Top Science News
December 17, 2019
Dec. 13, 2019 — Born pink, blind, and helpless, giant pandas typically weigh about 100 grams at birth -- the equivalent of a stick of butter. Their mothers are 900 times more massive than that. That raises a ...
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Dec. 13, 2019 — Based on a 5-year excavation of two Moai found within the Easter Island quarry called Rano Raraku, the Easter Island Statue Project released the first definitive study to reveal the quarry as a ...
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Dec. 13, 2019 — Using a brain-computer interface, a team of researchers has reconstructed English words from the brain activity of rhesus macaques that listened as ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — Comet 2I/Borisov is a mysterious visitor from the depths of space -- the first identified comet to arrive here from another star. Hubble images capture the comet streaking though our solar system and ...
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Latest Top Headlines
updated 10:45am EST
Dec. 14, 2019 — Mitochondria, tiny structures present in most cells, are known for their energy-generating machinery. Now, researchers have discovered a new function of mitochondria: they set off molecular alarms when cells are exposed to stress or chemicals that can damage DNA, such as chemotherapy. The results ...
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Dec. 13, 2019 — Researchers have made significant advances in developing a novel vaccine against Zika virus, which could potentially lead to global elimination of ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — Motorized molecules activated by light target and drill through highly antibiotic resistant bacteria and kill them within minutes. The molecules can open bacteria to attack by drugs they previously resisted. The strategy could be applied to bacterial infections or diseases on the skin, in the lungs ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — New research pinpoints a specific neural circuit that when altered caused animal models to drink ...
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Dec. 11, 2019 — An algorithm akin to the annoyingly helpful one that attempts to auto-complete text messages and emails is now being harnessed for a better cause. A group of researchers are using its pattern-recognition ability to identify microbial communities in ...
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Dec. 11, 2019 — Chemistry researchers have uncovered a better way to scrub carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions, which could be a key to mitigating global ...
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Dec. 11, 2019 — A surprising new study shows that heat energy can leap across a few hundred nanometers of a complete vacuum, thanks to a quantum mechanical phenomenon called the Casimir interaction. Though this interaction is only significant on very short length scales, it could have profound implications for the ...
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Dec. 11, 2019 — Where should the first people on Mars land? A new paper provides a map of water ice believed to be as little as an inch (2.5 centimeters) below the surface of the ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — Scientists collected data from hundreds of feeding whales, allowing them to determine how much energy species of different sizes invest to capture their prey and which of these species reap the greatest rewards for their efforts. Their findings reveal that body size in all whales is limited by the ...
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Dec. 9, 2019 — The newly described Kupoupou stilwelli has been found near New Zealand's South Island and it appears to be the oldest penguin known with proportions close to its ...
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Dec. 11, 2019 — By measuring the chemistry of fossilized seashells collected in Antarctica, researchers discovered that Earth was already experiencing carbon cycle instability before the asteroid impact that wiped out ...
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Dec. 11, 2019 — Despite being four times thicker than human hair, elephant hair is only half as strong -- that's just one finding from researchers studying the hair strength of many different mammals. Their work shows that thin hair tends to be stronger than thick ...
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Health News
December 17, 2019
Dec. 11, 2019 — A team of researchers has now identified a specific circuit in the brain that alters food ...
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Dec. 11, 2019 — Scientists have shown that worms live longer lives if they produce excess levels of a protein, p62, which recognizes toxic cell proteins that are tagged for destruction. The discovery could help ...
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Dec. 10, 2019 — In mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, the investigational drug candidates known as CMS121 and J147 improve memory and slow the degeneration of brain cells. Now, researchers have shown how these ...
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Dec. 10, 2019 — Using a targeted gene epigenome editing approach in the developing mouse brain, researchers reversed one gene mutation that leads to the genetic disorder WAGR syndrome, which causes intellectual ...
