Flexible dieting isn’t really dieting at all. It’s about meeting your nutritional needs on a daily basis while having the flexibility to choose your favorite foods from within the five food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy. For those who find traditional dieting constraining and downright ineffective, flexible dieting might be just the thing that moves the scale. What Is Flexible Dieting?According to registered dietitian Catherine Gervacio from the E-Health Project, th ...read more

Maybe you're shivering in your sheets, while your partner slumbers away, snug as a bug, right next to you. Or perhaps you have that one relative who's always wrapped in a blanket, even when the thermostat is cranked all the way up. You might simply feel like you can never get toasty enough, no matter how many layers you toss on. Of course, it's a common enough phenomenon. But why do some people seem to be naturally colder than others? The answer may surprise you, and it has a lot more to do wit ...read more

Using tools seems like second nature for humans today, but our prehistoric ancestors didn’t acquire this practical skill set overnight. The timeline of stone tool development by humans has been rearranged by new research, shaking up traditional views about the evolution of ancient human ingenuity. The study, published in Nature Communications, suggests that humans went through a period of gradual cultural change after they started moving throughout Eurasia 50,000 years to 40,000 years ago. Th ...read more

Sloths live in perpetual slow motion in the tropical rainforests of Central and South America today. But Roughly 10,000 years ago, a family of ancient, giant relatives would roam any number of terrains in the Americas. Giant ground sloths were directly related to their modern-day cousins, which are arboreal, or tree dwelling, and are limited in how big they can grow. But the largest of the land dwelling giant ground sloths, Megalonyx jeffersonii, could grow up to an astonishing three meters long ...read more

For dog owners, few sights are more heartwarming than their pooch wagging its tail. Suggesting excitement, eagerness, or simply pure joy, the tail wag has long been emblazoned as the default symbol of canine carefreeness. But it always begs the question: Just why do dogs seem to wiggle their behinds when happy? The answer, as it turns out, is complicated, involving a complex interplay between natural selection and humans’ artificial influence on behavior. And, dogs don’t just do it as an in ...read more

There’s no better place to put bodies and bronze treasures than in the bed of a small, shallow lake. At least, that’s what the Bronze Age people of Poland believed, according to a new article in Antiquity.Published in the journal in January, the article reports that researchers recently found a stash of Bronze Age remains and relics that trace as far back as 1000 B.C.E. Recovered from an ancient, long-lost lake in an archaeological area near Papowo Biskupie in Poland, the stash challenges co ...read more

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured 19 nearby spiral galaxies in a different light. The images revealed intricate details of each galaxy’s spiral arms, pockets of star clusters, and lacy, carved-out filaments of gas in the interstellar material. Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI instruments captured the glowing gas and points of light.“Webb’s new images are extraordinary,” said Janice Lee, a project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in a statement. “They’re mi ...read more

It takes a lot of guts to scale the highest mountains on Earth, but an intrepid bunch of animals makes living so far up seem like a cakewalk. These daredevils thrive in the world’s most isolated, inhospitable places, such as the rocky ranges of the Andes and the Himalayas. Parts of these regions also double as centers of biodiversity. Freezing temperatures, low oxygen levels and meager resources don’t stop animals from leading healthy lives in the highest altitudes. Here are 6 species that ...read more

It may be a global practice that accounts for a large percentage of protein consumption in many countries, but fishing is perhaps the least intuitive way to get food — most of the time, you can’t even see what you’re looking for.Hunting and gathering make sense, dealing as they do with the terrestrial realm in which we landlubbers evolved. We’re all familiar with this part of our heritage: Early humans got by spearing mammoths and foraging wild plants. Yet fishing also has ancient roots, ...read more

Paleontologists have unearthed a new species of pterosaur in a new study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Dubbed Ceoptera evansae, the species found on Scotland’s Isle of Skye shows that pterosaur clades may not have been restricted to one area of the world and were more diverse than previously thought. “Ceoptera helps to narrow down the timing of several major events in the evolution of flying reptiles," said Paul Barrett, study author and paleobiologist at the Natural ...read more