Natural short sleepers seem to have won the genetic lottery, which allows them to thrive on very little sleep. (Credit: Shutterstock)
Your sleep needs are probably influenced by your genes.It’s a new way of thinking about sleep that's gaining steam, thanks to a rare group of people known as natural short sleepers, or those who can function normally on less than six hours of sleep a night.
And now, a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco — who identi ...read more
Saharan silver ants. The insects can move at blistering speeds across fiery desert sands. (Credit: Pavel Krasensky/Shutterstock)
Around noon each day in the Sahara Desert, silver ants emerge from their underground nests. Despite this being the hottest part of the day, they come out to scavenge dead insects, which are most likely to drop dead when sand temperatures can reach 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius). The ants have to be quick, though. Their prey is scarce, and they have lot ...read more
Kids these days, amiright? (Credit: aastock/Shutterstock)
Ugh. Kids these days. They've got no respect. They dress all weird. They're always on their phones. And don't get me started on their music!
Versions of this argument have echoed through editorials, taverns, hair salons and Roman bathhouses for millennia. Kids these days just aren't what they used to be.
To hear the various ills of youth, one might well think that Western civilization has been in decline since it started. T ...read more
Our feline companions can pass parasites, pathogens and more on to us. (Credit: Lario/Shutterstock)
A good snuggle with a cat can improve anyone’s day — well, assuming you don’t have allergies. But like any other animal, our domestic felines can carry disease, and sometimes those illnesses pass to us.
Updated guidelines from the American Association of Feline Practitioners include a list of which diseases cat owners might be at risk for.
Zoonotic Worries
The 36 ...read more
Caster Semenya (right) competes during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Semenya filed a discrimination lawsuit against the International Association of Athletics Federations, challenging a rule that female athletes' testosterone levels must be below a certain limit. (Credit: CP DC Press/Shutterstock)
New research finds that women with boosted testosterone levels develop more lean muscle mass and can run longer before getting tired.
Though some researchers and activists think t ...read more
(Credit: Britney Schmidt/Dead Pixel VFX/Univ. of Texas at Austin)
Europa, one of Jupiter’s four largest moons, has an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust. In the coming years, scientists hope to send probes to the world to study the chemistry of its ocean and look for possible signs of alien life. One challenge in this quest is figuring out whether radiation hitting Europa would tamper with potential chemical evidence of life.
Luckily, it seems that scientists won’t ha ...read more
Boeing's Starliner capsule. (Credit: NASA)
NASA has confirmed that the aerospace company Boeing is pushing forward with their new Starliner crew capsule, which aims to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2020. But before the craft is deemed fit to carry a crew, it still must clear two critical tests.
The first test — the Pad Abort Test — will ensure the craft's escape system works as expected during an emergency on the launch pad. That test is set ...read more
Particle collisions event simulation at 13,000 GeV in the CMS, a general-purpose detector at the Large Hadron Collider. (Credit: CERN)
(Inside Science) -- In 2012, particle physicists detected the long-sought-after Higgs boson for the first time. This particle was the last missing puzzle piece of what physicists call the Standard Model -- the most thoroughly tested set of physical laws that govern our universe. The Higgs discovery was made possible by a giant machine in Europe, known as the ...read more
Today, insect eating is on the rise. Did our ancestors chow down on the critters, too? (Credit: CK Bangkok Photography/Shutterstock)
Anticipating food shortages in coming decades, some companies are touting insects as tomorrow’s protein source. Entrepreneurs are jumping on board and chips made of crickets are hitting grocery shelves. But scientists advise caution: They say more research is needed on the environmental impact of rearing insects at an industrial scale.
As sustainabilit ...read more
A very weak paper in PNAS has attracted some attention lately: An experimental test of the ovulatory homolog model of female orgasm
The paper aims to be a test of the hypothesis that the human female orgasm is a kind of evolutionary relic from an earlier stage in evolution.
In humans, ovulation happens on a monthly cycle and is not related to sexual activity. However, in some mammal species, such as rabbits, ovulation is triggered by sex (or copulation, as biologists say). In the new ...read more
