar Nilsson scanned the woman’s skull and then made a copy of it with a 3D printer. He also used information thought to be true about the woman’s age and ethnicity, which can affect the shape of a person’s face.

Nilsson had to take some educated guesses about the woman’s appearance. Her DNA, which would have revealed traits such as hair color and eye color, was not well preserved. But scientists know that there were three large migration waves into ancient Sweden. The one that took place during the woman’s lifetime included pale-skinned farmers with dark hair and brown eyes. So they believe the woman may have had these traits. 

Scientists aren’t sure if the woman was a farmer. She lived during an era when many people were transitioning from hunting and gathering their food to living in one place and farming the land. She may have done one or the other, or both.

We don’t know everything about how ancient humans lived, but we’re getting closer to knowing what they looked like.

When Jacky Hunt-Broersma was younger, she wasn’t into running. But after her left leg was amputated below the knee due to a rare type of cancer, she wanted to challenge herself. She became a dedicated long-distance runner—so dedicated that she recently ran 104 marathons in 104 days, breaking a world record.

“You kind of get put in this box of being disabled and it’s just really annoying,” Hunt-Broersma told ESPN. “And I’m super stubborn and like, ‘Well, no, I want to give running a go. I want to try it and just see.’”

Hunt-Broersma, who wears a prosthesis (an artificial limb) when she runs, originally challenged herself to complete 100 marathons in 100 days after another amputee, Alyssa Amos Clark, did 95 in 95 days. But when Kate Jayden beat Clark’s record with 101 marathons, Hunt-Broersma moved the goal post.

Each day, Hunt-Broersma ran the marathon length of 26.2 miles (42.2 kilometers). She mostly ran on trails near her home in Arizona or on a treadmill, though for Day 92, she ran the para-athletic race of the Boston Marathon. She reported her progress on social media and invited those tracking her progress to donate to an organization called Amputee Blade Runners. Hunt-Broersma raised more than $194,000 online for the organization, which provides free running prosthetics for amputees. 

Hunt-Broersma’s original goal was to complete 102 marathons, but she went ahead and did two more after Day 102. It may take Guinness World Records up to a year to verify that Hunt-Broersma broke the previous record. 

In the meantime, the tireless runner is training for a 240-mile ultra run, which will take place in Utah in October 2022.

Researchers say a man who is paralyzed and cannot speak was able to communicate after receiving a brain implant.

The man has ALS, a disease that gradually causes a person to be unable to move. The man lost his ability to speak a few years ago and began communicating with his eyes. But his family knew that, eventually, he would be unable to move his eyes. So researchers decided to try something called auditory neurofeedback. 

Doctors placed an implant in the man’s brain, and then researchers started to work with him. The implant allowed them to show the man his brain activity on a screen. Any time someone moves their body—or even tries to—there’s brain activity. The researchers instructed the man to try to move his eyes and watched how this changed his brain activity. 

His brain activity would produce a sound wave, which people hear as a tone, or musical note. The greater the brain activity, the higher the tone. The man learned to attempt eye movement in a way that would produce a certain tone. When he wanted to say “yes,” he produced a higher tone. When he wanted to say “no,” he did nothing. This produced a lower tone.

Once the man learned to communicate yes and no, he could spell out sentences. He would say “no” to letters until he got to the right one. One by one, he would spell out the words.