Animals also played an important role in Egyptian iconography. Gods were frequently portrayed as animal-human hybrids. For instance, the god of writing, Thoth, was sometimes shown with the body of a man and head of an ibis. The origin of this practice remains as elusive as the rise of those animal cults. But Barbash suspects it may relate to the relative ease of life in the lush Nile Valley, where people had the time to observe animal behavior and associate divine attributes with the traits of b ...read more
(Credit: Foxys Forest Manufacture/Shutterstock)
If you want to teach your children the alphabet while mildly traumatizing them at the same time, look no further than “The Gashlycrumb Tinies.” In alphabetical order, and with a jaunty rhyme scheme, 26 children meet fates both gruesome and preposterous. In the future, though, as climate change warms the planet beyond our comfort zone in many regions, the book could be rewritten by adding some heat.
There are 27 ways that a h ...read more
(Credit: Cornel Constantin/Shutterstock)
The content you see on the internet is increasingly becoming tailored to you: Music based on your favorite jams, shopping suggestions corresponding to your recent purchases, and television shows similar to your most beloved episodes.
These “similarity searches” drive custom content, and they’re pretty tricky to do correctly and quickly.
I Know This Song
That is, for computers at least. Fruit flies, on the other hand, seem to be pretty ...read more
East of the now-submerged land bridge Beriniga, a large valley moraine in northern Canada’s Nahanni National Park dates to 13,800 years ago, roughly the end of the last ice age. (Credit Brian Menounos, UNBC)
One if by land, two if by sea…if only the debate about how the first humans arrived in the Americas was as easy to sort out as Paul Revere’s fabled lantern signal. Maybe it is. A new study from a different field offers indirect support to researchers advocating a coa ...read more
A crested pigeon in flight. (Credit: Geoffery Dabb)
When the crested pigeon of Australia flees potential foes, it can raise an alarm — not by calling out vocally, but with whistling feathers in its wings. These new findings may be the first proof of an idea Darwin proposed nearly 150 years ago suggesting that birds could use feathers as musical instruments for communication.
Birds are known for the songs they can sing, but many can also generate unusual noises with their feathers. Darwin ...read more
An epidermal sheet grown on a fibrin base, like the grafts used to heal a boy’s skin in Germany. (Credit: CMR Unimore)
Doctors have replaced the majority of a patient’s damaged skin using genetically-modified grafts.
In 2015, a seven-year-old boy was admitted to a German hospital with lesions and blisters across nearly his entire body. He suffered from a rare genetic condition called junctional epidermolysis bullosa (JEB) that prevents the epidermis, the outermost layer of our ...read more
An artist’s illustration of New Horizons zooming past its next target on New Year’s Day 2019. (Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Carlos Hernandez)
NASA needs your help.
The New Horizons probe, which flew past Pluto two years ago to much fanfare, is heading towards another, even more distant world — (486958) 2014 MU69. It’s a maddeningly boring name, and it just doesn’t quite capture the adventure, the thrill, the awe of an earthly spacecraft visiting an object over 4 ...read more
