Science Alert: Cats Do Bond Securely to Their Humans - Maybe Even More So Than Dogs

This may not come as a huge surprise to those who live with cat companions, but it suggests two important things. Firstly, it looks like we've underestimated the depth of the bond cats can form with their people. Additionally, it shows that dogs don't have a monopoly on secure social bonding with Homo sapiens. [...]

In their behavioural experiment, the research team observed how cats respond to their owners in a strange environment. Previous research on rhesus monkeys (the controversial wire mother experiments reported in 1958) and dogs (a much more ethically sound experiment reported last year) had shown that both species form secure and insecure attachments. [...]

Interestingly, those rates - 64.3 percent and 65.8 percent - are pretty close to the 65 percent secure attachment rate seen in human infants. And cats showed a secure attachment rate slightly higher than found in a test of 59 companion dogs published in 2018; the canines were 61 percent secure and 39 percent insecure.

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Science Alert: Russian scientists say they've discovered a secret Nazi base in the Arctic

Schatzgraber was a mysterious Arctic weather station that was built in 1942 after Hitler invaded Russia.

Its construction - and abandonment - was documented in the 1954 German book Wettertrupp Haudegen, but no one had ever found physical evidence that it existed until now, and it's often dismissed as a war-time myth.

According to the written record, Schatzgraber was serviced from 1943, but was abandoned a year later in July 1944, after the staff at the site ate undercooked polar bear meat that was contaminated with round worm and poisoned themselves.

The soldiers were rescued by a German U-boat, but the base was abandoned after that, and to this day, no one is entirely sure what the point of the base was, or, until now, where it had been located.

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Science Alert: Europe announces that all scientific papers should be free by 2020

This week was a revolutionary week in the sciences - not because we discovered a new fundamental particle or had a new breakthrough in quantum computing - but because some of the most prominent world leaders announced an initiative which asserts that European scientific papers should be made freely available to all by 2020.

This would legally only impact research supported by public and public-private funds, which are a vast portion of the papers produced annually; however, the goal is to make all science freely available. [...]

To that end, while a spokesperson for the Competitiveness Council admits the 2020 target "may not be an easy task", all are quick to stress the importance of the council’s new resolve. "This is not a law, but it’s a political orientation for the 28 governments. The important thing is that there is a consensus."

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