Living organisms activated a natural light source nearly 300 million years earlier than previously thought, according to a study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. A group of scientists from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History used genetic data and statistical modelling to demonstrate that bioluminescence — the ability of living things to produce light through chemical reactions — first evolved in marine invertebrates called octocorals about 540 million years ago. Look ...read more
Leaving aside the fun and fascinating question about whether time exists — even if we assume that time is a real entity — our own personal perceptions of the flow of time can slow, stretch, speed up, and everything in between.Our brains constantly monitor a complex influx of signals arriving with different timings, and the balancing act from all those signals, combined with many internal operations, combine to give us our sense of time’s passage. These systems work…well, most of the time ...read more
For almost a decade, Oprah Winfrey served on WeightWatchers’ board of directors and also appeared in commercials promoting the diet program. “You can eat bread!” she promised viewers.Then in late 2023, Winfrey disclosed she had added weight-loss medication to her maintenance routine. She soon sold her shares in WeightWatchers and decided not to seek reelection for the board. Her announcements sparked a larger public interest in the possibilities of weight-loss medications.Weight-loss medic ...read more
The practice of drinking tea with milk has been around for centuries and enjoyed by many cultures throughout the world. Milk tea is said to have originated in China, where it remains one of the country’s — indeed one of Asia’s — most popular nonalcoholic drinks.But in the 1980s, tea vendors in Taiwan began serving a novel variation of the beloved beverage. The milk tea was served ice-cold and combined with fen yuan, a traditional Taiwanese dessert made with ice, sugar, and small, sweet t ...read more
Andrea Mosie greeted me at the doorway to the moon with a wink. “Are you ready?” she asked. I had been warned about the technical procedures that would precede my visit, but I was not prepared for what I would see, and she knew it.Only a few hundred humans have ever been to space. Only a handful have ever walked on the moon. But there is one other way to experience that other realm, and it is through a doorway at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. I entered a boringly tan federal buil ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine