It’s a simple idea: Stop mowing your lawn in the month of May to let flowers in the lawn, such as dandelions and clover, grow and support bees and other pollinators.“No Mow May” was started in 2019 by Plantlife, a conservation charity based in the United Kingdom, in response to a well-documented loss of meadows and an alarming decline of native plants and animals there. Since then, it has been taken up by many gardeners and conservation advocates in North America.Studies have shown that ma ...read more

Jamestown residents likely turned to Indigenous dogs as a food source several times during the first 10 years of their Virginia colonization, according to a new study in American Antiquity. They also examined how Indigenous dogs disappeared over the next 400 years.“The consumption of dogs suggests that Jamestown residents faced multiple periods of severe famine during the site’s early occupation, as well as later periods,” the paper said. “While the consumption of dog flesh in modern Wes ...read more

Imagine a simple, easy-to-access tool that could elevate your mood, improve your sleep, and strengthen your relationships. It's not a miracle pill or a high-tech device — it’s gratitude. Long extolled in proverbs and philosophical teachings, the age-old wisdom of being thankful now finds support in modern scientific studies, showing meaningful mental and physical health benefits. Gratitude on the BrainAt its core, gratitude involves recognizing and appreciating the positive aspects of life, ...read more

The question of whether some dinosaurs were covered with either scales or feathers has a new answer: both.Researchers examined the skin of the feathered dinosaur Psittacosaurus from the early Cretaceous period (135 million years to 120 million years ago) and found “zones” of reptile-style scales as well as “zones” where feathers were present, according to a study in Nature Communications. The early Cretaceous marks the period when some dinosaurs were evolving into birds. Rare Skin Sample ...read more

We’ve known for some time now that during sleep, the brain undergoes a memory spring cleaning of sorts, during which thoughts collected during that day are either converted into long-term memories or discarded.It makes sense that this brain cleanse would occur at night when the brain is idle, considering there’s no way that even the enormous human brain could possibly have enough room for everything that we take in on a given day.Until recently, researchers didn’t understand the mechanism ...read more

Have you ever had your dog get irritated red paws after running around in the grass outside, or has your cat recently developed a rash? One study from 2018 found that in the past decade, cases of environmental allergies have risen by 30.7 percent in dogs and 11.5 percent in cats.Like humans, our pets can also get runny, sneezy noses and itchy skin during allergy seasons. Most allergy spikes coincide with the changing seasons in the spring and Fall, but changes in food and using specific types of ...read more

Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have been billed as "gamechangers" in the fight against obesity and diabetes, and the popularity of these drugs as a weight loss aid is booming: In the U.S., health care providers wrote 9 million prescriptions for drugs like Ozempic in the last three months of 2022 alone, according to a 2023 analysis. But like any medication, however, Ozempic and similar drugs — which use semaglutide as an active ingredient to mimic a naturally occurring hormone called GLP-1 — c ...read more

When it comes to animal welfare, there’s no debate. A vegetarian or vegan diet is, pretty much by definition, better for animals. When it comes to the environment, there’s a lot of evidence that giving up animal products can do a world of good. But what about health? Is going veggie good for your health? The reasons vegetarian diets are healthy are pretty clear, explains Heather Hodson, a clinical nutritionist at NYU Langone’s Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease. People wh ...read more

Anxiety is a reaction to stress. It manifests itself in a variety of mental and physical effects. These include feelings of fear, dread, worry, unease, and tension. Other associated symptoms are shortness of breath, nausea, muscle tension, racing heart, headaches, fatigue, sleeplessness, and difficulty concentrating. Anxiety can lead to isolation and depression, as well as creating issues at work and/or school. Almost 20 percent of American adults have experienced anxiety. This equates to over ...read more

You’ve likely heard that you can get iron from eating spinach and steak. You might also know that it’s an essential trace element that is a major component of hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from your lungs to all parts of the body.A lesser known important function of iron is its involvement in generating energy for certain immune cells.In our lab’s newly published research, we found that blocking or limiting iron uptake in immune cells could potentially ease u ...read more