The recent announcement of the discovery of a dog-fox hybrid, the so-called “dogxim,” was strange and adorable and a little otherworldly. But scientists warn that such crossbreeds are generally evidence of nature going awry under pressures created by humans.As agriculture and other forms of human development encroach on natural areas, wild and domesticated animals (not to mention people and their automobiles) are frequently coming into close contact with each other.In the case of dogxim, the ...read more
People have been asking why space is dark despite being filled with stars for so long that this question has a special name – Olbers’ paradox.Astronomers estimate that there are about 200 billion trillion stars in the observable universe. And many of those stars are as bright or even brighter than our sun. So, why isn’t space filled with dazzling light?I am an astronomer who studies stars and planets – including those outside our solar system – and their motion in space. The study ...read more
Not everyone is a morning person. Some of us work better in the late hours than at the crack of dawn. But most jobs in our society are still geared towards the nine-to-five, forcing those who perform better at night into a schedule that doesn’t always catch them at their best.“If you are an early bird, work is perfect for you because the world revolves around your schedule,” says Sina Kianersi, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. But night owls, or those who tend to stay up late a ...read more
Anyone who has a brain can’t help but be interested in the buzzy class of supplements known as nootropics. Already a $10 billion+ industry, nootropic supplements and treatments offer an almost irresistible promise: to enhance brain function and general cognition, including superior focus, sharper thinking, and better memory.For the millions of people suffering from cognitive decay (and the families who have to watch it happen), nootropics offer a kind of Hail Mary pass, a last-ditch effort to ...read more
Animals are a noisy bunch. They babble and they bleat, and they chirp and croak and coo. And it's no wonder why, since sound is one of the main mediums through which animals can communicate.Studies suggest that there are around 10,000 species of birds and around 6,000 species of mammals that possess the ability to produce sounds, not to mention the sound-makers in the reptilian and amphibian taxa, among others. For these animals, sounds are the trick to survival. They allow their makers to find ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine