Photos: How Dutch Painter Rembrandt Created His Famous Self-Portraits

 Posted on March 9, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  651 words  |  Patria Henriques

Portrait of a manTwo researchers in Britain have revived a debate about the 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, with a new study that suggests the Old Master created his famously lifelike self-portraits by tracing them from an optical projection of himself. Rembrandt made nearly 100 self-portraits from the 1620s until his death in 1669, including around 50 paintings as well as dozens of etchings and drawings. This Rembrandt self-portrait in oil on canvas from 1659 is nearly life-size, and the researchers think it was painted from an optical projection created by a specific arrangement of a curved mirror and a flat mirror. [Read More]

Sex with 2 Partners Before Marriage Raises Divorce Risk

 Posted on March 9, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  589 words  |  Trudie Dory

When it comes to sex before marriage, a lot may be better than a little. New research suggests that women who had exactly two sexual partners (their husbands and one other person) were more likely to divorce than those who had either just one partner or many more. This was true, at least, during the 1980s and 1990s. Though it's not clear why exactly, the researcher speculated that women who had exactly two sexual partners were more apt to compare their husband to a past lover. [Read More]

There's Meth-Laced 7Up in Mexico

 Posted on March 9, 2023  |  1 minutes  |  190 words  |  Trudie Dory

Reports of methamphetamine-laced 7Up in Mexico have prompted Arizona health officials to warn travelers about the potential contamination, according to news reports. The contaminated soft drinks have killed one person and sickened seven others, the Coloradoan reported today (Sept. 22). Banner Health, a hospital network in Arizona and Colorado, released a statement on Sept. 20 about the contaminated drinks. "Medical toxicologists and emergency department physicians are on high alert," the statement said. [Read More]

Weird Earth Movement After Japan Earthquake Finally Explained

 Posted on March 9, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  777 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Japan's terrifying 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake unleashed about 1,000 years of pent-up pressure that was stored between two colliding tectonic plates. During the Tohoku earthquake, northeast Japan jumped 16 feet (5 meters) eastward — a permanent shift — and the seafloor closer to the fault skipped 101 feet (31 m) to the east, according to GPS data. But immediately afterward, offshore GPS receivers in the extreme damage zone were traveling westward again, a puzzling sight. [Read More]

2011: Year of Natural Disasters (Infographic)

 Posted on March 8, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  217 words  |  Patria Henriques

The United States was hit with a mega tab in 2011 as 12 $1-billion-plus disasters hit us, and researchers say that was just a sampling of the extreme weather to come. The culprit? Many say climate change is a contributor. Climate change is expected to increase certain types of extreme weather, leading to more disasters, according to a report being assembled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "The report that was released by the IPCC on extreme events suggests that what we are seeing this year is not just an anomalous year, but a harbinger of things to come for at least a subset of the extreme events we are tallying," [Read More]

Busting Baseball Myths: Scientist Throws Big Curveballs

 Posted on March 8, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  850 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Your Little League coach probably didn't know it, but every time he sent you to the plate with the instructions "keep your eye on the ball," he was giving you an impossible task. And if you followed the coach's advice of positioning yourself directly under a popup, you probably struggled to catch balls in the outfield, too. Ken Fuld, a baseball enthusiast and visual psychophysicist at the University of New Hampshire, has pored over numerous baseball studies and suggests that neither of these approaches produce optimal results. [Read More]

Church that Worships AI God May Be the Way of the Future

 Posted on March 8, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  599 words  |  Fernande Dalal

You might soon be able — if you're so inclined — to join a bonefide church worshiping an artificially intelligent god.  Former Google and Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski, according to a recent Backchannel profile, filed paperwork with the state of California in 2015 to establish Way of the Future, a nonprofit religious corporation dedicated to worshiping AI. The church's mission, according to paperwork obtained by Backchannel, is "to develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society. [Read More]

Easy Answers to the Top 5 Science Questions Kids Ask

 Posted on March 8, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  857 words  |  Fernande Dalal

IntroWhy is the moon sometimes out during the day? Why is the sky blue? Will we ever discover aliens? How much does the Earth weigh? How do airplanes stay up? Those are the five questions kids most often ask their parents, and in that order, according to a new survey conducted in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, they're tough nuts to crack probably why kids find them so universally puzzling in the first place. [Read More]

Einstein's Letter Defending Murderous Friend Up for Auction

 Posted on March 8, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  647 words  |  Fernande Dalal

When a close friend of Albert Einstein committed murder, Einstein rushed to defend his character, according to a letter the Nobel Prize winner wrote that is hitting the auction block. In the letter, written in German on April 29, 1917, Einstein reached out to his good friend Michele Besso, the only person Einstein credited in his paper on the theory of special relativity. In the note, Einstein wrote about general relativity, quantum physics and another friend Friedrich Adler, who was accused of murdering the Austrian Minister-President Karl von Stürgkh in 1916, during World War I. [Read More]

FDA Approves First 'Digital' Pill: How Does It Work?

 Posted on March 8, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  862 words  |  Trudie Dory

A new "digital pill" can tell doctors whether a patient has taken his or her medicine. The pill, which was approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Nov. 13, sends a signal to a wearable sensor when a patient has taken the medication, and that information is then sent to a doctor's office. The whole system is called Abilify MyCite, and consists of the pill, the wearable sensor and a smartphone app. [Read More]