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
Fountains of lava erupted from the Sundhnúkur volcanic system in southwest Iceland on Jan. 14, 2024. As the world watched on webcams and social media, lava flows cut off roads and bubbled from a new fissure that invaded the outskirts of the coastal town of Grindavík, burning down at least three houses in their path.Nearby, construction vehicles that had been working for weeks to build large earthen dams and berms in an attempt to divert the lava’s flow had to pull back.The lava flow on Ja ...read more
A new computer model might explain why some animals shrink over time while others grow. It has to do a lot with their habitat and resource availability."Where direct competition is less, sizes tend to get bigger, even though being big and few in number can make animals more vulnerable to dying out – such as what happened with the dinosaurs," said Shovonlal Roy, study lead author who specialized in ecosystem modeling at the University of Reading, in a press release. The study was published in ...read more
Every squirrel has a science story to tell, but, sadly, squirrels vastly
outnumber squirrel scientists. That’s where you, the intrepid citizen
scientist, come in. Try out the squirrel projects in this newsletter,
along with other squirrel-centric and squirrel-adjacent projects you’ll
find with the handy SciStarter Project Finder, and help sort out the
many mysteries of our favorite wild rodent.Cheers!The SciStarter TeamWhat sorts of squirrels live near you? Researchers at Project Squirr ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine