How to Get Over Jet Lag

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Vacationing somewhere far from home is always fun — but traveling there via plane can be a real lesson in self-discipline. Hours upon hours in a cramped, confined space with low air pressure and low humidity can bring on discomforts ranging from headache to dehydration. No surprises there.But even after stepping off the plane, your troubles may be only beginning. While the symptoms of travel fatigue fade fairly quickly, the icky feelings that accompany jet lag — irritability, indigestion, sl ...read more

Why Do Cats Always Land on Their Feet?

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

As long as there have been little kids and curious scientists, people have been dropping cats to see what happens. And for just as long, cats have landed on their feet. But how do cats pull this off? The answer to that question has been a scientific query for hundreds of years. Do Cats Always Land on Their Feet?In his 2019 book Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics, Greg Gbur, a physics professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, gives a delightful tour through the history of th ...read more

Your Native Language May Wire the Brain in Unique Ways

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

It’s hardly surprising that modern languages and their respective words change over time. History and literature have demonstrated this repeatedly.Something that is less clear, however, is the degree to which a given language changes and shapes its human speakers. (It’s an important question, considering there are roughly 7,000 languages currently active on Earth.)To put it more specifically: Might native French speakers, for example, tend to think a particular way because of the language th ...read more

Record Ocean Heating Spike May Herald Acceleration of Global Warming

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

As the world's oceans have spiked a record-setting fever in recent weeks, scientists are trying to work out the precise causes. You can see the dramatic rise in global sea surface temperature in this unsettling graph: Since early March, the global average sea surface temperature has increased to a record high, jumping above those seen during the strong El Niño year of 2016. Also shown in this graph are SSTs from the warm El Niño years of 2002/2003, 2009/2019 and 2015, along with 2022, a relati ...read more

Tiny Worms Got Stoned for the Benefit of Science

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Researchers have dosed microscopic hydra with cannabinoids to observe their feeding habits, and in 2000, a study at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh injected THC into the spinal fluid of rats and set them loose on some chocolate cake batter. The conclusion? The active ingredient in marijuana had effectively given munchies to the THC-injected rats, which ate more greedily.Now a new study has extended the investigation to one of the best-studied organisms on the planet, Caenorhabditis elegans, ...read more

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