More often than not, a trip to the grocery store ends up with the purchase of packaged snacks, sugar-sweetened beverages, or reconstituted meat products, also known as ultra-processed foods. These foods make up more than 70 percent of the packaged foods in the U.S. and represent about 60 percent of the calories consumed by the average American.Extensive research has already indicated how detrimental ultra-processed foods are to your physical health — but what about your mental health?What Are ...read more

The importance of a good night’s rest cannot be overstated. Poor sleep is linked to all-cause mortality, which means getting too little or too much sleep are “significant predictors of death,” according to a 2010 meta-analysis study. But good sleep is increasingly a privilege, as stress, workloads, and the trappings of a modern lifestyle squeeze out valuable shut-eye.Naturally, there are medications that aim to fix this problem. Home remedies like extracts of valerian root, a pinkish-white ...read more

The benefits of friendship go far beyond having someone to confide in or spend time with – it can also protect you from physical and mental health problems. For example, people with good friends recover more quickly from illnesses and surgeries. They report higher well-being and feel like they live up to their full potential. Additionally, people with good friends report being less lonely across many life stages, including adolescence, becoming a parent and old age.In fact, friendshi ...read more

Sea snakes have long captivated, and terrified, ocean enthusiasts and beachgoers alike. With their sleek bodies and potent venom, they've surely earned their spot in the marine hall of fame.But just how dangerous are sea snakes? In this article, we’ll take a deep dive.Are Sea Snakes Poisonous?Firstly, it's important to note the distinction between "poisonous" and "venomous." A creature is poisonous when it releases toxins when touched or consumed. Venomous creatures, on the other hand, activel ...read more

When you think of great survivors in the animal kingdom, your mind might not immediately go to the humble pig, but maybe it should. In the wild, pigs are extremely durable — they can thrive in almost any environment — and they’re well-known for being able and willing to eat just about anything.These two traits alone should earn them some respect as highly adaptable creatures. The problem is, those same characteristics make them a nuisance, certainly in the U.S., where feral hogs are now co ...read more

Anybody who has played tic-tac-toe has probably worked out that the game can always be drawn, provided neither player makes a mistake. Indeed, it is straightforward to create an algorithm that guarantees a win or draw regardless of the moves made by the opponent.This is a trivial example of a game that has been “solved” – one in which the outcome is determined from the start. There are many others that have also been solved but plenty that have not. For game theorists and computer scientis ...read more

Nothing calls to mind nonsensical treatments and bizarre religious healing rituals as easily as the notion of Dark Age medicine. “The Saturday Night Live” sketch Medieval Barber Theodoric of York says it all with its portrayal of a quack doctor who insists on extracting pints of his patients’ blood in a dirty little shop.Though the skit relies on dubious stereotypes, it’s true that many cures from the Middle Ages sound utterly ridiculous – consider a list written around 800 C.E. of ...read more

A shoe, a coconut, a tennis ball, a dead frog, a turtle, a mango, a ruler, a gecko, and a lump of yack dung — these are just some of the odd things frogs have been recorded trying to have sex with. Frog sex, in most species, involves the male gripping onto the female from behind for long periods of time — from hours to days — until they’ve succeeded in fertilizing their eggs. But mating can be very competitive for these web-footed amphibians, resulting in some individual mistakenly tryin ...read more

Giraffes are the world’s tallest mammals and an African icon, but they are also vulnerable to extinction.Giraffe populations have declined by 40% in the last 30 years, and there are now fewer than 70,000 mature individuals left in the wild. What are the causes of this alarming decline, and what can be done to protect these gentle giants?The five biggest threats to giraffes are habitat loss, insufficient law enforcement, ecological changes, climate change, and lack of awareness. Below, I will ...read more

The cars, cellphones, computers and televisions that people in the U.S. use every day require metals like copper, cobalt and platinum to build. Demand from the electronics industry for these metals is only rising, and companies are constantly searching for new places on Earth to mine them.Scientists estimate that lots of these metals exist thousands of miles beneath Earth’s surface, in its molten core, but that’s far too deep and hot to mine. Instead, some companies hope to one day search f ...read more