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Latest Health Headlines
updated 10:45am EST
Dec. 16, 2019 — A new study suggests there is a link between bacteria that live in the upper airway and the severity of asthma symptoms among children with mild to moderate ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — A team of researchers has cracked a rare gene variant for a disorder that causes severe neurodegeneration in ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — A research team at has developed a new CRISPR-based gene-drive system that dramatically increases the efficiency of inactivating a gene rendering bacteria antibiotic-resistant. The new system leverages technology in insects and mammals that biases genetic inheritance of preferred traits called 'active ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — Researchers have developed a new method for identifying which proteins are affected by specific drugs. The tool and the results it has already generated have been made freely available ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — Among women, lower hydration levels were associated with lower scores on a task designed to measure motor speed, sustained attention, and working memory. They did not find the same result for ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — Only 23 percent of people who experience trauma develop PTSD. New research offers new clues on identifying which trauma victims will develop the disorder and suggests potential interventions. Researchers used a mobile phone app to gather information from patients in the critical 30 days after the trauma event - when symptoms interact to create the ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — A potent drug for glioblastoma can't be used in patients. It can't reach its target because it's blocked by the blood-brain barrier, and the conventional formulation for this drug is toxic to the brain. But now scientists have used a novel technology for opening the blood-brain barrier with an implantable ultrasound, and delivered the powerful drug to the tumor in mice. Scientists also identified ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — Students who are better able to understand and manage their emotions effectively, a skill known as emotional intelligence, do better at school than their less skilled peers, as measured by grades and standardized test ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — A study of pregnant women in coastal Florida found that hair mercury concentration was associated with consumption of locally caught seafood and all seafood, a higher level of education, and first pregnancy. The highest concentrations were in women over 33 with the highest levels in Asian women. Pregnant women who ate seafood three times a week had the highest concentration - almost four times as ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — Being undernourished or overweight are no longer separate public health issues. A new article details how more than one in three low- and middle-income countries face both extremes of malnutrition -- a reality driven by the modern food ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — For decades, an ancient Egyptian known as Merit Ptah has been celebrated as the first female physician and a role model for women entering medicine. Yet a researcher now says she never existed and is an example of how misconceptions can ...
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Dec. 11, 2019 — Women who consumed a diet high in added sugars and refined carbohydrates had a greater risk of developing insomnia, a new study has ...
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Physical/Tech News
December 17, 2019
Dec. 9, 2019 — Researchers have created a more feasible way to combine transistors and memory on a chip, potentially bringing faster ...
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Dec. 9, 2019 — Scientists may have figured out how dust particles can stick together to form planets, according to a new study that may also help to improve industrial ...
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Dec. 9, 2019 — Researchers have discovered a new method for turning nearly any object into a data storage unit. This makes it possible to save extensive data in, say, shirt buttons, water bottles or even the lenses ...
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Dec. 9, 2019 — Slashed across the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus are four straight, parallel fissures or 'tiger stripes' from which water erupts. These fissures aren't quite like anything else in the Solar ...
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Latest Physical/Tech Headlines
updated 10:45am EST
Dec. 16, 2019 — Nanotechnology is booming, but risk assessment for these tiny particles is a laborious process that presents significant challenges. To find more efficient test methods, researchers took a closer look at the biological ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — A new article provides a significant new insight into our understanding of uranium biogeochemistry and could help with the nuclear legacy. The recent study is the first time that researchers have shown that a uranium-sulfide complex can form under conditions representative of a deep underground environment. This complex then transforms further into highly immobile uranium oxide ...
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Dec. 13, 2019 — A team of researchers has developed a self-cleaning surface that can repel all forms of bacteria, preventing the transfer of antibiotic-resistant superbugs and other dangerous bacteria in settings ranging from hospitals to ...
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Dec. 13, 2019 — A team of engineers will utilize the rare properties of an unusual, light-dependent enzyme in a photo-bio-catalytic continuous flow system to produce drop-in biofuels from waste oils and ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — Roughly a hundred of very red, star-like sources that have appeared and vanished in short period of time have been discovered by a team of researchers when reviewing catalogue data, according to a new article. While most likely to be natural astrophysical sources the researchers are also taking extra-terrestrial sources into ...
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Dec. 15, 2019 — Astronomers found that not all exoplanets in habitable zones will be able to maintain hospitable conditions for life. Exoplanets in close proximity to stars are subject to radiation bursts which can disrupt habitable conditions unless the exoplanet has significant atmospheric or magnetic ...
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Dec. 13, 2019 — JAXA and NASA satellite observations show where killer electrons are generated in the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — A new article documents the global wind patterns on any planet for the first time. Remote repogramming of the MAVEN spacecraft and its NGIMS instrument enabled the data collection. The results reveal seasonal stability in circulation patterns on Mars, but high short-term volatility in wind direction and speed. The data also allow researchers to ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — Researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind model to control traffic and intersections in order to increase autonomous car capacity on urban streets of the future, reduce congestion and minimize ...
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Dec. 13, 2019 — A new approach to trapping light in artificial photonic materials could lead to a tremendous boost in the transfer speed of data ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool could help social media networks and news organizations weed out false stories. The tool uses deep-learning AI algorithms to determine if claims made in posts or stories are supported by other posts and stories on the same ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — Researchers have used advanced imaging approaches to achieve super-resolution microscopy at unprecedented speeds. The new method should make it possible to capture the details of processes occurring in living cells at speeds not previously ...
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Environment News
December 17, 2019
Dec. 10, 2019 — New time-lapse videos of Earth's glaciers and ice sheets as seen from space -- some spanning nearly 50 years -- are providing scientists with new insights into how the planet's frozen regions are ...
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Dec. 10, 2019 — Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s and is tracking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's high-end climate warming scenario, which would see 40 million more people ...
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Dec. 9, 2019 — New research finds that killer whale grandmothers who were no longer able to reproduce had the biggest beneficial impact on the survival chances of their grand-offspring. This may be because ...
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Dec. 9, 2019 — Researchers have discovered jet stream patterns that could affect up to a quarter of global food ...
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Latest Environment Headlines
updated 10:45am EST
Dec. 16, 2019 — A team found that tiny hair-like structures, called nanofibrils, grown by aquatic bacterium Leptothrix cholodnii are essential for surface attachment and the formation of long bacterial filaments. These nanofibrils also trap free metals, making the bacteria prime candidates for use in the bioremediation and extraction of heavy and precious metals from aquatic ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — The impact of an asteroid or comet is acknowledged as the principal cause of the mass extinction that killed off most dinosaurs and about three-quarters of the planet's plant and animal species 66 million years ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — In first-of-its-kind research, scientists used 100 years of microscopic shells to show that the coastal waters off California are acidifying twice as fast as the global ocean average -- with the seafood supply in the ...
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Dec. 13, 2019 — The matrix shell of the HIV-1 virus may have a different shape than previously thought, and a newly proposed model has significant implications for understanding how the virus ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — Artificial Intelligence may be just the thing to accelerate spray-on solar cell technology, which could revolutionize how consumers use energy. A research team has used Machine Learning, aka Artificial Intelligence to optimize the materials used to make perovskite solar cells (PSC). The Organic-Inorganic halide perovskites material used in PSC converts photovoltaic power into consumable ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — A new study examines the opposing roles of natural gas in the battle against climate change -- as a bridge toward a lower-emissions future, but also a contributor to greenhouse gas ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — Transgressing one planetary boundary can amplify human impacts on another one. For the first time, an international team of scientists now quantified some of the planetary-scale interactions in the Earth system. These biophysical interactions have in fact almost doubled direct human impacts on the nine planetary boundaries, from climate change to freshwater use. This insight can now be applied in ...
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Dec. 16, 2019 — Researchers used neutron scattering in the development of a catalyst that converts biomass into liquid fuel with remarkably high efficiency and provides new possibilities for manufacturing renewable energy-related ...
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Dec. 13, 2019 — At a prehistoric archaeological site in Turkey, researchers have discovered two 8,500-year-old human teeth, which had been used as pendants in a necklace or bracelet. Researchers have never documented this practice before in the prehistoric Near East, and the rarity of the find suggests that the human teeth were imbued with profound symbolic meaning for the people who wore ...
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Dec. 13, 2019 — An Antarctic field campaign last winter led by the US and Australia has successfully extracted some of the largest samples of air dating from the 1870s until today. Researchers will use the samples to look for changes in the molecules that scrub the atmosphere of methane and other ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — Canada's northernmost islands, Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg islands in Nunavut, were home to a vibrant, temperate forest 56 million years ago, according to fossil ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — University of Melbourne research has established when and where flowering plants first took a ...
