Days come and go. Our circadian rhythms are tuned to the rising and setting of the Sun and the push and pull of the Moon. Days appear stable to us, an endless cycle of day and night, unless we decide to change our clocks, there are always 24 hours in a day.However, change is the norm when it comes to Earth's day length over geological periods. Earth's satellite, our Moon, steals rotational energy to travel farther and farther away from us over time. And as the Moon's gravitational effect on the ...read more
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go on safari in southern Africa. One of the greatest thrills was going out at night looking for predators on the prowl: lions, leopards, hyenas.As we drove through the darkness, though, our spotlight occasionally lit up a smaller hunter – a slender, tawny feline, faintly spotted or striped. The glare would catch the small cat for a moment before it darted back into the shadows.Based on its size and appearance, I initially presumed it was someone’s pe ...read more
One of the great achievements of modern science was the human genome project to map the sequence of genes in human DNA. The project produced unprecedented insight into the function of genes, their role in human health and the nature of life itself.And yet the human genome project was just the beginning. Armed with the sequence of genes in DNA, life scientists now want to know how the extraordinarily rich complexity of life emerges from this code. Closely linked and just as puzzling is how small ...read more
A 200-million-year-old piece of fossilized poop has provided some of the earliest evidence yet that modern-day parasites plagued the age of the dinosaurs.A Thai-French joint paleological survey recovered the “coprolite” in 2010 while working at an archaeological site in the central part of Thailand. The dropping was smooth, gray, cylindrical and curved slightly to one side – a simple object, but a potential “treasure trove,” according to a statement.What Did the Coprolite Contain?Later ...read more
After a retired speech-language pathologist had a stroke, he struggled to articulate his thoughts, even though he knew what he wanted to say. His wife didn't understand the source of his difficulties until a clinician showed her a video that explained what her husband wished he could tell her: His stroke caused apraxia.Apraxia is a term used to describe a list of neurological disorders that impact speech, movement or gestures. Clinicians have observed apraxia for centuries, but they still don ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine