OUCH! Virtual Girl Slaps Real Guys

 Posted on December 20, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  498 words  |  Patria Henriques

Many video gamers know the shock of seeing their game avatar get shot or injured, and so a virtual slap sounds almost tame by comparison. But scientists have now shown how humans can inhabit a virtual body so completely that their real bodies react to a virtual blow as if someone had slapped them in real life. In the study released this week, male volunteers donned virtual reality goggles and took on the view of a virtual teenage girl sitting in a living room. [Read More]

Photos: The 10 Best US Beaches to Visit

 Posted on December 20, 2022  |  6 minutes  |  1096 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Sun, surf and squeaky sand are on the docket at America's best beaches. Each year, Florida International University coastal expert Stephen P. Leatherman, better known as "Dr. Beach," ranks the cleanest, healthiest and most beautiful beaches in the country, judging them on 50 different criteria. This year's top 10 span from Hawaii to Florida, with some love for California, Massachusetts and the Carolinas as well. Read on, and dream of your next summer vacation. [Read More]

Sex and Cheating: When Does It Count?

 Posted on December 20, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  497 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Blame Bill Clinton: Ever since the former president confounded Congress — and the nation — with his semantically driven definition of sex, the nature of the act has become increasingly vague. In 2005, the federal government released a study that found more than 50 percent of American teenagers had engaged in oral sex; furthermore, they considered oral sex a less-significant substitution for intercourse. And as the generation enters adulthood, this attitude toward sex is affecting its relationships. [Read More]

Surprise Strategy: Bees Smother Enemies

 Posted on December 20, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  404 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Cyprian honeybees don't smother their enemies with kindness—they just smother them to death, research now reveals. This novel strategy has never been seen before in insects, "and probably in all animal species," apidologist Gerard Arnold at the National Center of Scientific Research in France, told LiveScience. Cyprian honeybees (Apis mellifera cypria) do possess stingers to defend themselves. However, their archenemy, the Oriental hornet (Vespa orientalis), is protected from such attacks by their hard body armor. [Read More]

Trophy Wife Myth Busted: People Choose Partners Like Themselves

 Posted on December 20, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  594 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Here's some bad news for men with highly successful careers and fat wallets: You probably will not end up with a "trophy wife," a new study suggests. When researchers compared qualities such as level of attractiveness and socioeconomic status within couples, they found almost no evidence of the trophy wife stereotype, which suggests attractive, young women tend to marry rich and successful men. Instead, couples are far more likely to end up together because they share similar traits. [Read More]

7 Baby Myths Debunked

 Posted on December 19, 2022  |  6 minutes  |  1153 words  |  Patria Henriques

IntroductionOne unexpected offshoot of becoming a parent is the endless advice offered by well-meaning relatives and friends (and occasionally strangers). Some of the advice will be helpful. Other tips will seem, well, suspect. And they probably are. However well-intentioned these tips may be, some of them can have serious consequences if they're followed. Dr. Rachel Vreeman, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, has co-authored two books " [Read More]

70,000-year-old Neanderthal remains may be evidence that 'closest human relative' buried its dead

 Posted on December 19, 2022  |  6 minutes  |  1088 words  |  Patria Henriques

Some Neanderthals may have buried their dead. That's according to the discovery of a partial Neanderthal skeleton found deep in a cave in Iraqi Kurdistan alongside a possible grave marker.  Neanderthals, our closest extinct human relative, lived in Eurasia from about 250,000 to 40,000 years ago. The roughly 70,000-year-old bones of this newfound individual included a squashed skull and upper body, making it the most complete articulated Neanderthal skeleton to be found in more than 25 years, the researchers said. [Read More]

Chaco Canyon's famous 'tree of life' might have just been a bench

 Posted on December 19, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  1008 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

A towering ponderosa pine discovered in the center of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, known as the "Plaza Tree," was once thought to symbolize life and the center of the world for an ancient pueblo town. But new research suggests it may have been just a giant log no one bothered to move for 800 years, and maybe didn't hold significant meaning.  "I think the tree was dead when it was transported into the canyon," [Read More]

Earliest Known Case of Leprosy Unearthed

 Posted on December 19, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  646 words  |  Patria Henriques

A 4,000-year-old skeleton found in India bears the earliest archaeological evidence of leprosy, a new study reports. The finding, detailed in the May 27 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE, is also the first evidence for the disease in prehistoric India and sheds light on how the disease might have been spread in early human history. Though it is no longer a significant public health threat in most parts of the world, leprosy is still one of the least understood infectious diseases, in part because the bacteria that causes it (Mycobacterium leprae) is difficult to culture for research and has only one other animal host, the nine banded armadillo. [Read More]

First-Ever Image of a Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Burst Shows Light Exploding Out of a Thundercloud in Asia

 Posted on December 19, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  342 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Gamma-rays are the highest-energy form of light in the universe. They burst out of distant galaxies following some of space's most extreme events — massive suns exploding, hyper-dense neutron stars crashing into one another, black holes gobbling up worlds of matter, etc. — and, when they do, their glow briefly outshines every other light in the sky. (That is, if you can catch them with a gamma-ray telescope.) Sometimes, however, gamma-ray bursts pop up where scientists don't expect to see them — like in Earth's atmosphere, for example. [Read More]