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Society/Education News
December 17, 2019
Dec. 6, 2019 — Reductions in air pollution yielded fast and dramatic impacts on health-outcomes, as well as decreases in all-cause morbidity, according to new ...
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Dec. 5, 2019 — Researchers have developed a more accurate method of measuring bisphenol A (BPA) levels in humans and found that exposure to the endocrine-disrupting chemical is far higher than previously assumed. ...
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Dec. 3, 2019 — How did the almost 6,000 languages of the world come into being? Researchers have tried to simulate the process of developing a new communication system in an experiment -- with surprising results: ...
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Nov. 25, 2019 — Children's average daily time spent watching television or using a computer or mobile device increased from 53 minutes at age 12 months to more than 150 minutes at 3 years, according to a recent ...
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Latest Society/Education Headlines
updated 10:45am EST
Dec. 14, 2019 — Between 2007 and 2017, children in eight low- and middle-income countries received, on average, 25 antibiotic prescriptions from birth through age 5 -- up to five times higher than the already high levels observed in high-income settings. The number of antibiotic prescriptions for young children ranged from one per year for children in Senegal to ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — A new study has compiled the estimated per-case costs of 6 childhood health conditions linked to air pollution -- estimates that can be incorporated into benefits assessments of air pollution regulations and climate change mitigation ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — As sea levels rise and adverse weather events become more common, vulnerable coastal communities are at increasing risk of devastation from storm surges and tsunamis. The death toll from tsunamis was 260,000 during the past century. A research team has now compared the effects of human-made and ecosystem protection to propose an approach including mangroves and coral reefs in coastal ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — Following the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011, the Japanese authorities decided to carry out major decontamination works in the affected area, which covers more than 9,000 km2. On Dec. 12, 2019, with most of this work having been completed, researchers provided an overview of the decontamination strategies used and ...
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Dec. 13, 2019 — How is knowledge exchanged and shared when interdisciplinary research teams work together? Researchers have investigated this by studying several different research projects. Their study makes concrete recommendations for how teams can best work together and achieve effective ...
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Dec. 12, 2019 — Scientists have known for decades that aerobic exercise strengthens the brain and contributes to the growth of new neurons, but few studies have examined how yoga affects the brain. A review of the science finds evidence that yoga enhances many of the same brain structures and functions that benefit from aerobic ...
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Dec. 9, 2019 — People who play drums regularly for years differ from unmusical people in their brain structure and function. The results of a new study suggest that they have fewer, but thicker fibers in the main connecting tract between the two halves of the brain. In addition, their motor brain areas are organized more ...
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Dec. 9, 2019 — There have been many headlines in recent years about the potentially negative impacts contact sports can have on athletes' brains. But a new study shows that, in the absence of injury, athletes across a variety of sports -- including football, soccer and hockey -- have healthier brains than ...
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Nov. 27, 2019 — Researchers executed successful stealth attacks on real and simulated robotic vehicles, revealing vulnerabilities in the attack detection system most commonly used by such ...
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Nov. 27, 2019 — A new study finds that students who tolerate cheating in the classroom may also turn a blind eye to unethical behavior in the ...
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Nov. 25, 2019 — Pharmaceutical industry executives, speaking confidentially, paint a frank picture of the rationale behind the price of medication available to people with multiple ...
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Nov. 25, 2019 — Even when both male and female college students say they want to pursue a major with the best earnings prospects, the majors men choose are higher paying than the majors women ...
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Researchers Discover Brain Circuit Linked to Food Impulsivity
First Identified Comet to Visit Our Solar System from Another Star
NASA's Treasure Map for Water Ice on Mars
Storing Data in Everyday Objects
Earth Was Stressed Before Dinosaur Extinction
Killer Whale Grandmothers Boost Survival of Calves
Greenland Ice Losses Rising Faster Than Expected
Researchers Reconstruct Spoken Words as Processed in Nonhuman Primate Brains
Deadly 'Superbugs' Destroyed by Molecular Drills
Unearthing the Mystery of the Meaning of Easter Island's Moai