Timing is everything. For early risers and late-nighters alike, listening to your internal clock may be the key to success. From the classroom to the courtroom and beyond, people perform best on challenging tasks at a time of day that aligns with their circadian rhythm.Circadian rhythms are powerful internal timekeepers that drive a person’s physiological and intellectual functioning throughout the day. Peaks in these circadian rhythms vary across individuals. Some people, known as larks or ...read more
The days of having a dictionary on your bookshelf are numbered. But that’s OK, because everyone already walks around with a dictionary – not the one on your phone, but the one in your head.Just like a physical dictionary, your mental dictionary contains information about words. This includes the letters, sounds and meaning, or semantics, of words, as well as information about parts of speech and how you can fit words together to form grammatical sentences. Your mental dictionary is also li ...read more
The Caspian tiger's (Panthera tigris virgata) story is a tragic tale. Once a dominant predator of Asia's diverse landscapes, its disappearance testifies to the darker sides of agricultural development. And though its demographic traits distinguished it as a unique subspecies within the tiger family, those traits didn’t last long, and the cat was lost to extinction in the late 20th century. So, why don't we see any of these tigers in the world today?What Was the Caspian Tiger?With a wide habita ...read more
Fossils provide important insights about the existence and adaption of living organisms — over millions of years. Ancient plant fossils provide clues about climate conditions and environmental change. Among the most interesting are Glossopteris leaf fossils, which have been found in Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, and parts of Asia — mostly India. With more than 70 identifiable species, this once prevalent plant is a valuable information source on Earth’s conditions, lo ...read more
Old Tom, a particularly long-lived orca that participated in whale hunts in the early 1900s, may have sounded a call-to-arms early in the morning, or even in the middle of the night — a loud slapping of tail fins off the surface of the water.In a small town called Eden off the coast of southeastern Australian, orca pods would alert whalers and heard humpback whales that swam through these waters every year towards the Twofold Bay area. The whalers would then get out on the water as quickly as ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine