The American pronghorn is a hoofed mammal native to North America. It's not an antelope, and it's not a sheep, although it has traditionally been called both. Rather, the pronghorn is an even-toed ungulate that can run faster than most any animal on Earth, with the exception of the African cheetah. Clocking in at 61 miles per hour, the pronghorn can run faster than any predator that lives in its habitat, and it has extreme endurance, keeping up that pace for long periods of time. So it begs to ...read more
The headlines about global warming have been hard to miss. First we had the unofficial hottest day on record, then a string of unofficial hottest days in a row, followed by the unofficial hottest week.But here at ImaGeo, I chose to wait for NOAA and NASA to come out with their regular independent monthly analyses of the global climate. I explain why below, but first, the news:Both agencies have found that last month obliterated the record for warmest June globally. In both NOAA's and NASA's reco ...read more
This article was originally published on Oct. 31, 2021 and has since been updated with new information on wet-bulb temperatures. For thousands of years, Earth has been good to us. The planet has cooperated with our physiology (or, rather, natural selection has shaped our physiology to fit a wide variety of climates) and allowed us to survive just about anywhere we please. But its generosity is winding down. As we careen toward temperatures that neither we nor any of our ancestors have encountere ...read more
Dinosaurs roamed for thousands of years on Earth. They thrived in various environments, so they must have had some pretty good strategies for keeping offspring alive and ensuring the species' survival. Learning about what these techniques might be hasn't been easy for paleontologists, who've primarily worked with scarce, fragmented fossil evidence. The main theory is that just like living animals exhibit a variety of behaviors from species to species, it's likely that dinosaurs also were variab ...read more
The costly tuberculosis (TB) drug bedaquiline, a lifesaver in more difficult cases, will be available in generic form to many low- and middle-income countries around the world, under a surprise agreement announced July 13, 2023. The accord was negotiated quietly between Johnson & Johnson and international group Stop TB Partnership, which provides TB drugs to lower income countries around the world.Activists such as Doctors Without Borders and The Fault in Our Stars author John Green, who led ...read more
Some 125 million years ago, dinosaurs like Iguanodon and Polacanthus walked the floodplains of the Isle of Wight, a quaint island off the southwestern corner of England.In fact, so many of these giants roamed there — or the conditions for preservation were so good — that the island now holds one of the richest deposits of dinosaur fossils in all of Europe, with parts of more than 20 species dating to the early Cretaceous period.Some of these, like the Iguanodon, were among the first dinosaur ...read more
Assuming human beings don’t wipe themselves out in the coming decades, and technology continues to develop at current rates, our species just might eventually expand into other parts of the solar system.After all, NASA has plans to build a permanent moon base, and steps are being taken to send crewed spacecrafts to Mars. Should we get there, humans must grapple with various potential methods of survival as a space-faring civilization.Two general schools of thought have emerged, each with a vas ...read more
As a person with life-long hearing loss, I rely on hearing aids to help me navigate my muffled world. Because I have layers of hearing loss in one of my ears, I function as a “one-eared listener,” and sometimes, my hearing aids aren’t enough. The sounds I hear are often garbled due to my auditory processing disorder, which can make language hard to decipher.Yet, I love music. This might seem counterintuitive — how can a person with hearing loss enjoy music?With the help of brain imaging, ...read more
As sessile living things, plants must adapt and respond to their ever-changing environments. And in recent years, understanding how roots may regulate high temperatures has gained traction among scientists.Biologists thought young plant shoots controlled temperature within the plants and acted as a transmitter that signaled the root to alter its growth, said Marcel Quint, a plant biologist and study author at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, in a statement.Now, plant biologists fou ...read more
We all forget things from time to time. Whether it’s a mistaken name or a misplaced wallet, forgetfulness is a normal part of life. But older adults are particularly prone to worrying about their memory. According to recent research, around 48 percent of adults in their 50s and early 60s anticipate developing dementia in the United States as they age, and around 44 percent worry about the possibility of memory-deteriorating disorders.Of course, that tendency to worry makes sense, since Alzheim ...read more