Decades of conflicting reports seem to have finally resolved into a clear, buzz-killing picture, while yet another study confirms it: No amount of alcohol consumption will protect against disease or extend your lifespan, according to a sweeping review published in late March.The meta-analysis, printed in the Journal of the American Medical Association, draws on more than a hundred studies involving nearly 5 million people.The researchers found that just 25 grams a day for women and 45 for men †...read more
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
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
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
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
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
