Gold and Jewels Found on Minoan Island Devoted to the Color Purple

 Posted on December 26, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  871 words  |  Fernande Dalal

A storehouse of ancient treasures, including precious jewels and gold beads, has been uncovered by archaeologists on an island near Crete devoted to making a precious purple dye from sea snails thousands of years ago. The finds on Chrysi — a now uninhabited island — show the high value placed on the rare purple dye and the flourishing economy of the settlement between 3,800 and 3,500 years ago, during the Protopalatial and Neopalatial periods of the Minoan civilization on Crete. [Read More]

Iron Man-Style Exosuit Turns Inventor into Real-Life Superhero

 Posted on December 26, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  764 words  |  Patria Henriques

Residents of the quiet town of Salisbury, in the south of England, had no clue until last week that their neighbor, a 38-year-old oil trader named Richard Browning, is a real-life Iron Man in the making. The amateur inventor had been secretly building a jet engine-powered exoskeleton suit, and he recently unveiled how the futuristic ensemble enables him to hover in the air like a superhero. Despite the noisiness of the technology, which consists of three sets of miniature jet engines attached to the arms and the back, Browning managed to keep the work completely under wraps. [Read More]

Malaysia Says Goodbye to Iman, Its last Sumatran Rhino

 Posted on December 26, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  482 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

The last Sumatran rhino in Malaysia, a female dubbed "Iman," died on Saturday (Nov. 23) at the Borneo Rhino Sanctuary in Sabah, Malaysia. Her death at age 25 marks the extinction of her species in that country and is a grim reminder of the animals' vulnerability; fewer than 80 wild Sumatran rhinos (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) remain in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Captured in 2014 and brought to the sanctuary for a breeding program, Iman suffered from uterine fibroid tumors — growths on the walls of her uterus — that sent her health into a serious decline over the past few years, Malaysian news site Malaysiakini reported. [Read More]

Phelps vs. Shark! Why the Olympic Medalist Stands Little Chance

 Posted on December 26, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  666 words  |  Trudie Dory

It's hard to imagine how Olympic-gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps could win in a race against a great white shark, but the Discovery Channel is giving him every advantage in the book. During Sunday's program, "Phelps vs. Shark: Great Gold vs. Great White," Michael Phelps will wear a monofin — a single fin-like foot flipper that will help him swim like a shark — as well as a wetsuit known as the Phantom, which increases buoyancy and reduces drag, according its maker Aqua Sphere. [Read More]

Prehistoric Sea Monster Was Nearly the Size of a Blue Whale

 Posted on December 26, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  512 words  |  Patria Henriques

About 205 million years ago, a ginormous sea monster — so large it was nearly the size of a modern blue whale — swam through the ocean, fueling its colossal body by preying on prehistoric squid and fish, a new study finds. The recent discovery of this creature's immense jawbone has helped researchers identify a previously unknown species and to solve a nearly 170-year-old mystery. In 1850, beachgoers in southern England found Late Triassic fossils by the shore that were so massive, they were thought to be the limb bones of giant dinosaurs, such as the long-necked sauropods. [Read More]

Sibling Bonds: How Parents Dole Out the Cash Matters

 Posted on December 26, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  637 words  |  Trudie Dory

When parents play favorites by giving one young adult child more money than the other, the whole family may lose out. That's because such favoritism can make for bad sibling relationships later on, new research finds. Even so, the study, detailed in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, suggested when parents give one of their children other types of preferential treatment, such as greater affection and emotional support, sibling relationships weren't affected. [Read More]

Two-Thirds of Young Adults Report Having Oral Sex

 Posted on December 26, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  534 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

About two-thirds of older teens and young adults in the United States have had oral sex, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between 2007 and 2010, 66 percent of women and 65 percent of men ages 15 to 24 reported they had either given or received oral sex with a partner of the opposite sex, the report found. Similar percentages reported having vaginal intercourse, with 67 percent of young women saying they had ever had sex, and 63 percent of young men saying the same. [Read More]

Weight-Loss Procedure Makes Stomach into 'Accordion' Without Surgery

 Posted on December 26, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  604 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

CHICAGO — A new, nonsurgical weight-loss procedure — which involves inserting a tube down a patient's throat and suturing the stomach — is safe and effective, a new study finds. During the procedure, which is called endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty, doctors insert a long tube down a patient's esophagus to the stomach. Then, they sew "pleats" into the stomach, which makes it resemble an accordion. The procedure reduces the volume of the stomach, so that patients feel fuller faster and therefore eat less, said lead study author Dr. [Read More]

Why Is So Much Oil In the Gulf of Mexico?

 Posted on December 26, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  441 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

An explosion on the Mariner Energy oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico is the latest in a series of drilling-related disasters in the Gulf. Why exactly are all these companies drilling in the Gulf, and where did all that oil come from anyway? Oil, the lifeblood of U.S. transportation today, is thought to start with the remnants of tiny organisms that lived millions of years ago, but the exact chemical transformation is somewhat mysterious. [Read More]

A High-Fat Diet May Be Bad for Your Gut Bacteria

 Posted on December 25, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  673 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Eating too much fat may be bad for your gut bacteria, a new study from China suggests. The study involved more than 200 young, healthy adults who were assigned to eat either a low, moderate or high-fat diet for six months. Those in the high-fat diet group saw "unfavorable changes" in their levels of certain gut bacteria and the compounds these bacteria produce, the researchers said. Such changes might have negative consequences" [Read More]