Isabelle Lousada was in her early 30s when she collapsed at her Philadelphia wedding in 1995. A London architect, she had suffered a decade of mysterious symptoms: tingling fingers, swollen ankles, a belly distended by her enlarged liver. The doctors she first consulted suggested she had chronic fatigue syndrome or that she’d been partying and drinking too hard.But her new brother-in-law, a cardiologist, felt that something else must be going on. A fresh series of doctor’s visits led, finall ...read more
This article originally appeared in Nexus Media News.After a series of winter storms pummeled California this winter, thousands of trees across the state lost their grip on the earth and crashed down into power lines, homes and highways. Sacramento alone lost more than 1,000 trees in less than a week. Stressed by years of drought, pests and extreme weather, urban trees are in trouble. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that cities are losing some 36 million trees every year, wiped out by ...read more
In 1991, two German tourists were hiking in the Ötztal Alps — a mountain range shared by Austria and Italy — when they stumbled upon the frozen remains of a dead man. The ice preserved the man so well that his body, clothes and tools never decomposed.Scientists dubbed him Ötzi the Iceman and began studying the naturally-preserved mummy. They’ve determined he lived more than 5,000 years ago, which makes Ötzi the Iceman the oldest mummy ever found.Researchers are still studying the moun ...read more
Poison frogs across Central and South America display some of the most stunning colors in the animal kingdom. Some species are cobalt or indigo; others are yellow, golden, strawberry pink, or bright stop-sign red and striped down the back.While these hues are splendid to marvel at, the color actually serves as a warning sign to potential predators: Eat me and I will poison you.The way that these creatures and other animals evolved to be just colorful enough to signal their toxic defense — but ...read more
On April 12, 1955, virologists announced that they’d developed a safe and potent vaccine against polio, the deadly, paralyzing disease that then tormented thousands of individuals in the U.S. Setting off a series of concentrated vaccination campaigns in the country and abroad, the announcement sowed the seeds for a polio-free future.Today, 68 years after the arrival of the vaccine, the disease teeters on the verge of disappearance. In the U.S., cases of wild, community-circulating polio were w ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
