Dendrochronologist Henri Grissino-Mayer and colleagues study the tree rings in the Karr-Koussevitzky double bass. Their analysis ultimately determined that the instrument was built much later than previously thought. (Credit: Henri Grissino-Mayer)
Modern science is full of surprising analytical techniques that can be used in a wide variety of remarkable circumstances.
My favorite technique is dendrochronology—the study of “tree time.” By assigning calendar-year dates to growt ...read more
(Credit: EJ Hersom/Department of Defense)
It’s a familiar scene that played out most recently at the London marathon: An exhausted runner staggers and falls in the home stretch, unable to will their legs forward another step. It’s an extreme example of a phenomenon endurance athletes come to know intimately, often called “hitting the wall,” or sometimes by the more offbeat term “bonking.”
The proverbial wall appears when our bodies have run out of store ...read more
A Simon and Garfunkel song comes to mind—and that has scientists scratching their heads as the spacecraft heads today for a second dive.
In this illustration, the Cassini spacecraft is shown diving between Saturn and the planet’s innermost ring. (Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
As the Cassini spacecraft swooped between Saturn and its innermost ring on April 26th, one of its instruments listened for the sounds of its passage through the heretofore unexplored region. What it heard was of g ...read more
A Camellia sinensis shrub. (Credit: LiZhi Gao Lab)
The first draft tea tree genome is revealing how the world’s most popular beverage developed its unique flavors and soothing properties.
Despite the wide variety of teas that adorn store shelves today, there is just one species of plant that produces tea leaves. Two varieties of Camellia sinensis, a type of evergreen shrub, are responsible for everything from Masala chai to oolong teas, with small variations in the way the leaves ar ...read more
Nice piece of tail: Galeamopus pabsti, the newest sauropod dinosaur in the books. (Credit Davide Bonadonna)
The latest big’un of the dinosaur world, Galeamopus pabsti, makes its official debut to science today after hiding in plain sight.
Paleontologists Emanuel Tschopp and Octávio Mateus, authors of the new study, contemplate G. pabsti‘s noggin in an artsy shot I rather like. (Credit Octávio Mateus)
If you want to sum up the sauropods, the group of herbivorous dinosa ...read more
(Credit: Future Vectors/Shutterstock)
Depression is challenging to manage, especially since many antidepressants can take weeks to work and simply fail for nearly one-third of sufferers. New research presented in April at the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference in Oakland, California, suggests psychedelic drugs can help people battling depression and other psychiatric disorders that defy conventional therapies.
Brewing Up a Mood Boost
Dráulio Barros de Araújo, a neuroscientist at ...read more
(Olga Kuevda/Shutterstock)
Middle-agers and seniors on average sleep less than younger people, about 6 to 7 hours a night compared to 8 to 9 hours.
But why is this so? And are older people therefore sleep deprived, which can give rise to chronic maladies and speed up aging?
There are two camps on this. One is that older people sleep less because their body requires less sleep. No harm, no foul here. The other is that the hours spent sleeping isn’t the relevant question; what matters is t ...read more
Rats get a bum rap. Most of us find them repulsive, and we will actively persecute them if we find them in our living spaces. It’s no wonder–they harbor carriers of the plague. But, like most mammals, they are more similar to us than you might expect. Take this study, for example. Here, scientists wondered whether non-human mammals have orgasms. To answer this question, they began by coming up with a set of physiological responses associated with human orgasms. They then a ...read more
Scientists refer to the study of biological toxins as toxinology. From bacterial toxins like anthrax to the deadliest snake venoms, toxinology examines the chemical warfare between animals, plants, fungi and bacteria. In my Toxinology 101 series, I explain and explore the fundamentals of toxin science to reveal the unusual, often unfamiliar, and unnerving world created by our planet’s most notorious biochemists.
One of the most frequent questions I receive as a venom s ...read more
High-resolution animation from GOES-16: massive thunderstorms over southern Illinois, part of a sprawling, dangerous weather system
A screenshot from an animation of GOES-16 weather satellite images shows severe storms boiling up over southern Illinois, where they dumped heavy rainfall on April 28, 2017. Click to watch the animation. (Source: CIRA/RAMMB/NOAA)
A large swath of the nation’s midsection has been hammered with torrential downpours. And the forecast calls for yet more, thanks t ...read more
