Should You Eat Red Meat? Navigating a World of Contradicting Studies

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

The new study still finds that reducing unprocessed red meat consumption by three servings in a week is associated with an an approximately eight per cent lower lifetime risk of heart disease, cancer and early death. (Credit: Shutterstock) Another diet study, another controversy and the public is left wondering what to make of it. This time it’s a series of studies in the Annals of Internal Medicine by an international group of researchers concluding people need not reduce t ...read more

Life Might Survive on a Planet Orbiting a Black Hole — If It Can Stand the Harsh Light

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

A more realistic simulation of the black hole featured in the movie Interstellar. (Credit: James et al./IOP Science) In the 2014 movie Interstellar, astronauts investigate planets orbiting a supermassive black hole as potential homes for human life. A supermassive black hole warps surrounding space-time, according to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and at least one of the planets in the movie, called Miller’s planet, experienced time passing at a slowed-down rate. For eac ...read more

Why Do We Have Eyelashes? New Study Says It’s to Keep Our Eyes Moist

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Do eyelashes exist, in part, to keep our eyes from drying out? (Credit: KDdesignphoto/Shutterstock) Why do we have eyelashes? The answer might seem simple: those thick hairs on the end of our eyelids simply exist to block intruding particles from landing on our eyeballs. And in fact, that’s what many scientists have hypothesized. It explains why camels evolved to have long lashes for wandering the dusty desert and why our house pets, in comparison, have stumpy ones. But it tu ...read more

Humans Are Causing a Larger Impact on the Planet than an Asteroid Impact or Flood Basalt

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Volcanic plume from Soufriere Hills on Montserrat, see from the ISS on October 11, 2009. Image: NASA. Carbon dioxide! Little did we realize 100 years ago how this simple gas would become such a cultural lightning rod. Yet, here we are, battling what might be an existential fight that is focused on how much carbon dioxide humans pump into Earth's atmosphere. It isn't a little bit, either. No, humans might be now be the gold standard in carbon dioxide emissions in the history of the planet. ...read more

Researchers Find Dietary Changes That Help Treat Irritable Bowel Disease

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

(Credit: Rimma Bondarenko/Shutterstock) In recent years, researchers have pinpointed a group of compounds called FODMAPs that are common trigger foods for people with irritable bowel syndrome. But it wasn’t immediately clear whether eliminating these foods could also help people with more serious conditions like Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis — or if it might actually hurt their already-sensitive guts. Now a new report in the journal Gastroenterology suggests a di ...read more