Best Cooking Apps Handle Recipes and Grocery Lists
Posted on March 11, 2023
| 7 minutes
| 1485 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Forget the piles of oil-splattered cookbooks. Leave behind that illegible grocery list. All-in-one apps for the home cook now offer a full suite of recipes, meal planners and automatic lists that can make time in the kitchen more fun.
The dinner hour can be stressful. You're home late from work, and your stomach is rumbling. Research suggests, however, that you shouldn't give in to takeout temptation too often. One study presented at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in November 2014 found that people who cooked six or seven times a week ate about 140 fewer calories each day than those who cooked once a week or less.
[Read More]Bon Voyage: US Navy's Futuristic Destroyer Sails Out to Sea
Posted on March 11, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 443 words
| Patria Henriques
The U.S. Navy's giant new warship finally sailed out to sea this week to complete its first-ever round of tests and trials in the Atlantic Ocean.
On Monday (Dec. 7), the 610-foot-long (186 meters) destroyer, the USS Zumwalt, made its way from the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine, to the high seas. The massive ship tips the scales at 15,480 tons (that's nearly 31 million lbs., or more than 14 million kilograms) and cost more than $4 billion to design and build, according to a report by The Washington Post.
[Read More]Christopher Columbus to Thailand's Kings: 11 Curious Stories About Eclipses
Posted on March 11, 2023
| 9 minutes
| 1887 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
A celestial signSolar and lunar eclipses have sometimes played quite a remarkable role in human history. From foretelling evil omens to inspiring early works of science fiction, here are 11 of the most curious stories about eclipses.
The Chinese AstrologersSolar eclipses were definitely bad news for astrologers in ancient China.
According to a 2003 study published in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, the sun was considered a symbol of the emperor of China, and so eclipses of the sun were interpreted as a warning to the Son of Heaven himself.
[Read More]Depression-Era Workers Found Strange Fossilized Beasts in 'Texas Serengeti'
Posted on March 11, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 465 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
About 12 million years ago, antelopes with slingshot-like horns and beasts that weren't quite elephants but that had long trunks and tusks tramped across the "Texas Serengeti" searching for food and caring for their babies.
Little was known about this ancient menagerie until, during the Great Depression, the government created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and tasked some of the organization's employees with finding and preserving thousands of fossils from the Miocene, an epoch that lasted from about 23 million to 5 million years ago.
[Read More]Dinosaur-Era Super-Piranha Terrorized Jurassic Seas
Posted on March 11, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 695 words
| Patria Henriques
A piranha-like fish with a mouth full of pointy teeth (some even jutting down from the roof of its mouth) once swam the Jurassic seas, ripping flesh or even fins from the bodies of other aquatic creatures.
That was 152 million years ago, a new study of a fossil of the creature found in Germany revealed. At that time, pterodactyls flew in the skies and stegosaurs and brontosaurs walked the Earth.
[Read More]Fossils of Ice Age manatees discovered in Texas
Posted on March 11, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 483 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Today's manatees often summer off the coast of Texas and Florida, heading farther south toward warmer waters in the winter. Now, new fossils suggest that their ice age ancestors may have made the same migrations.
Eight Pleistocene manatee bones — ribs, jaws and other fragments — found along the Texas coast reveal that manatees either lived in the area or visited it regularly between 11,000 and 240,000 years ago. This finding is surprising, because it indicates that either Texas coastal waters were warmer than expected during the ice age, or ancient manatees were more tolerant of cold than their modern relatives.
[Read More]How Much Fuel Is Inside Earth?
Posted on March 11, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 650 words
| Patria Henriques
The searing heat deep inside Earth is what keeps the planet churning — creeping tectonic plates, erupting volcanoes and a working magnetic field — but how much of this sizzling energy does the planet have in its tank?
Scientists have long wondered how much energy remains in the planet today, 4.6 billion years after the rocky world formed. Now, a team of researchers plans to have an answer to the gargantuan question by 2025.
[Read More]No Snow, No Cold: Where Is Winter?
Posted on March 11, 2023
| 5 minutes
| 869 words
| Fernande Dalal
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Just how pitiful has winter been this year? Amtrak passengers from New York City — a notoriously blasé bunch — were positively delighted to see snow flurries falling at Union Station yesterday (Jan. 9).
And barely any snow fell. Washington's Dulles International Airport saw 0.5 inches (1.27 centimeters) yesterday, pushing its total since the summer to just over 1 inch.
Things are uncharacteristically balmy in Chicago too, where people are walking around in flip-flops, according to one news report.
[Read More]Ocean currents are getting faster
Posted on March 11, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 541 words
| Fernande Dalal
Ocean currents are moving faster today than they did two decades ago.
New research, published today (Feb. 6) in the journal Science Advances, finds that this acceleration is occurring around the globe, with the most noticeable effects in the tropical latitudes. The enhanced speed isn’t just at the ocean’s surface, but is occurring as deep as 6,560 feet (2,000 meters).
“The magnitude and extent of the acceleration in ocean currents we detected throughout the global ocean and to 2000-meter (6,560 foot) depth was quite surprising,"
[Read More]Seas will likely rise even faster than worst-case scenarios predicted by climate models
Posted on March 11, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 728 words
| Fernande Dalal
Sea levels will probably rise faster than most climate models predict, according to a new study.
In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations scientific body that reports on climate change, said that the global sea-level average would likely rise at least 2.00 feet (0.61 meters) by the year 2100, but no more than 3.61 feet (1.10 m). Those numbers come from models that account for climate change and ocean heating, ongoing greenhouse gas emissions and potential changes in human behavior to prevent more warming.
[Read More]