Microscope

An asteroid hunter's snap

As it slingshotted past Earth recently at 30,578 kmph on its journey to an asteroid, Nasa's Osiris-Rex spacecraft took a moment to admire the view - from 1,70,590km away. A composite image was taken by an onboard camera as the spacecraft flew past the Blue Planet. Osiris-Rex is on a mission to collect samples from the asteroid Bennu. The rendezvous is expected in August 2018.

Dead bumblebee

For centuries thousands of bumblebees have been found sick or dead beneath flowering tilia trees. UK-based researchers set out to solve this bee mystery and proposed an explanation in Biology Letters. According to them, the bees rely too much on the tilia as food attracted by its odour, colour and shape. But its intoxicant nectar eventually kills them.

Humane chimps

In the late 1950s, when Jane Goodall started attributing human personality traits — playful or aggressive, affectionate or nurturing — to chimpanzees, many scientists were horrified. A study in Scientific Data confirms that chimps in the wild do have personalities similar to those in captivity, and both strongly overlap with traits that are found in humans. 
text and pictures: nytns