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When you hear someone laugh behind you, you probably picture them on the phone or with a friend – smiling and experiencing a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Chances are just the sound of the laughter could make you smile or even laugh along. But imagine that the person laughing is just walking around alone in the street, or sitting behind you at a funeral. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so inviting.
The truth is that laughter isn’t always positive ...read more
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What’s a more healthful option for a sandwich: industrially processed white bread, or artisanal whole-grain bread?
To those who seek clear-cut, black-and-white answers to burning questions like this one, we apologize preemptively. The answer is both; it simply depends on who’s eating it.
The Better Bread?
That conclusion is from researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science who recently compared the short-term health effects of switching ...read more
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We all know that feeling: the burning sensation as we slice into a fresh onion, eyes watering and wincing to relieve the stinging. There are claims that home remedies can solve this problem, including burning a candle, putting the onion in the freezer before chopping, or cutting the onion underwater. In this article we will investigate the culprit behind our onion tears and a possible scientific resolution that has emerged in the 21st centu ...read more
A mother and baby from the village of Pomerini, Tanzania. It’s estimated that the disease kills 60,000 to 80,000 people there annually. (Credit: Franco Valpato/Shutterstock)
You have a bit of your mother in you, literally.
When scientists performed biopsies of young adults’ organs, they’ve found maternal cells embedded in hearts, kidneys, and liver. This phenomenon, called microchimerism, is caused by a small number of cells passing through the placenta during pregnancy. The ...read more
Kelt-9b and its parent star, which heats its surface to temperatures nearly as hot as the sun. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC))
Astronomers recently announced the discovery of the hottest known giant exoplanet.
Sitting 650 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, Kelt-9b is a scorching ball of gas roughly three times the size of Jupiter. Temperatures there are estimated to reach 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough that the planet’s atmosphere may be evaporating away i ...read more
Ten years ago, ketamine was a drug best known for its popularity on the rave scene. Yet it has since enjoyed a remarkable rebirth – as an antidepressant. Starting out with a handful of small clinical trials, there are now numerous reports that ketamine produces rapid antidepressant effects. In the US, various clinics have sprung up offering ketamine treatment to depressed patients – at least the ones able to pay the bill, because insurance doesn’t tend to cover it.
Now, a grou ...read more
The Earth from the Moon on Apollo 8, 1968. NASA.
You might think the story of the Space Race is straightforward. That NASA was created one day so the United States could start sending things and people into space, and when it turned out that the Soviet Union had more advanced technologies — it did get the first satellite and human into orbit — President Kennedy decided we should go to the Moon. By the end of the decade, no less. Then NASA did what it does best: solved the problem. I ...read more
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A push to renew research into an understudied gut organ is gaining momentum.
The organ in question? The omentum. It’s a curtain of fatty tissue that hangs down from our stomach and liver and wraps around the intestines, and is known to play a role in immune responses and metabolism, although exactly how that happens is only dimly understood.
Because the omentum doesn’t have a discrete function like, say, our stomach, it can be easy to overlook. But, ...read more
Methane still seeps from these craters on the Barents Sea floor, formed some 12,000 years ago when pent-up methane burst from sediment. (Illustration Credit: Andreia Plaza Faverola/CAGE)
A massive reserve of methane — a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide — is trapped deep within the seafloor.
In northern latitudes, thick ice sheets act as a lid sequestering gases at the right temperature and pressure. But when that ice melts, it’s akin to popping a cork on a press ...read more
