Walruses are perhaps best recognized for their iconic tusks. But one thing that makes them unusual among modern marine mammals is the way they use suction to eat. That ability appears to have been missing among many of the animal’s ancient relatives. But fossils now show that a newly named species developed that skill — perhaps as a way to adapt to a changing climate, according to a report in PeerJ Life & Environment.This finding is both exciting and unusual because it showcases a potent ...read more

Night terrors, often known as sleep terrors, have a sure way of making us feel rattled. After all, who wants to have anything other than peaceful sleep? Unfortunately, for those of us experiencing night terrors, undisturbed sleep is hardly ever achieved. Night terrors are a form of sleep disturbance that occurs when your brain is partially asleep and partially awake. They occur during non-REM sleep, often at the beginning of a sleep cycle, and can last up to 40 minutes. Unlike a nightmare where ...read more

Ask a group of people to name a famous psychotherapist, and most would probably say Sigmund Freud or perhaps Carl Jung. But, one of the most influential psychotherapists of the 20th century was Carl Rogers. In the 1940s, Rogers developed a radical approach to psychotherapy called “person-centered therapy,” a therapeutic technique in which the therapist uses empathy, reflective listening, and profound acceptance — rather than interpreting behaviors or exploring unconscious drives — to hel ...read more

The Kronosaurus was a massive marine predator with a fearsome jaw, big enough to swallow an adult human whole. They had huge teeth — about 12 inches long from the base to the tip, which they used to eat almost anything they could get their teeth on during the Early Cretaceous.“In terms of size, they are some of the biggest,” says Leslie Noe, a paleontologist at the University of the Andes in Bogota, Colombia.And the fearsome jaw is all we know about the Kronosaurus queenslandicus — the o ...read more

As someone with mild ADHD, I find it hard to focus if there are any distractions around me. As soon as something catches my attention, even for a moment, I’m hooked. Between this sentence and the last, I spent a minute or two staring out the window at a deer walking through my yard.It’s a trait that notoriously makes it hard to sit in long classes and perform mundane tasks. And, it’s a trait that many of us try to unlearn or suppress through medication, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfu ...read more

Mars holds enough water to cover the entire planet with an ocean about a mile deep, according to a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But accessing that water would require drilling wells 6 miles down. On Earth, creating wells that reach even a half mile down is a challenge. Water was first discovered on Mars in 2020, it was frozen in polar ice caps. But scientists had also noticed signs that much more once flowed on the surface through channels resembling riverbeds. F ...read more

The Titanic, discovered in 1985 deep beneath the ocean off of Newfoundland, is the most iconic shipwreck in the world. The massive luxury liner sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, but it was well preserved in its freezing resting place on the ocean floor.In 2021, the Oceangate, a state-of-the-art submersible, made it possible to visit the site, but just two years later, everyone aboard the vessel was tragically killed when it imploded deep in the blue, and all the crew members were lost to th ...read more

Parasites take an enormous toll on human and veterinary health. But researchers may have found a way for patients with brain disorders and a common brain parasite to become frenemies.A new study published in Nature Microbiology has pioneered the use of a single-celled parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, to inject therapeutic proteins into brain cells. The brain is very picky about what it lets in, including many drugs, which limits treatment options for neurological conditions.As a professor of microbi ...read more

My colleagues and I have developed an artificial intelligence system that helps buildings shift their energy use to times when the electric grid is cleaner.I’m an engineer who studies and develops smart buildings. My lab created Merlin, which learns how people use energy in their homes and adjust energy controls like thermostats to meet their needs while at the same time minimizing the impact on the grid. The system can learn on one set of buildings and occupants and be used in buildings with ...read more

As we focused our microscope on the soil sample for the first time, bits of organic material came into view: a tiny poppy seed, the compound eye of an insect, broken willow twigs and spikemoss spores. Dark-colored spheres produced by soil fungi dominated our view.These were unmistakably the remains of an arctic tundra ecosystem– and proof that Greenland’s entire ice sheet disappeared more recently than people realize.These tiny hints of past life came from a most unlikely place – a handful ...read more