When I was a kid, I liked to dig holes in my backyard in Cincinnati. My grandfather joked that if I kept digging, I would end up in China.In fact, if I had been able to dig straight through the planet, I would have come out in the Indian Ocean, about 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) west of Australia. That’s the antipode, or opposite point on Earth’s surface, from my town.But I only had a garden spade to move the earth. When I hit rock, less than 3 feet (1 meter) below the surface, I couldn’ ...read more

The holidays offer many opportunities for awkward moments. Political discussions, of course, hold plenty of potential. But any time opinions differ, where estrangements have caused lingering rifts, or when behaviors veer toward the inappropriate, awkwardness can set in.Awkwardness is what happens in social interactions when you suddenly find yourself without a script to guide you through. Maybe the situation is new or catches you off guard. Maybe you don’t know what’s expected of you, or you ...read more

Orcas can get organized. When hunting for whale sharks — the world’s largest fish — a pod of killer whales appears to target the youngest most vulnerable sharks, ram them to turn them upside done — thus immobilizing them, and will then focus on high value organs like the heart and liver.Although there have been scattered reports of such incidents, scientists in Mexico recorded and studied four specific attacks, analyzed them, and described them in an article in Frontiers in Marine Scienc ...read more

We talk a lot about the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Rising sea levels, heat waves, melting glaciers -- they are all changes our planet is experiencing as the temperature rises. However, these can seem a little abstract if you're not experiencing them yourself. Sometimes it takes a concrete example of just how climate change is influencing not only changes to our landscape and ecosystems, but also to things like ... baseball.The Tampa Bay Rays play at Tropicana Field, a domed stadium ...read more

Scientists seeking the secrets of the universe would like to make a model that shows how all of nature’s forces and particles fit together. It would be nice to do it with Legos. But perhaps a better bet would be connecting everything with strings.Not literal strings, of course — but tiny loops or snippets of vibrating energy. And the “fit together” needs to be mathematical, not via properly shaped pieces of plastic. For decades now, many physicists have pursued the hope that equations in ...read more

About 1.5 million years ago, two different species of early man likely came within hours of passing each other on the shores of what is now known as Lake Turkana in Kenya. Two sets of footprints tracing each hominin’s path represent the first geological record of such an example, according to a report in Science.Those footprints are part of a much larger picture that tells a more complete story of life there then. “The footprint evidence provides a unique window into the occupation of the la ...read more

When you bite into a juicy hamburger, slice into the perfect medium-rare steak, or gobble down a plateful of chicken nuggets, your senses are most likely responding to the food’s smell, taste, texture, and color. For a long time, these four attributes set meat apart from other food groups.But in recent years, food companies have started to focus on the development of meat alternatives. Many people believe that transitioning away from meat-heavy diets can help with environmental sustainability ...read more

The opioid crisis remains a significant public health challenge in the United States. In 2022, over 2.5 million American adults had an opioid use disorder, and opioids accounted for nearly 76 percent of overdose deaths.Some patients are fearful of using opioids after surgery due to concerns about dependence and potential side effects, even when appropriately prescribed by a doctor to manage pain. Surgery is often the first time patients receive an opioid prescription, and their widespread use ra ...read more

Sometimes, good memory can be bad news.It turns out fat cells have excellent memory. Researchers published a study in Nature that explains how that memory works and why it is so persistent. The work describes the genetic and cellular mechanisms that make the "Yo-Yo effect," a common phenomenon where a person can lose weight, but it returns right away.The Persistence of Fat CellsThis result has especially profound implications in the U.S. where about 40 percent of adults are either overweight or ...read more

You are what you eat — a case especially true for the prehistoric creatures that roamed Earth before us. According to a recent study published in Nature, which analyzed fossilized dinosaur poop, or coprolites, the key to survival in prehistoric times was a diet of plants instead of meat. An international team from Uppsala University in Sweden and researchers from Norway, Hungary, and Poland examined hundreds of dinosaur coprolites and identified the different plants and animals these creature ...read more