Violent Video Games Improve Real Shooting Accuracy
Posted on April 7, 2023
| 5 minutes
| 869 words
| Patria Henriques
It’s all fun and games until … Playing violent shoot-‘em-up video games makes people more accurate at firing real guns, and make them more likely to aim for the head, a new study finds. Just 20 minutes of video game practice does the trick. To test the effect, the participants — after playing popular video games — shot pistol-shaped controllers at mannequins in a video environment (not a live shooting range).
[Read More]Why Scientists Are Rushing to Hunt Down 1.7 Million Unknown Viruses
Posted on April 7, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 502 words
| Trudie Dory
There may be more than 1.67 million unknown viruses infecting the animals of Earth — and scientists want to find them.
In a research letter published in the journal Science this week, an international team of scientists described a sweeping new partnership called the Global Virome Project, scheduled to launch later this year. The project's goal: to spend the next 10 years identifying, studying and hopefully preventing hundreds of thousands of unknown animal-borne viruses from causing the next global disease pandemic.
[Read More]Wild Sex Cries Aim to Advertise Partner's Popularity
Posted on April 7, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 561 words
| Arica Deslauriers
The cries one calls out during sex can serve as status symbols advertising just how popular your partners are, according to new findings in the sexually promiscuous chimpanzees known as bonobos.
Just like humans, sex is not used simply for reproduction among bonobos, but now also serves as a social tool, researchers added.
Bonobos, once known as pygmy chimpanzees, are the sister species of common chimpanzees, and with them are the closest living relatives to humans.
[Read More]A Massive 'Blob' of Rock Stretching Under Asia Might Be Triggering Hundreds of Earthquakes
Posted on April 6, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 497 words
| Trudie Dory
The Hindu Kush mountain range — which stretches about 500 miles (800 kilometers) along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan — shudders with more than 100 earthquakes at a magnitude of 4.0 or greater every year. The area is one of the most seismically active spots in the world, especially for intermediate-depth quakes (tremors forming between 45 and 190 miles, or 70 and 300 km, below the planet's surface). And yet, scientists aren't sure why.
[Read More]Are Today's Youth Less Creative & Imaginative?
Posted on April 6, 2023
| 5 minutes
| 952 words
| Arica Deslauriers
It sounds like the complaint of a jaded adult: Kids these days are narrow-minded and just not as creative as they used to be.
But researchers say they are finding exactly that. In a 2010 study of about 300,000 creativity tests going back to the 1970s, Kyung Hee Kim, a creativity researcher at the College of William and Mary, found creativity has decreased among American children in recent years. Since 1990, children have become less able to produce unique and unusual ideas.
[Read More]Build-A-Bear Recalls Colorful Hearts Teddy Bears
Posted on April 6, 2023
| 1 minutes
| 205 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada, in cooperation with Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc., of St. Louis, Mo., announced a voluntary recall of 284,000 Colorful Hearts Teddy Bears in the United States and 13,200 in Canada.
Hazard: The teddy bear’s eyes could loosen and fall out, posing a choking hazard to children.
Incidents/Injuries: None reported
Description: The Colorful Hearts Teddy is a stuffed animal about 16 inches high with black plastic eyes.
[Read More]Chronic Drinking, Sudden Withdrawal: Both Are Dangerous, Studies Find
Posted on April 6, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 531 words
| Trudie Dory
Unwinding after work with some wine or heading out for drinks with friends is a common practice for relieving stress. It works because alcohol changes neurotransmitter levels in the brain.
But chronic drinking has been linked by a series of studies to high levels of the stress hormone cortisol , which can be dangerous to health. And the withdrawal that comes when alcoholics abstain from drinking has been linked to the same danger.
[Read More]Deep-Diving Dolphins Avoid 'Bends' with Powerful Lungs
Posted on April 6, 2023
| 5 minutes
| 939 words
| Trudie Dory
When dolphins dive deep below the water's surface, they avoid succumbing to decompression sickness, or "the bends," likely because the massive sea creatures have collapsible lungs, a new study finds. These lungs allow dolphins to inhale and exhale two to three times quicker than humans.
Understanding how dolphins breathe rapidly and maintain lung functionality under immense pressure could help scientists keep humans safe when they are in similarly extreme situations, such as under anesthesia during surgeries, the researchers said.
[Read More]Dinosaur Tracks Reveal Odd Mating Dance
Posted on April 6, 2023
| 5 minutes
| 998 words
| Fernande Dalal
Did dinosaurs shake a tail feather? Some meat-eating theropods used fancy footwork to attract their mates, leaving behind their fox-trotting tracks in rocks millions of years ago.
An analysis of the newfound marks suggests they are the first known evidence of a type of mating display behavior known as "scraping," common in modern ground-nesting birds. The dinosaur lads may have performed their paleo-numbers in groups for a (hopefully) swooning female audience, the researchers say.
[Read More]Dying Breed? Zoo Toils to Save Strange 'Scrotum Frog'
Posted on April 6, 2023
| 8 minutes
| 1499 words
| Patria Henriques
DENVER — In a back room of the Tropical Discovery exhibit at the Denver Zoo, it's feeding time for 17 of the most critically endangered frogs in the world.
The strange, baggy-skinned amphibians leaping for red wiggler worms are Lake Titicaca frogs (Telmatobius coleus), which can grow to more than 2 pounds (1 kilogram) and are found only in the lake along the Peruvian and Bolivian border that gives them their name.
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