For the stressed and overworked, there might be nothing more relaxing than a spa. Beyond the cucumber slices and hot towels, these leisurely destinations carry a fascinating legacy that extends back to ancient times. Bathing in mineral springs — a feature of many historic spas — has been considered a medical and therapeutic treatment throughout the ages, spawning the proverbial phrase “taking the waters”. Today, this practice is known as balneotherapy. Some cities have made the most of ...read more
Dogs have long shown that they can respond to such instruction words as sit, fetch, and come. They have more difficulty differentiating between objects — say a Frisbee or a ball. Earlier research shows that, when asked to choose between two items, dogs pick the correct one about half the time — no better than a coin flip. But a new study shows dogs’ brains respond about as well as a human’s when presented with familiar versus unfamiliar words, according to a study in Current Biology.Mari ...read more
A new instrument aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper may be sensitive enough to detect any life emanating from the plumes of far-off icy moons like Saturn's Enceladus and Jupiter's Europa. Over the years, scientists have found evidence of water underneath both moon’s frozen surfaces.The instrument dubbed the SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA) on the Europa Clipper, can detect even the slightest biological signatures in one out of hundreds of thousands of grains of ice from plumes on Europa and Enceladus. ...read more
Airplane flight is one of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century. The invention of the airplane allows people to travel from one side of the planet to the other in less than a day, compared with weeks of travel by boat and train.Understanding precisely why airplanes fly is an ongoing challenge for aerospace engineers, like me, who study and design airplanes, rockets, satellites, helicopters and space capsules.Our job is to make sure that flying through the air or in ...read more
If you don’t live in Australia, you may never have seen a numbat — even if you do, you may still have never seen one. The numbat is small, well-camouflaged, and … there aren’t many to see. That’s because they’re endangered. Though its territory once covered most of the bottom half of Australia, from the west of New South Wales to Western Australia, the numbat is now limited to two indigenous populations in southwest Western Australia (Dryandra National Park and the Upper Warren regi ...read more
If you don’t live in Australia, you may never have seen a numbat — even if you do, you may still have never seen one. The numbat is small, well-camouflaged, and … there aren’t many to see. That’s because they’re endangered. Though its territory once covered most of the bottom half of Australia, from the west of New South Wales to Western Australia, the numbat is now limited to two indigenous populations in southwest Western Australia (Dryandra National Park and the Upper Warren regi ...read more
By harnessing light, my colleagues and I designed a wireless, ultrathin pacemaker that operates like a solar panel. This design not only eliminates the need for batteries but also minimizes disruptions to the heart’s natural function by molding to its contours. Our research, recently published in the journal Nature, offers a new approach to treatments that require electrical stimulation, such as heart pacing.Pacemakers are medical devices implanted in the body to regulate heart rhythms. They ...read more
The largest river dolphin fossil has been found — thousands of miles from its nearest living relative, reports an international group of paleontologists in Science Advances.The team, led by University of Zurich (UZH) paleontologists, located the fossil in the Peruvian Amazon. It measures nearly 12 feet long and dates back about 16 million years. The new freshwater species, named Pebanista yacuruna, is linked to the rare contemporary South Asian river dolphin Platanista and the saltwater relati ...read more
For most animals, sex is an egg-meets-sperm affair that requires both a male and a female. Aptly, this is called sexual reproduction. However, some species have the remarkable ability to reproduce asexually without male fertilization.Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet discovered this process, known as parthenogenesis (a Greek term that translates to “virgin origin”), was discovered by the Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet in the mid 1700s. It was long considered peculiar to plants, insects, and o ...read more
Doctors may someday be able to use bodily fluids to noninvasively detect breast cancer in patients earlier than is possible now.Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in the U.S. and is currently one of the leading causes of cancer deaths. Earlier diagnosis and treatment lead to better prognoses for breast cancer patients. But mammograms have proved to be less effective for those under age 40, as their breast tissue is denser and screening and biopsies can be unpleasant ...read more
