(Credit: tommaso lizzul/Shutterstock)
Have you had your tonsils out? If you’re a millennial, the answer is probably no. Tonsillectomies, once all the rage in the mid-to-late 20th century, have fallen off sharply in recent decades.
They may not have fallen off far enough, though. A new study suggests that seven of every eight tonsillectomies in Britain weren’t actually necessary.
Leave Those Tonsils
Writing in the British Journal of General Practice, researchers from ...read more
A comparison of skulls from a human (left) and a Neanderthal (right). (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Did Neanderthals have language? Before trying to answer that, I should admit my bias: I’m team Neanderthal. As an anthropologist who studies our evolutionary cousins, I’ve seen plenty of evidence suggesting Neanderthals were competent, complex, social creatures. In light of their apparent cognitive abilities, I’m inclined to believe they had language.
But I can’t ...read more
A color image of the Hellas Planitia region of Mars. (Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS)
Today, water on mars is locked into ice deposits or held in deep underground lakes. But, water once flowed across the planet’s surface, and researchers have found further evidence of its presence on the Red Planet.
A new study, reveals that the Hellas impact basin on Mars once contained a number of ephemeral lakes, or lakes that are usually dry but fill up with water for brief periods of time.
Wat ...read more
Earlier this year, I posted on how Sergio Della Salla, the editor of Cortex, criticized a headline-grabbing JAMA paper that had reported neuropsychological abnormalities in US embassy staff exposed to the mysterious Havana ‘sonic attack’. According to Della Salla, the evidence presented didn’t suggest enduring cognitive deficits in the victims.
Now, Della Salla is back (along with co-authors) for round two with a new paper, called Cognitive symptoms in US government personnel ...read more
Scientists think they’ve found brain cells that explain how animals strike a pose. (Credit: Djomas/shutterstock)
Even though you probably don’t notice, your brain is constantly keeping tabs on where your body is in the space around you and where different body parts are in relation to each other. Researchers have been trying to better understand that phenomenon, called body schema, for a while. So far, they don’t really think there’s a specific region dedicated to this ...read more
National Members of the IAU vote at the 2018 General Assembly (not related to the Hubble–Lemaître law). (Credit: IAU/M. Zamani)
The Hubble law has a new suggested name, as members of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) have voted to recommend that the law now be known as the Hubble-Lemaître law.
The Hubble law, as it is typically known, describes the effect in which objects move away from each other with a velocity proportional to their distance in an expandi ...read more
Despite decades of high-quality observations, many details about our sun are still unknown. Credit: NASA SVS
The fact that the sun is hot should not be news to a single person. The sun’s surface is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which seems toasty enough. But surrounding the sun is an atmosphere of sorts called the corona. This envelope of superheated gas — plasma, actually — measures more than 3 million degrees. And scientists are still trying to figure out how this o ...read more
Carol Howard, 69, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease six years ago. (Credit: Joel Shurkin)
(Inside Science) — The second movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony begins with a minor-key rhythm in the cellos. It sounds like a background rhythm, which it becomes when the violins introduce a second, soaring and entirely different melody. One half the Baltimore Symphony is on stage playing one thing; the other half, another. Next to me, my wife, Carol, le ...read more
