Nothing calls to mind nonsensical treatments and bizarre religious healing rituals as easily as the notion of Dark Age medicine. “The Saturday Night Live” sketch Medieval Barber Theodoric of York says it all with its portrayal of a quack doctor who insists on extracting pints of his patients’ blood in a dirty little shop.Though the skit relies on dubious stereotypes, it’s true that many cures from the Middle Ages sound utterly ridiculous – consider a list written around 800 C.E. of ...read more

A shoe, a coconut, a tennis ball, a dead frog, a turtle, a mango, a ruler, a gecko, and a lump of yack dung — these are just some of the odd things frogs have been recorded trying to have sex with. Frog sex, in most species, involves the male gripping onto the female from behind for long periods of time — from hours to days — until they’ve succeeded in fertilizing their eggs. But mating can be very competitive for these web-footed amphibians, resulting in some individual mistakenly tryin ...read more

Giraffes are the world’s tallest mammals and an African icon, but they are also vulnerable to extinction.Giraffe populations have declined by 40% in the last 30 years, and there are now fewer than 70,000 mature individuals left in the wild. What are the causes of this alarming decline, and what can be done to protect these gentle giants?The five biggest threats to giraffes are habitat loss, insufficient law enforcement, ecological changes, climate change, and lack of awareness. Below, I will ...read more

The cars, cellphones, computers and televisions that people in the U.S. use every day require metals like copper, cobalt and platinum to build. Demand from the electronics industry for these metals is only rising, and companies are constantly searching for new places on Earth to mine them.Scientists estimate that lots of these metals exist thousands of miles beneath Earth’s surface, in its molten core, but that’s far too deep and hot to mine. Instead, some companies hope to one day search f ...read more

Most people with chronic back pain naturally think their pain is caused by injuries or other problems in the body such as arthritis or bulging disks. But our research team has found that thinking about the root cause of pain as a process that’s occurring in the brain can help promote recovery. That is a key finding of a study my colleagues and I recently published in JAMA Network Open, a monthly open-access medical journal.We have been studying a psychological treatment called pain reprocess ...read more

We’re all guilty of it. Whether our kids are driving us crazy, our employer is being difficult, or our spouse says something that sets us off, being able to control and even suppress our emotions isn’t such a bad thing, especially when it’s done for the right reasons and in moderation. But when it’s a regular part of our existence, says Robert W. Levenson, director of the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley, it can take a toll.  What ...read more

There's something sitting inside your skin. It's spindly and startlingly white, and, by its weight, it's stronger than steel.That might sound spooky — that something so strange and so spectacularly strong is sitting inside you — but that thing within your skin is what allows you to stand, walk, and sprint. It protects your innards and provides your squishy organs with structure. Pieced together from a slew of separate parts, it's been with you since you were a baby, plying you with the cells ...read more

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is a major health concern affecting millions each year. From the first sniffle to serious complications, understanding RSV is crucial, especially for vulnerable groups. Babies and toddlers are extremely susceptible to RSV, with most children experiencing the virus by the time they reach the age of two. While most patients recover without any treatment, there are still up to 80,000 hospitalizations each year among kids under five. RSV can also impact older adult ...read more

The allure of Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of Egypt, has captivated the imagination of historians, artists, and storytellers for centuries. Yet, one enduring mystery remains at the heart of her legend: What did Cleopatra really look like? Despite the vast body of information about her reign and exploits, the physical appearance of this iconic figure remains shrouded in mystery. From her ethnicity to her beauty, uncover the historical accounts and long standing controversies surrounding Cleopatra ...read more

Scientists have pieced together how a cave lion died some 48,000 years ago at the hands of Neanderthals, and the picture they’ve painted is pretty grisly.Lions loomed large in the psyche of Stone Age hominins, who painted them on cave walls and carved their likenesses into bone and ivory ornaments. Neanderthals competed with them for food, but evidence of their direct interaction has remained scarce.Neanderthal Hunting Techniques DiscoveredIn present-day Germany, a group of the early hominins ...read more