At the start of the year, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a Florida woman had been convicted for her part in swindling victims in an online romance scheme. When she pled guilty, she admitted to laundering more than $2.7 million to her co-conspirators abroad.Although this crime ring was busted, the DOJ reports there are many others, and such scams are increasing each year. Gone are the days of getting a misspelled email from a dethroned “Nigerian prince” asking for money. Socia ...read more

Before the ash of Mount Vesuvius buried the city of Pompeii in 79 C.E., some of the city’s elites would host parties in their own private bathhouse.Researchers from the Archeological Park of Pompeii — Parco Archeologico di Pompei — announced the discovery of an elaborate bathhouse inside a private home (domus). According to the Archeological Park of Pompeii, this may be the largest bathhouse ever found at the site. The new finding sheds more light on the lives of Pompeii’s citizens up un ...read more

Long before humans acquired an appetite for meat, one of our earliest hominin ancestors — Australopithecus — stuck to a vegetarian diet. The ancient hominin, living in eastern and southern Africa around 3.5 million years ago, ate primarily plant-based foods, according to a new study that analyzed their fossilized teeth. The study, published in the journal Science, marks the latest chapter in the hunt to unearth the foundation of humans’ carnivorous tendencies. Scientists have regularly sp ...read more

Astrophysicists have taken images of a large sample of exocomet belts for the first time, imaging the bands along with the tiny pebbles that orbit within. The images were published in a study in Astronomy and Astrophysics, showing bands of a variety of structures. “The images reveal a remarkable diversity in the structure of belts,” said Sebastián Marino, a study author and an astronomer at the University of Exeter, according to a press release. “Some are narrow rings […] but a larger n ...read more

Using the Body Mass Index (BMI) to diagnose obesity should go the way of blood-letting, an international panel of 58 scientists argued in the British medical journal The Lancet. Doctors should instead measure how excess body fat affects the body — a measurement called adiposity. Physicians have used BMI in part because it’s a simple calculation that compares weight relative to health.The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Commission argues that BMI is more simplistic than simple, because it ...read more

The fictional Magic School Bus enables its passengers to explore scientific phenomena, such as dinosaurs. Now, a non-fictional Space Bus named Pandora is ready to investigate celestial mysteries, like exoplanets that orbit small stars.The team that conceived of and built Pandora — consisting of scientists from institutions including NASA, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the University of Arizona — announced its completion at an American Astronomical Society press briefing in Mary ...read more

At the beginning of the 20th century, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, often called “the father of modern neuroscience,” made it clear: In adults, “the nerve paths are something fixed, ended, and immutable. Everything may die, nothing may be regenerated,” he wrote. The inability of adults to produce new neurons was pretty much the central dogma of neuroscience until the 1960s. But as with a lot of fathers in that decade, a younger person challenged Ramón y Cajal’s decree.In 1962, Josef Altma ...read more

Snapshots of colorful galaxies and planets show that the beauty of our universe knows no bounds, and recent images of glowing space gas and dust captured by NASA are no exception. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has caught yet another visual spectacle, depicting layers of interstellar material illuminated by a supernova in a phenomenon known as a thermal light echo.Getting a glimpse of the brilliant scene through JWST, a team at NASA created a 3D scan of the interstellar material that disp ...read more

They don’t always own up to it, but many parents play favorites, treating their more favored children differently than their less favored. According to recent research in the Psychology Bulletin, certain children tend to be the favorites, as parents may be more inclined to treat their daughters, as well as their agreeable and conscientious children, better.“Differential treatment from parents can have lasting consequences for children,” said Alexander Jensen, a study author and an associat ...read more

The desert is one of the harshest environments to live in. It can be extremely hot during the day and freezing cold at night. There is sparse vegetation and little shade. The terrain is often rough, and to top it all off, there is minimal water. Desert inhabitants must be adaptable to survive these harsh conditions. As humans, to thrive in desert life, we must find ways to stay hydrated, stay out of the sun, and find food and shelter. It’s much easier to survive in the desert now, with modern ...read more