The extent of sea ice around Antarctica has reached a record low level — for the second Southern Hemisphere summer in a row. This year’s low is 405,000 square miles below the 1981 to 2010 average minimum extent of sea ice around Antartica, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. That amount of ice loss is equivalent to more than half of the land area of Alaska. As Antarctic sea ice shrivels, it opens the way for waves to violently pound ice shelves that hold back the flow of gia ...read more

Cats have a reputation for being self-sufficient, especially when compared to their canine counterparts. Little bath time is required, for example, thanks to their overzealous grooming habits. They also don’t need to be taken outside for bathroom breaks multiple times per day. But make no mistake: Cats are not low-maintenance pets. Find out just how long it's okay to leave your cat alone. How Long Can Cats Stay Alone? “I would never describe any pet as low-maintenance if you’re providing ...read more

In the 2012 film Silver Linings Playbook, Pat, the main character played by Bradley Cooper, stays up all night reading Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Enraged by the book’s ending, Pat snaps it closed, yells an expletive and throws it through the window. He then wakes his parents up at 4 a.m. to rant about it.  This is an example of a manic episode.  Viewer Discretion Advised: This Video Uses Strong Language While mania can impact people in different ways, those who experience manic ...read more

One of the great questions for humanity is whether we are alone in the universe. Indeed, astrobiologists appear tantalizingly close to being able to spot the signs of life on other Earths — should it exist elsewhere — using modern observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope. Now a group of astronomers have taken this question further by asking whether life could exist in other universes. In other words, they want to know whether we are alone in the multiverse. And they have develope ...read more

Four decades ago, philosopher Hilary Putnam described a famous and frightening thought experiment: A “brain in a vat,” snatched from its human cranium by a mad scientist who then stimulates nerve endings to create the illusion that nothing has changed. The disembodied consciousness lives on in a state that seems straight out of The Matrix, seeing and feeling a world that doesn’t exist.  Though the idea was pure science fiction in 1981, it’s not so far-fetched today. Over the past decad ...read more

Metacognition is a fancy word for "thinking about thinking." We all do it, but how we do it can mean the difference between exacerbating depression and getting over it. When thoughts pop into our heads, they usually pop right back out. But sometimes we invest a lot of importance to them. If you do that, explains Aaron Brinen, assistant professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, you're going to pay much more attention to them. Then these thoughts begin to mean something; yo ...read more

Just a few weeks ago, city officials in Lake Elsinore, Calif., shut down their trails to prevent members of the public from disrupting a potential superbloom of golden poppy flowers in the region.  The shutdown was to prevent chaos from breaking out over people trying to view the flowers, much like what happened in Lake Elsinore in 2019 when a different superbloom took place. But what exactly is a superbloom, and why are people so intent on seeing one?  The Basics of a Superbloom  Superbl ...read more

About 3,000 years ago, the ancient Scythians were a force to be reckoned with. Beginning with their emergence from Iran around 900 B.C. until the peak of their power, during the 4th century B.C., the nomadic tribes who all shared aspects of Scythian culture were spread across Eurasia. Their territory once stretched more than a million square miles, from the edges of China and India to eastern Europe, beyond the Black Sea. In this domain, more than two dozen tribes thrived, including such groups ...read more

Cocaine is perhaps most notoriously known as a dangerous drug. But it’s also used legally as a local anesthetic for surgeries. Scientists in China have now genetically engineered a tobacco plant to produce cocaine in its leaves. “Actually, it’s a big challenge to solve this unresolved scientific question,” says Sheng-Xiong Huang, a plant chemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Kunming Institute of Botany. Researchers have attempted to determine how the coca plant, native to western ...read more

Signs of dementia can spark anxiety and fear in anyone who is aging and experiencing cognitive decline. These concerns often ripple into the psyche of family members, friends and loved ones, too. Part of the challenge is the many unknowns and uncertainties that accompany dementia, which is not a sole diagnosable disease. Rather, this syndrome — involving a gradual decline in thinking, memory or other cognitive abilities — typically stems from various terminal neurodegenerative diseases. The ...read more