Whenever images of giant ash plume show up in the news, one of the first questions that arrives in my inbox is whether that eruption will impact the Earth's climate. It turns out that it takes more than just an ash column that towers 100,000 feet (30 kilometers) over the volcano to drive the needle when it comes to our planet's climate. What might be the most important factor for an eruption to impact climate?First, a few volcano-climate basics. It isn't the ash that causes Earth's climate to ch ...read more
For the first archaeologists, the only way to peer inside an ancient coffin or container was to take the artifact apart. In fact, it was only through the dismantling of ancient artifacts that these individuals learned about the lives, religions and rituals of antiquity, including those of Egypt.Nowadays, there's a longer list of less invasive approaches for learning about antiquity, and that list is expanding. According to a paper published in Scientific Reports, for instance, a team of research ...read more
In his free time, David Smith designs tiles. More specifically, the retired print technician and recreational mathematician pieces together as many tiles as he can (no gaps allowed) before the pattern either repeats or cannot continue.Until recently, every shape anyone had ever tested met one of those two fates — despite the scrutiny of many brilliant minds over the past 50 years. Then, one day last November, Smith found the only known exception.13 Sided ShapeUsing an app called PolyForm Puzzl ...read more
Despite having roamed the planet millions of years ago, thanks to advances in technology, dinosaurs aren’t as inscrutable today as they once were. And over the past decades, in addition to studying what they acted like, including their habits and diets, researchers have specialized in reconstructing and depicting what they looked like — all the way down to specific details like texture and color.But how do scientists go about pinpointing these details for creatures that died 65 million years ...read more
The seizures started when Samantha Gundel was just four months old. By her first birthday, she was taking a cocktail of three different anticonvulsant medicines. A vicious cycle of recurrent pneumonia, spurred on by seizure-induced inhalation of regurgitated food, landed the young toddler in and out of the hospital near her Westchester County home in New York State.Genetic testing soon confirmed her doctors’ suspicions: Samantha, now age 4, has Dravet syndrome, an incurable form of epilepsy. H ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
