The World’s Only Floating National Park is Under Threat

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Keibul Lamjao National Park is a natural wonder on many accounts. For starters, the park lies in the largest freshwater lake in northeast India, Loktak Lake, with a surrounding backdrop of low, gentle, green-tinged hills.   It's difficult to get more specific about the park’s location because its component parts don’t stick to one place — instead, they float. For that reason, Keibul Lamjao bills itself as the only floating national park in the world.   But the rich, biodiverse wetland ...read more

What Psilocybin Psychedelic Mushrooms Are Teaching Us About Human Consciousness

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

This article was originally published on Oct. 9, 2020. The scientific world is in the midst of a decade-long psychedelic renaissance. This revolution is expanding our understanding of one of the most captivating scientific puzzles: human consciousness. Numerous research fields are revealing new insights into how psychedelics affect the brain and which neural processes underly consciousness. Multiple studies testing psychedelic drugs for treating mental illness provide compelling evidence of the ...read more

The Domino Effects of a Global Food Shortage

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 349 million people in 79 countries are facing "acute food insecurity," an increase of 200 million people from before the pandemic. This sudden surge has caused the organization and others like it to warn that the world is hungrier than ever. There are several reasons for the dangerous food shortage, and world leaders caution that the lack of needed nutrition will lead to death and massive social upheaval.   Gauging the Global Food Crisis Public h ...read more

4 Dragons That Have Entered the Fossil Record

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Old-school paleontologists would have frowned upon a colleague referring to a fossil find as anything like a dragon. Certainly in the early days of this branch of science, it must have been a tad exasperating to explain to non-scientists that the giant bone they found in the local quarry, or ground up for some folk remedy was not evidence of a legendary cryptid, but was instead a precious artifact worthy of preservation and legitimate study.   But if additions to the fossil record over the pas ...read more

Humans May Have Settled in North America 16,000 Years Ago, Ready to Hunt

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

In 1929 Ridgley Whiteman, then just a teenager, made an archeological discovery that would forever change our understanding of the first Indigenous people to land in North America. He found what would later be known as Clovis points, named after the town of Clovis, New Mexico, the site of their discovery. The fluted projectile points, dating back 13,000 years, show that ancestral Indigenous people not only lived in North America but also had the technology to hunt megafauna like woolly mammoth ...read more

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