The average person in the U.S. uses an enormous amount of plastic — much more so than in other countries. And this number has surged in recent decades.Back in 1980, annual plastic use in the U.S. was around 60 pounds per person. By 2018, this figure had risen to 218 pounds. A paper from 2020 estimated that 46 million tons of plastic waste was created in the U.S. in 2016.“We estimated that in the U.S., our population produces more plastic waste than in any other country on the planet. That's ...read more

In late 2019 and early 2020, bushfires in Australia destroyed the habitat for millions of animals as well as homes for thousands of people. UNICEF estimated that the fires somehow impacted 40 percent of Australian children. Many children felt traumatized by the fires, and because teddy bears have the power to calm and comfort, UNICEF organized therapy sessions with handmade teddy bears that children could keep and cuddle.Researchers are learning more about the emotions people attach to teddy ...read more

As heavy snows have closed parts of Yosemite National Park in California, it's a good reminder that when visiting one of the 63 national parks in the U.S., always have a backup plan. The national parks are a wonder to behold. They help preserve pristine natural areas and the organisms that live there. However, they are also subject to extreme and unpredictable weather and are home to wildlife you won't often encounter anywhere else, which can hinder your visit. The best way to have a fun and sa ...read more

For better or worse, humans have sent an ark's worth of other animals into space. This veritable zoo of space travelers includes dogs, mice, fish, tortoises, frogs, spiders and non-human primates.But let's start with some little guys — fruit flies. First Animals in Space: Fruit Flies(Credit:Tomasz Klejdysz/Shutterstock)Fruit flies were the first animals of any kind to leave the planet. Fruit flies make good experimental subjects because they're remarkably similar to humans at the genetic and ...read more

Dyslexia affects approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population and represents 80 to 90 percent of all learning disorders. Despite its prevalence, many people with dyslexia experience a misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis or go completely undiagnosed. It creates challenges in processing written and spoken language and is usually first noticeable in childhood, sometimes even as young as preschool age.Signs of dyslexia include:Reversing sounds when pronouncing words.Slow reading speed.Difficulty re ...read more

Some ideas feel so obvious and make so much sense that you’d think they existed for millennia. But it’s incredible how fast science has moved in the past two centuries. The strides that we’ve made may seem so conspicuous that you can’t imagine a world without them, but you’d be surprised. These five scientific assumptions and discoveries are more recent than you might imagine.1. DNA Structure(Credit:ADragan/Shutterstock)In 1953, we learned that DNA was a double helix, a twisted ladder ...read more

In the days before and after a rift opened in the Ethiopian Desert in September 2005, the ground shook with no fewer than 420 earthquakes. Volcanic activity bubbled across the landscape, sending ash into the sky. In the climactic event, the earth ripped itself apart like a pair of too-tight jeans, opening up a 35-mile fissure. Some 25,000 herders fled the first major new “dike intrusion” to hit land since the 1970s, according to one paper.Scientists rushed to the rift, hoping to study a proc ...read more

You probably have it tucked away in your medicine cabinet. Whether you're taking it to stave off the aches and pains of daily life or reduce your risk of a cardiovascular event, aspirin has been a staple for over a century. But what is it, and how does it work in the body? What is Aspirin?Spiraea (Credit:Diyana Dimitrova/Shutterstock)Aspirin is made from salicylic acid, an organic compound found in a common shrub called Spiraea. The white willow tree's bark also contains the drug's natural elem ...read more

Large language models are a type of artificial intelligence currently taking the world by storm. They include OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and various others. All are trained on vast databases of written articles in which they measure the likelihood of a word appearing, given the sequence of words that appear before it. Armed with that knowledge, the AI produces responses to a given prompt by listing the most likely sequence of words that the model suggests. Computer scientists have furth ...read more

Having a son can be a costly experience for orca mothers, also known as killer whales — and it comes at the expense of having additional offspring, researchers have found. In a recent study, researchers report that male offspring from a population known as the southern residents — which are found off the Pacific coast of the U.S. — depend upon their mothers to such an extent that they reproduce less. (Daughters, however, don't appear to impact reproduction.) These adult sons impose “biol ...read more