Spices bring up feelings of comfort, cultural belonging, and holidays. They can make our homes smell amazing and our food taste delicious. They can satisfy our cravings, expand our culinary horizons, and help us eat things that we might normally dislike. Spices have health-enhancing properties and, in medicine, have been used to heal people since ancient times.Recently, however, spices have been getting a bad rep.In September 2024, Consumer Reports, a nonprofit organization created to inform con ...read more
Are you looking for gift ideas for that curious person in your life...or yourself?Check out these tools for birdwatchers, skygazers, and weather enthusiasts. They relate to projects on SciStarter that help advance research.These are gifts that keep on giving!Credit: Hachette PublishingWant to get your friends and family hooked on citizen science? The Field Guide to Citizen Science, co-authored by SciStarter founder Darlene Cavalier, is an accessible introduction. It contains tips on getting star ...read more
It’s estimated that 10 million Americans — and many more worldwide — suffer from a condition known as lymphedema — a swelling of various parts of the body caused by fluid blockage in the lymphatic system.Like many health conditions, lymphedema and lymphatic blockage are the targets of various consumer products that claim to provide relief and improvement in symptoms. Devices that range from pumps to vibration plates can be bought and used by anyone, but do these products actually work? A ...read more
Parents of angsty teens have almost certainly heard this line at least once: I didn’t ask to be born.For fish embryos, communication about their impending birth appears quite the opposite. A report in Science details how fish-in-the-making play an active role in determining their delivery.A Fish Embryo Decides When to HatchSuch timing is crucial to baby fish — indeed, to all egg-laying species. Controlling one’s own hatch ensures that the embryo emerges as a newborn, fully developed and re ...read more
Everyday physical activity, like going for a short walk or playing with the kids, may provide short-term benefits for cognitive health, equivalent to reversing four years of cognitive aging. That was a key finding for my colleagues and me in our new study, which was published in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.Prior to enrollment into a study of diet and dementia risk, we asked a diverse sample of 204 middle-aged adults to check in five times per day for a period of nine days via a sma ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine