You probably already know that how you eat before bed affects your sleep. Maybe you’ve found yourself still lying awake at 2 a.m. after enjoying a cup of coffee with dessert. But did you know that your eating choices throughout the day may also affect your sleep at night?In fact, more and more evidence shows that overall dietary patterns can affect sleep quality and contribute to insomnia.I am a nutritional epidemiologist, and I’m trained to look at diets at the population level and ho ...read more

In 2020, a New Zealand woman in her 20s underwent a standard Caesarean section to give birth. The procedure seemed to go fine, but for months afterward, the woman suffered chronic abdominal pain. She visited her primary care physician multiple times because of it, and even made a trip to her local hospital’s emergency room when the pain was particularly severe. A year later, in 2021, an abdominal CT scan finally revealed the cause of her distress: a plastic wound retractor about the size of a ...read more

Fountains of lava erupted from the Sundhnúkur volcanic system in southwest Iceland on Jan. 14, 2024. As the world watched on webcams and social media, lava flows cut off roads and bubbled from a new fissure that invaded the outskirts of the coastal town of Grindavík, burning down at least three houses in their path.Nearby, construction vehicles that had been working for weeks to build large earthen dams and berms in an attempt to divert the lava’s flow had to pull back.The lava flow on Ja ...read more

A new computer model might explain why some animals shrink over time while others grow. It has to do a lot with their habitat and resource availability."Where direct competition is less, sizes tend to get bigger, even though being big and few in number can make animals more vulnerable to dying out – such as what happened with the dinosaurs," said Shovonlal Roy, study lead author who specialized in ecosystem modeling at the University of Reading, in a press release. The study was published in  ...read more

Every squirrel has a science story to tell, but, sadly, squirrels vastly outnumber squirrel scientists. That’s where you, the intrepid citizen scientist, come in. Try out the squirrel projects in this newsletter, along with other squirrel-centric and squirrel-adjacent projects you’ll find with the handy SciStarter Project Finder, and help sort out the many mysteries of our favorite wild rodent.Cheers!The SciStarter TeamWhat sorts of squirrels live near you? Researchers at Project Squirr ...read more

It was the fall of 1888, and the inhabitants of London were frozen with fear. “The air of Whitechapel is thick with murders and rumors of murder,” an article in The Star announced in September. “Whitechapel is panic-stricken,” with its inhabitants too terrified to travel the twisting, smoggy streets alone. The widespread terror in Whitechapel was all thanks to the work of a “murderous maniac,” according to the article, “who stalks through the streets,” targeting “the most miser ...read more

The only constant is change. At least, that’s what the Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited to have said. And while science and philosophy don’t always go hand in hand, there is some truth to Heraclitus’ notion. Change is inevitable and, in some cases, necessary for our species to evolve. While some change happens automatically, like the tides going in and out, some changes bloomed from scientific discoveries. Using fire to cook food and keep warm propelled our ancestors toward the fo ...read more

My in-laws always have a newspaper on their coffee table. So, before family dinners, I used to read each person’s horoscope aloud. Cancer for my mother-in-law and brother-in-law, Virgo for my father-in-law, Libra for my sister-in-law, and Pisces for my husband.If their star sign had a dismal divination, I simply made up a more positive reading. I did these substitutions for over a decade until my family realized I was fictionalizing the forecasts.But are horoscopes even real? Does having a des ...read more

It is no surprise that our canine companions age faster than humans. Some studies have found that our pups are similar in age to a 30-year-old human by the time they reach their first birthday. By four, the dog is nearing human middle age at 52.A new study suggests a dog's body size, age, and weight may influence the health ailments your pup may develop over time. The find, published today in PLOS ONE, is part of a more extensive nationwide study of how dogs age over time and its effects on ...read more

As Woolly Mammoths trekked across Alaska thousands of years ago, hunter-gatherers followed their every step. New research on the journey of a 14,000-year-old mammoth named Élmayųujey’eh — Elma, for short — has further illustrated the travels of beast and human alike throughout this prehistoric expanse.Researchers at the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility learned of Elma’s odyssey by analyzing isotopes from her tusk, which was first identified in 2009 at the Swan Point archaeological site i ...read more