[embedded content]The world's fishing industry largely acts like a sieve separating the larger fish – the keepers taken for human purposes – from the smaller ones, which go on to reproduce. This process creates a kind of evolutionary pressure, according to researchers, affecting the genetic makeup of generations to come.A 2002 study found it took only four generations of such size-focused fishing to shrink the size of the ensuing generations. While the strategy initially produced large yield ...read more

The Tasmanian tiger was once a creature of great beauty. The striped, marsupial predator, and largest of its kind, moved at a slow, stiff-legged pace through the grasslands of Australia, hunting singly or in pairs. Its 46 teeth closed around kangaroos, other marsupials, small rodents and birds, according to the Australian Museum.The Tasmanian Tiger ExtinctionLargely a creature of the night, the Tasmanian tiger became a thing of legend as farmers blamed it for the death of sheep and poultry acros ...read more

When the roller coaster at Coney Island first debuted in 1884, thrill seekers climbed aboard a ride that scaled a 15-foot hill and sped at four miles per hour.Modern coasters can reach heights of 300 feet and speeds of 90 miles per hour. They drop riders suddenly or jerk them backward. Riders twist, fly upside down and return to the start within mere minutes.Scientists are learning more about what happens to the body during roller coaster rides. The twists and turns are harmless for most peopl ...read more

This article was originally published on April 22, 2020.Organizers of the first Earth Day reportedly scheduled the event on a Wednesday to avoid conflicting with the “weekend activities” that college students enjoyed.That must have been the right call. That April 22, 1970, hundreds of campuses across the country hosted lectures, protests and clean-ups, alongside citywide events in Washington, D.C. and New York City. Why Was the First Earth Day Important?The environmental movement has changed ...read more

The camel-mounted warriors of Nabataea were so skilled that they brutally slayed nearly 4,600 Greek soldiers during a single battle in 312 B.C. The Nabataean merchants held a monopoly on Silk Road trade at the crossroads of Africa, Europe and Asia for hundreds of years. And the Nabataean porters had secret reservoirs of water and supplies that only the Nabataeans could find.Then, in A.D. 106, the great civilization of Nabataea “peacefully” came to an end. Or did it? According to ancient Roma ...read more

It’s a familiar and seemingly logical argument: Social media makes us less social. We’re hooked to our phones at the expense of going out into the real world and interacting with other people.And according to Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies and director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at the University of Kansas, the concept even has a name: the social displacement hypothesis.“The social displacement hypothesis is probably the most well-known, long-lasting explan ...read more

It all started with a cloud of dust and gas.Long before the Earth or anything else in the solar system existed — indeed, before there even was a solar system — there was a massive molecular cloud. Dark and dense, it was nevertheless full of crucial amounts of certain elements and tiny but useful dust particles.It’s from this ancient and fortuitous cloud that a blazing, life-sustaining sphere was ultimately born. The ancient Romans knew it as “Sol,” which today remains the scientific na ...read more

When flying thousands of miles, birds often make pitstops to recharge on food and energy.New research shows that the birds making these twice-yearly journeys may be doing more than filling their bellies and resting their wings: Their immune systems may need a boost to keep the birds from succumbing to disease or infection.“These birds basically run 100 marathons — they are super athletes,” says Cas Eikenaar, an ecologist at the Institute of Avian Research in northern Germany. “They make ...read more

For more than 4,300 years, the Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest human-made structure on Earth. Standing 481 feet, the Great Pyramid lost its title of the tallest in the world after the completion of the Washington Monument in 1885. Today it stands at about 450 feet after losing about 31 feet from the top. The Great Pyramid has long fascinated scholars, scientists and amateur Egyptologists. As old as it is, much of the Great Pyramid remains a mystery. Now new technologies are helping sci ...read more

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, while the rest of us were binge-watching TV shows and baking banana bread, a couple of researchers at Johns Hopkins University took their minds off the healthcare crisis by counting the brain cells of fruit flies and mosquitoes. The researchers, Joshua Raji and Christopher Potter, discovered that the two animals had around 200,000 brain cells on average, mostly neurons, with about 10 to 15 percent non-neuronal cells, such as glial cells. (Glial ...read more