Hurricane Beryl was the latest Atlantic storm to rapidly intensify, growing quickly from a tropical storm into the strongest June hurricane on record in the Atlantic. It hit the Grenadine Islands with 150 mph winds and a destructive storm surge on July 1, 2024, then continued to intensify into the basin’s earliest Category 5 storm on record.The damage Beryl caused, particularly on Carriacou and Petite Martinique, was extensive, Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell told a news briefing. “In ...read more

Civilizations rise and fall, and sometimes, they fall on top of each other. Part of the reason that civilizations are born is their location, and over time, that location largely remains the same even though the city it hosts changes.These archeological sites are layered on top of each other, telling the story of one society, its rise, and then the next that came in its place. 1. Pompeii(Credit: Ivo Antonie de Rooij/Shutterstock) Pompeii is well known as a city that was decimated by the eruptio ...read more

Picture an amphibian over 6 feet long, with a suction-cup mouth containing 4-inch fangs in a 2-foot-long skull that holds a ring of smaller, but equally sharp teeth. Such a creature dominated the waters 40 million years before dinosaurs usurped it as a top predator and comes from a lineage once thought to be extinct millions of years before its aquatic reign. This creature, Gaiasia jennyae — which could aptly be named “salamander from hell” — is described in a new report in Nature.“Gai ...read more

Electroencephalography, or EEG, was invented 100 years ago. In the years since the invention of this device to monitor brain electricity, it has had an incredible impact on how scientists study the human brain.Since its first use, the EEG has shaped researchers’ understanding of cognition, from perception to memory. It has also been important for diagnosing and guiding treatment of multiple brain disorders, including epilepsy.I am a cognitive neuroscientist who uses EEG to study how people rem ...read more

Personality is a fascinating and complex aspect of human nature. It's what makes each of us unique, influencing how we think, feel, and interact with the world around us. But have you ever wondered why sometimes you enjoy being the life of the party, and other times you crave solitude? If so, you might be tapping into both introverted and extroverted traits, making you an ambivert.In this article, we’ll briefly explore what it means to be an ambivert, as well as how to recognize if you possess ...read more

Since the dawn of time, humans have depended on the light of day and the darkness of night to regulate sleep cycles and keep our circadian rhythms in check. But now with the advent of electrical lighting as well as screen time, we have to tend to unnatural lighting and the impact it has on our sleep cycles.Humans have robust rhythms that regulate nearly every aspect of our lives, from our cognition to memory to things like liver function and how the pancreas secretes insulin in response to a mea ...read more

Every season has its own unique sights, sounds and other sensations. In this episode of the SciStarter podcast, we look at fireflies, listen to cicadas, feel the ocean waves and extend our senses beyond the bounds of our planet.Sensations of Summer Audio PodcastSensations of Summer Video PodcastPodcast TranscriptSciStarter S5E6 Sensations of SummerBob Hirshon Welcome to Citizen Science: Stories of Science We Can Do Together, also known as the SciStarter podcast. In this episode a summer sensory ...read more

You have to wonder how people originally figured out how to eat some foods that are beloved today. The cassava plant is toxic if not carefully processed through multiple steps. Yogurt is basically old milk that’s been around for a while and contaminated with bacteria. And who discovered that popcorn could be a toasty, tasty treat?These kinds of food mysteries are pretty hard to solve. Archaeology depends on solid remains to figure out what happened in the past, especially for people who didn� ...read more

Medical professionals often see patients exhibiting symptoms of more than one mental condition at a time, which are called comorbidities. However, the causes of these comorbidities involve delving into the complexity of the human brain and the myriad reasons why mental health conditions arise in the first place. “Comorbidities are, unfortunately, common and a serious problem,” says Kristin Scaplen, an assistant neuroscience professor at Bryant University. “Research shows that the presence ...read more

The Bronze Age saw the creation of complex societies and complex warfare, and served as the setting of some of the world’s most famous myths. In fact, the Aegean Bronze Age was the time of Achilles and Odysseus — of the legendary Trojan Horse and Trojan War — memorialized in the works of Homer. Not so mythical were the cultures that arose around the Aegean throughout the Greek Bronze Age, between 3000 B.C.E. and 1000 B.C.E., including the Minoan civilization on Crete and the Mycenaean civi ...read more