Sit comfortably and pay attention to your breath as you inhale and exhale. When thoughts drift into your mind, just ignore them and stay focused on your breath. Seems simple enough, right? But it turns out that this basic practice, known as mindfulness meditation, is powerful stuff. Not only does it help reduce stress and improve mood, but it actually changes your brain structure. And those changes can be quite beneficial. How Meditation Changes the Brain Sara Lazar is a neuroscientist at the ...read more

The ancient runes of an inscribed silver armband found in a buried Viking treasure hoard in Scotland are helping to reveal more about a place and time nearly lost to history.“The hoard has a ripple effect — it makes you want to reconsider what was in the area,” says Martin Goldberg, a curator at National Museums Scotland.The silver armband was part of the Galloway Hoard — buried treasure including ornate jewelry, gold and silver bullion, silk, and painted beads discovered in southwestern ...read more

As Earth’s surface continues to buckle from the burdens of climate change, its upper atmosphere faces different troubles altogether as greenhouse gases threaten space sustainability. A new study warns that the future could bring a sharp increase in space debris as satellites start to get stuck in Earth’s orbit because of climate change.The study, recently published in Nature Sustainability, cautions that greenhouse gases are causing the upper atmosphere to cool and shrink, leaving satellites ...read more

Many lifestyle factors are already known to influence cancer development, prompting people to modify their habits. Well-established connections include smoking as a cause of lung cancer, excessive alcohol consumption leading to liver cancer, and poor dietary choices increasing the risk of stomach, pancreatic, and colorectal cancers.A less conventional link between an unhealthy diet and lung cancer was recently identified by researchers at the University of Florida Health, in collaboration with t ...read more

Researchers who were curious about when ancient Europeans travelled to Africa followed the DNA. The route they discovered didn’t just track migration — it revealed pockets of resistance to the Neolithic revolution, as well as signs of sea-faring derring-do. A Societal ShiftDuring that period, starting around 12,000 years ago, societies started shifting from hunter-gatherers to farming. But not all of them. Most farmers from Anatolia (present-day Turkey) went on the move around 7,500 years ag ...read more

There are a lot of things that you might expect to see at an Australian high school. Backpacks filled to the brim with books? Sure. Forgotten pencils and half-finished pages of homework? Definitely. But a stone slab stamped with dozens of fossilized dinosaur tracks? That might be a little lower on your list.As surprising as it may seem, however, Biloela State High School in Queensland has long been home to one of Australia’s most footprint-filled stones from the Early Jurassic period. Describe ...read more

Art and literature have often depicted the creation of life with big, dramatic moments — often involving electricity.Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein got zapped into action. Michelangelo’s God (after six REALLY busy days) seemed to send an invisible but palpable spark into Adam’s extended finger, waking him into existence on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.The same is true for one scientific theory of life’s creation on Earth.Lightening and Life CreationThe theory states that a lightning bol ...read more

If humans could hijack photosynthesis — essentially, plants’ food factory — they could, in theory, capture carbon and produce hydrogen, both potentially helpful in fighting climate change. Absorbing carbon could slow climate change, and manufacturing hydrogen efficiently could create an alternative to CO2-producing fossil fuels.Figuring Out How to Harness PhotosynthesisPlants’ natural “factory” is both elegant and efficient: they absorb energy from the sun to process carbon dioxide a ...read more

When it comes to good overall health, the teeth are often overlooked. We tend to think of teeth as primarily cosmetic when in reality, oral health is linked to physical health and the risk of a number of chronic conditions. The mouth is a gateway to the rest of the organs, and when it becomes diseased, so too can the body.“Your mouth is the primary way bacteria enters your body. Bacteria can travel from areas like infected gums through the bloodstream to other parts of your body,” says Shash ...read more

Climate change has already begun to alter the environment in many ways, but scientists are also vigilantly watching for the ripple effects that will spread to human health. Now, they’re raising the alarm about exposure to viruses lingering in sewage as the world gears up for more frequent storms this century. A new study published in the journal Water Research warns of virus transmission through sewage systems, a public health risk that could grow in severity as wastewater continues to spill ...read more