Microplastics — defined as plastic particles under 0.2 inches – have been discovered most recently in human lungs and brains, as well as in our livers, kidneys, and testes. They have so far been associated with some cancers, respiratory diseases, and pregnancy and birth complications.Now researchers are adding another ill effect to the persistent particles — boosting antibiotic resistance, according to a study recently published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.Antibio ...read more
When the James Webb Telescope first observed mysterious Little Red Dots in the early universe, astronomers looked on in disbelief. These strange objects, they realised, were distant, bright and strangely, unexpectedly, bafflingly red.That’s a puzzle because young stars are blue and become red only later in life, when they are several billion years old. But these objects formed about 900 million years after the Big Bang and so could not be made of stars that old. In any case, stars are incapabl ...read more
Languages evolve and change drastically over time. If you were to say street corn, nepo baby, or beach read — three terms recently added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary — to early English speakers, they’d likely think you were speaking a different language. English borrows a lot of words from different languages. Words include rendezvous, genre, and even lemon. English is more of a fluid language, picking up new words as it grows. However, this wasn’t always the case, especially when ...read more
Decades after its initial discovery, the skeleton of a prehistoric child who possessed both human and Neanderthal attributes has now been directly dated. Archaeologists have confirmed that the skeleton of the Lapedo child, named after its place of origin in Lapedo Valley, Portugal, is somewhere between 27,780 to 28,550 years old, according to new research. Details surrounding the Lapedo child are presented in a study that was recently published in Science Advances. The updated date range of the ...read more
Hantavirus is not exactly a household word — or a disease that many people think much about. That changed when complications caused by the rare virus killed Betsy Arakawa, wife of Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman.Hantaviruses are a family of viruses that can cause serious illnesses and death. Some forms do more damage to the lungs. Other strains can destroy the kidneys.Whatever the strain, the infectious diseases are most often spread by rodents. In much of the world, there has been no record ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine