Siberian town records 100 degree F day — the hottest in Arctic history
Posted on February 2, 2023
| 2 minutes
| 426 words
| Trudie Dory
Siberia — the land ofblack snow,blood rain andspontaneous solar eclipses — may have just set a dire new climate record. On Saturday (June 20), temperatures in the far-north town of Verkhoyansk broke 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) for the first time, according to news reports.
If verified, that makes Saturday's high the hottest-ever temperature documented above the Arctic Circle,The Washington Post reported.
Verkhoyansk is a town of some 1,300 residents in the Siberian Arctic, about 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) east of Moscow.
[Read More]Spirituality Spot Found in Brain
Posted on February 2, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 461 words
| Patria Henriques
What makes us feel spiritual? It could be the quieting of a small area in our brains, a new study suggests. The area in question — the right parietal lobe — is responsible for defining "Me," said researcher Brick Johnstone of Missouri University. It generates self-criticism, he said, and guides us through physical and social terrains by constantly updating our self-knowledge: my hand, my cocktail, my witty conversation skills, my new love interest … People with less active Me-Definers are more likely to lead spiritual lives, reports the study in the current issue of the journal Zygon.
[Read More]The Incredible Evolution of the Olympics
Posted on February 2, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 449 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
From the long-defunct tug-of-war to the resurrected tennis matches and the tried-and-true gymnastics, the Olympics have evolved dramatically over the years while a few elements remain forever a part of the games.
The inaugural modern games in 1896 offered nine sports, compared to 28 at this year's Olympics in London. In the intervening decades, various events have come and gone, including baseball, golf, water motorsports and demonstration sports such as ballooning and American football.
[Read More]The real Brexit: How Britain became an island
Posted on February 2, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 794 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Thousands of years before Brexit (Britain’s political divorce from the European Union), its physical separation from mainland Europe was well underway.
Around 18,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene Epoch, the majority of modern-day Britain was covered by an ice age, according to Wessex Archaeology(opens in new tab), an educational charity based in the UK. This period of glaciation persisted for thousands of years until around 12,000 years ago after a warming climate brought the icy expanse to an end.
[Read More]Watch a Moth Suck the Tears Out of a Bird's Eye, Because Nature Is Metal
Posted on February 2, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 457 words
| Trudie Dory
Take this moth, for instance. Somewhere in the Brazilian Amazon, this moth is literally drinking the tears out of a bird's eye in the dead of night. While we at Live Science do not hold any degrees in lepidopterology, we believe we are correct in saying that's pretty metal.
Actually, drinking the tears of your neighbors is common enough in biology that it has a name: lachryphagy. Tear-drinking is a relatively common way for insects like butterflies, moths and bees to supplement their diets, according to Leandro João Carneiro de Lima Moraes, a biologist at the National Institute of Amazonia Research in Brazil who filmed this moth-on-bird action while doing fieldwork in the central Amazon.
[Read More]Weird Paradox Says 2 Losses Equals a Win. And It Could Lead to Fast Quantum Computers.
Posted on February 2, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 774 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Two losing games can add up to a winning one, according to a concept called Parrondo's paradox.
Now, physicists have shown that this paradox also exists in the realm of quantum mechanics, the rules that govern subatomic particles. And it could lead to faster algorithms for future quantum computers. [The Mysterious Physics of 7 Everyday Things]
Physicist Juan Parrondo first described the paradox in 1997 to explain how randomness can drive ratchets — asymmetrical, saw-toothed gears that allow motion in one direction but not the other.
[Read More]Your brain warps your memories so you can remember them better
Posted on February 2, 2023
| 5 minutes
| 989 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Like a fisherman talking about the size of the one that got away, the brain exaggerates its memories.
This exaggeration is in the service of good, however. New research finds that when people exaggerate the differences between similar memories, they recall them better. The findings could help explain why memory works, and why it often declines with age.
The research involved asking people to match faces to objects, which often differed only slightly in color.
[Read More]7 Beautiful Bike Rides
Posted on February 1, 2023
| 6 minutes
| 1266 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Show and go
All across the country, people are biking miles and miles by day, camping by night and loving every minute. We've got the most beautiful long-distance bicycle tours right here, so dust off that bike and hit the road across some of the most beautiful countryside in America. The bike rides in this list run from rugged mountains to live oak canopies to endless cornfields for your two-wheeled viewing pleasure.
[Read More]7 Conditions That Botox May Help Treat
Posted on February 1, 2023
| 5 minutes
| 863 words
| Arica Deslauriers
IntroductionBotox is typically known as a tool for smoothing out wrinkles, but it actually has many other applications in medicine.
Botox, a trademark that's short for botulinum toxin, is a neuromuscular blocker, which means it paralyzes the muscle into which it is injected, said Dr. Daniel Maman, a board-certified plastic surgeon and an assistant clinical professor of surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. And because muscle issues are involved in many different types of medical conditions, the range of medical applications of Botox has been expanding, he told Live Science.
[Read More]A Cloud 'Tide' Fills the Grand Canyon in Gorgeous Time-Lapse Video
Posted on February 1, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 467 words
| Patria Henriques
Time-lapse images recently captured an incredible sight — a "tide" of clouds rolling into Arizona's Grand Canyon, in a rare phenomenon known as a total cloud inversion.
Thick, white clouds roil and churn in footage that was shot and edited into a video by filmmaker Harun Mehmedinovic. Titled "Kaibab Elegy," the film was published on Vimeo(opens in new tab) on May 14 and is part of the Skyglow video series and book project, documenting the impact of light pollution on the visibility of the night sky, and contrasting bright urban landscapes with wild spaces untouched by the shine of electric illumination.
[Read More]