Interacting with food is an incredibly sensual experience. One might imagine the smell of an oven roast, or picture an oozing chocolate lava cake, maybe even hear the crunch of a stale baguette. But what happens when you lose your sense of smell and taste?
Anosmia is a disorder where one loses their ability to smell. There are various forms of this unfortunate disorder: Congenital anosmia is when someone is unable to smell at birth, and hyposmia describes the diminishing sense of smell th ...read more
Finally! Some relief from the unrelenting decay in Arctic sea ice.
Well, no. I was hoping to be able to report that. But I can't. The National Snow and Ice Data Center's most recent update shows the extent of Arctic sea ice in March dropping to a record low for the month. And that marks the sixth month in a row of record-setting lows.
On March 7, the extent of Arctic sea ice seems to have reached its maximum extent for the year, after an entire winter of frigid temperatures. But here ...read more
Izaak Walton League Celebrates Citizen Science Month With Project To Document Streams Across America
By Danielle Donkersloot, Izaak Walton League Clean Water Program Director
Every American has the right to know whether the streams running through their backyards and neighborhood parks are safe. But there is an alarming lack of up-to-date information about water quality across the country. The Izaak Walton League’s “Stream Selfie” project will help bridge that information ...read more
Well, well, well... looks like it's time for yet another shake-up in the dinosaur story, this time courtesy of one of the animals' early relatives, Teleocrater rhadinus. The first description of the animal, published today, reveals the conventional chronology of how dinosaurs bodies evolved might be just a wee bit off, give or take several million years.
With reverberations from a proposed massive rewrite of the dinosaur family tree still echoing, here comes a species new to science but v ...read more
Over the past 7,000 years, as mighty civilizations rose and crumbled, another saga was playing out in the southern reaches of the world.
Just off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, a colony of gentoo penguins have long made tiny Ardley Island their home. At times, the colony rose to a mighty power, holding absolute dominion over the mile-long strip of land their forefathers swam, waddled and slid their way to some time around 5,700 B.C. But, nature deals harshly with hubris ...read more
If you're a cat owner, then you probably have a pretty good sense of whether your cat is happy, angry, or frustrated. But do cats, like humans, actually have common "facial expressions" that accompany these emotions? People have actually been studying questions like this for decades (and even back to Charles Darwin), but not always in a scientifically rigorous manner. Enter these scientists, who set out to create a "facial coding system" for cats, which they term "CatFACS" (fortunately not r ...read more
Hey, your shoe is untied, and now scientists know why: the combination of foot stomping and leg swinging cause the laces to slip apart.
Yes, a child could have told you this, but there’s a reason scientists gave knots a closer look. Knots are everywhere, from stitches used in surgery to steel cables used in construction. Sailors are familiar with the clove hitch, bowline and cleat hitch. Even DNA is a snarled knot. With knots holding so much together, scientists thought it couldn’t ...read more
How has neuroscience changed over the past decade? In a new paper, Hong Kong researchers Andy Wai Kan Yeung and colleagues take a look at brain science using the tools of citation analysis.
Yeung et al. extracted data from 2006-2015 from Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports (JCR), which track publications and citations. All journals that the JCR classifies in the "Neurosciences" category were included.
The first change Yeung et al. noticed was that the number of published neuros ...read more
After epic drought, California experienced an equally epic rainy season this past winter. And the state's deserts have responded with an explosion of wildflowers and other vegetation.
Maybe you've seen those almost unreal photos of hills blanketed in emerald green grass, and bright yellow, orange and purple wildflowers? If not, check it out:
https://twitter.com/Interior/status/849048725867679745
Now, NASA's Earth Observatory has published before-and-after satellite images of the Anz ...read more
Going to the dentist may not be any fun today, but 13,000 years ago it would have been outright traumatic.
Before the age of painkillers, specialized tools and antibiotics, dentists used a variety of crude implements to ply their trade. A pair of incisors unearthed in Tuscany and recently analyzed by Italian researchers were hollowed out with sharpened rocks and stuffed with traces of bitumen and organic matter in what appears to be an early attempt at dental fillings.
Open Wide ...read more
