Is a Shopping Addiction Real?

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

During the pandemic, millions of people turned to the internet to order groceries, household supplies and other goods they’d typically purchase in person. Our phones and laptops became sanitary havens of commerce. But for some people, online shopping easily transforms from a convenient consumer strategy into an excessive, harmful behavior.Is Compulsive Buying Disorder Real?The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders doesn’t officially classify shopping addiction (or, more techn ...read more

Go Ahead, Get Yourself Something Nice Over the Holidays, Too

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

‘Tis the season … for being stressed, that is. The holidays, joyful as they can be, can also be emotional powder kegs simmering with worry and feelings of constraint. A 2021 report by the American Psychiatric Association surveyed 2,000 adults and found that 41 percent reported an increase in stress this time of year. The reasons for the uptick in anxiety are plentiful: financial pressures, gift-giving worries, and family tensions, to name a few. Whether it’s from demands at work, home, or ...read more

What Is Quantum Advantage? A Quantum Computing Scientist Explains An Approaching Milestone Marking The Arrival Of Extremely Powerful Computers

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Quantum advantage is the milestone the field of quantum computing is fervently working toward, where a quantum computer can solve problems that are beyond the reach of the most powerful non-quantum, or classical, computers.Quantum refers to the scale of atoms and molecules where the laws of physics as we experience them break down and a different, counterintuitive set of laws apply. Quantum computers take advantage of these strange behaviors to solve problems.There are some types of problems tha ...read more

European Basket-Making Is at Least 9,500 Years Old, When It Was Used to Hold Hunter Gatherers’ Valuables

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

There isn't a corner of the globe where you can't find people living. Even in some of the most extreme environments on the planet, people manage to get by, largely thanks to the innovations of technology. It's easy to take these technological innovations — which have facilitated our dispersal throughout the world — for granted. In fact, common items like baskets, bags, pottery, and woven string were once considered innovative, even though they might seem humble compared to the technologies b ...read more

Why Can’t You Swim Through Space?

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

You may have seen it happen in the movies, or on TV: an astronaut swims their way through space to get from point A to point B. It may look a little fun, but unfortunately, humans can’t swim through space because there’s not enough stuff to swim through.What Is the Physics of Swimming?We can easily swim through water because water is dense enough to allow us to push back on it with our hands and get something for our effort. By conservation of momentum, when we push on the water, the water p ...read more

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