When flying thousands of miles, birds often make pitstops to recharge on food and energy.New research shows that the birds making these twice-yearly journeys may be doing more than filling their bellies and resting their wings: Their immune systems may need a boost to keep the birds from succumbing to disease or infection.“These birds basically run 100 marathons — they are super athletes,” says Cas Eikenaar, an ecologist at the Institute of Avian Research in northern Germany. “They make ...read more
For more than 4,300 years, the Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest human-made structure on Earth. Standing 481 feet, the Great Pyramid lost its title of the tallest in the world after the completion of the Washington Monument in 1885. Today it stands at about 450 feet after losing about 31 feet from the top. The Great Pyramid has long fascinated scholars, scientists and amateur Egyptologists. As old as it is, much of the Great Pyramid remains a mystery. Now new technologies are helping sci ...read more
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, while the rest of us were binge-watching TV shows and baking banana bread, a couple of researchers at Johns Hopkins University took their minds off the healthcare crisis by counting the brain cells of fruit flies and mosquitoes. The researchers, Joshua Raji and Christopher Potter, discovered that the two animals had around 200,000 brain cells on average, mostly neurons, with about 10 to 15 percent non-neuronal cells, such as glial cells. (Glial ...read more
[embedded content]Americans waste a lot of food, either 40 percent or 25 percent of that which we come in contact with, depending on the source. Some experts, such as Maria Corradini, a food scientist at the University of Guelph, blame, in part, a confusing food packaging system (Sell By, Best By, Use By) that prompts people to throw out food that's still safe to eat."In general, none of these labels is directly related to food safety," she says.Even the Use By labels applied to perishable dairy ...read more
You might have heard stories about someone who has a photographic memory. Perhaps you even thought you or someone you know might have one. But is a photographic memory real? The brain works as a super machine, storing several types of memory. Imagine it as a computer hard drive, where it’s possible to keep large amounts of compartmentalized data. Yet there is a limit to the amount of information we can retain in any given memory. For example, according to German neuroscientist Boris Konrad, ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
