A farmer climbs into a combine. (Credit: USDA/Lance Cheung)
Most people think of frost as a farmer’s worst nightmare. But for corn growers in Illinois, there’s little worse than a warm, soggy spring. Rainfall can soak soft prairie soils and rot the kernels before they can grow. If the rains keep farmers from their fields long enough, crop yields start to plummet. Rain can also wash away herbicides, pushing growers to apply more.
For years, this fear has driven farmers to plant earl ...read more
The skeleton of a near-term fetus found in a Black Death-era Italian grave. (Credit D. Cesana et al 2017)
For one unfortunate medieval Italian, the cradle was the grave. It’s commonly called coffin birth, though researchers use the terms post-mortem fetal extrusion or expulsion. And yes, it is what you think it is — but the latest case documented by scientists, from 14th century Liguria, reveals there was more to the story.
A re-examination of a medieval grave outside Geno ...read more
Can neuroscience help courts to decide how criminals should be punished? Is moral responsibility, or the lack of it, visible on a brain scan?
In The Brain Defense (Penguin, 2017, on sale now), author Kevin Davis explores the growing use of brain images as evidence in American courtrooms. What Davis calls the “brain defense” is the strategy of using evidence of apparent brain abnormalities as a mitigating factor when defendants are convicted of violent crimes. If someone’s brai ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
