Shortly after eating or drinking, you might find yourself with a burning sensation in your chest, otherwise known as heartburn. Maybe you feel something rising from your stomach to the back of your throat, or even find yourself having to swallow it or spit it out.Any of these symptoms may point to gastroesophageal reflux disease, also known as GERD, says David Estores, a gastroenterologist at the University of Florida College of Medicine. What Are the Symptoms of GERD?Heartburn and acid regurgit ...read more

American writer and activist Rebecca Solnit once described blue as “the color of where you are not.” In the context of sparkling oceanic horizons or cloudless summer skies, you might add that it’s where many of us want to be — especially when water is involved.Whether we’re talking Caribbean Sea, alpine lakes and rivers or a simple fountain in a park, there’s something magnetic about water. The human psyche, generally speaking, is drawn to it.Just consider the trend of cities and tow ...read more

This article was originally published on Dec. 1, 2022.Queen Nefertiti is best known for the elegant limestone bust signifying her role as the Great Royal Wife of Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. The Egyptian artifact highlights her long neck, high cheek bones and flawless features. But many scholars think there may be more to Nefertiti than just beauty. They contend that Nefertiti was also Egypt’s leading lady, a powerful figure who took over after her husband’s death. Nefertiti ruled during the ...read more

The world’s most popular sport has more than 250 million players in over 200 countries. Every week it fills stadiums with many millions more. This sport, soccer, is played by two teams of 11 players who cooperate to score goals while preventing their opponents from doing so. For each team, a game can have one of three outcomes — win, draw or lose. This kind of game is usually part of a bigger business to determine the best team. The most common process is a league structure in which teams p ...read more

An illness transferred from animals to humans is called a zoonotic disease. COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease that may have passed from live animals in Wuhan, China, to humans in the Huanan Market — though the data on this is still new. Examples of Zoonotic DiseasesHowever the virus was transmitted, this is hardly the first time humans have had to worry about a zoonotic disease. Here are four other diseases that were passed from animals to humans. 1. Rabies(Credit:nikitich viktoriya/Shutter ...read more

Our universe is about 13.8 billion years old, and the observable bubble of that cosmos has a diameter of about 93 billion light-years across. And we all know the famous maxim from Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity: nothing can travel faster than light.Taken together, this presents us with a perplexing riddle about the nature of the cosmos itself: How can the universe get so mind-bogglingly big in such a short amount of time?What Does "Faster Than Light" Mean?There are two ways to ...read more

A mat composed of microbes may have preserved a series of 255-million-year-old indentations made in a sandy South African tidal bottom by a hulking amphibian, a new study says.The remarkable shapes reveal that the nearly 2-meter-long rhinesuchid temnospondyl lurked for its prey and swam after it in the fashion of a crocodile. Like a prehistoric choreographer’s diagram, the impressions are a unique window into life on ancient earth shortly before the Permian Mass Extinction Event destroyed 90 p ...read more

Some creatures in the animal kingdom show off spectacular colors when exposed to light, such as certain snakes, insects and peacocks. They are known as iridescent animals.While snakes have iridescent scales and peacocks have iridescent feathers, a recent study published in PNAS indicates that in the case of the transparent ghost catfish, the iridescent shine it gives off isn’t from the fish’s scales. Read More: Inside the Secret World of Iridescent AnimalsThe Rainbow FishThe ghost catfis ...read more

Most people perceive paleontology as a frivolous sort of science. To them, the study of fossils is nothing more than the investigation of the planet’s trivial, far-flung past, making it impossible to appreciate the practical applications of the field.That said, the findings of paleontology apply to the present and the future of the planet much more than most people probably imagine. So, what, specifically, do paleontologists do, and why is their work so important?What Is Paleontology?In the si ...read more

Dinosaurs lived relatively long lives. The oldest Tyrannosaurus rex specimens that we’ve found were alive for about 30 years. It’s likely that many dinosaurs, especially sauropods, lived much longer than that. And with long lives and aging comes diseases. But what do we know, and what can we know about the diseases that impacted our favorite dinosaur species?According to Penélope Cruzado-Caballero, an assistant professor of paleontology at the University of La Laguna in Spain, dinosaurs ...read more