When you hear “megalodon,” what comes to mind? If the answer is a gigantic version of a great white shark, the latest revelation in megalodon research might make you reconsider. A recent find by researchers dashes this common perception of the extinct species and grants it a reimagined shape, describing it as more slender than the great white shark. What Shark Is Similar to the Megalodon?The modern great white shark has often been referenced when replicating the body of the megalodon (Otodu ...read more
Four recent catastrophic building collapses and a near miss are raising concerns about the state of America’s aging buildings and questions about who, if anyone, is checking their safety.Many cities have buildings showing signs of aging and in need of repair. In New York City, where a seven-story apartment building partially collapsed in December 2023, the median building age is about 90 years, and many neighborhoods were built before 1900.As a civil engineer, I study building failures, an ...read more
A grand network of connected cities and villages existed in the Amazon for at least 1,000 years.A new discovery reveals a thriving level of social organization in the jungle from roughly 500 B.C. to 600 A.D. that was very different from that of the Indigenous Americans who have inhabited many parts of the Amazon today.“It’s really a fantastic archeological situation,” says Stéphen Rostain, an archaeologist with the French National Center for Scientific Research — a governmental institu ...read more
You probably already know that how you eat before bed affects your sleep. Maybe you’ve found yourself still lying awake at 2 a.m. after enjoying a cup of coffee with dessert. But did you know that your eating choices throughout the day may also affect your sleep at night?In fact, more and more evidence shows that overall dietary patterns can affect sleep quality and contribute to insomnia.I am a nutritional epidemiologist, and I’m trained to look at diets at the population level and ho ...read more
In 2020, a New Zealand woman in her 20s underwent a standard Caesarean section to give birth. The procedure seemed to go fine, but for months afterward, the woman suffered chronic abdominal pain. She visited her primary care physician multiple times because of it, and even made a trip to her local hospital’s emergency room when the pain was particularly severe. A year later, in 2021, an abdominal CT scan finally revealed the cause of her distress: a plastic wound retractor about the size of a ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine