For those struggling with alcohol use disorder, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is often touted as the go-to option for support. With more than 123,000 groups across 180 countries worldwide, the AA model — free and open to the public — has guided people through addiction since it began in 1935. And in recent decades, a growing body of research has shown that it can be incredibly effective. “I think it is the power of peers,” says John Kelly, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical ...read more
Our universe began with a puzzle. For 100 million years after the big bang, it expanded. Then something strange happened — this expansion suddenly accelerated and has continued to accelerate ever since. Today cosmologists think some kind of pressure must have forced this acceleration, all powered by huge amounts of energy from an unknown source. Cosmologists call it dark energy. But why this accelerating expansion occurred, and why it happened at that time, is one of the great unsolved myster ...read more
In general terms, scientists have a clear idea about what snakes eat, according to Bryan Maritz, senior lecturer at the Department of Biodiversity & Conservation Biology at the University of the Western Cape. For example, one rule of thumb is that there are no vegetarian snakes, since no species of snake eat any plant material at all, and every snake on the planet is a predator of other animals. What other animals they’re eating, though, ranges enormously depending on species, geography, t ...read more
In February 2023, the family of actor Bruce Willis made an announcement about his health. The previous year, Willis had been diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder that prevents a person from speaking or understanding speech. As his condition worsened, physicians identified Bruce Willis has frontotemporal dementia. Frontotemporal dementia is one of four main types of dementia. About 50 million people worldwide are living with dementia, and epidemiologists expect that number to triple by 2050. Ab ...read more
Yes, there is a hypothetical particle, called the tachyon, that could travel back in time. One catch: It almost certainly doesn’t exist. Time and Speed of Light Before we start talking about time travel, we first must talk about the speed of light. All objects in our universe are constrained to go no faster than the speed of light. The only particles capable of achieving light speed are massless particles, like light itself. Anything with even a tiny amount of mass will find it impossible to a ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine