Galeamopus Pabsti: A New Whip It Good Dinosaur

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Nice piece of tail: Galeamopus pabsti, the newest sauropod dinosaur in the books. (Credit Davide Bonadonna) The latest big’un of the dinosaur world, Galeamopus pabsti, makes its official debut to science today after hiding in plain sight. Paleontologists Emanuel Tschopp and Octávio Mateus, authors of the new study, contemplate G. pabsti‘s noggin in an artsy shot I rather like. (Credit Octávio Mateus) If you want to sum up the sauropods, the group of herbivorous dinosa ...read more

Psychedelics Show Promise in Treating Depression

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

(Credit: Future Vectors/Shutterstock) Depression is challenging to manage, especially since many antidepressants can take weeks to work and simply fail for nearly one-third of sufferers. New research presented in April at the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference in Oakland, California, suggests psychedelic drugs can help people battling depression and other psychiatric disorders that defy conventional therapies. Brewing Up a Mood Boost Dráulio Barros de Araújo, a neuroscientist at ...read more

Why Quality Sleep Grows More Elusive with Age

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

(Olga Kuevda/Shutterstock) Middle-agers and seniors on average sleep less than younger people, about 6 to 7 hours a night compared to 8 to 9 hours. But why is this so? And are older people therefore sleep deprived, which can give rise to chronic maladies and speed up aging? There are two camps on this. One is that older people sleep less because their body requires less sleep. No harm, no foul here. The other is that the hours spent sleeping isn’t the relevant question; what matters is t ...read more

Do rats have orgasms? Do you really want to know?

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Rats get a bum rap. Most of us find them repulsive, and we will actively persecute them if we find them in our living spaces. It’s no wonder–they harbor carriers of the plague. But, like most mammals, they are more similar to us than you might expect. Take this study, for example. Here, scientists wondered whether non-human mammals have orgasms. To answer this question, they began by coming up with a set of physiological responses associated with human orgasms. They then a ...read more

Measuring Deadliness | Toxinology 101

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Scientists refer to the study of biological toxins as toxinology. From bacterial toxins like anthrax to the deadliest snake venoms, toxinology examines the chemical warfare between animals, plants, fungi and bacteria. In my Toxinology 101 series, I explain and explore the fundamentals of toxin science to reveal the unusual, often unfamiliar, and unnerving world created by our planet’s most notorious biochemists. One of the most frequent questions I receive as a venom s ...read more