7 Gadgets That Changed the World

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  6 minutes  |  1160 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Companies like to call their new gadgets revolutionary. Amazon did it when it introduced its Kindle e-book reader in 2007, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs used the word often last week while unveiling his company's new iPad – a tablet computer that also doubles as an e-reader. Jobs even threw in a "magical" here and there when describing the device. Corporations aren't the only ones predicting that the digitization of books will bring great change. [Read More]

Aromatherapy: Something Smells Funny

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  690 words  |  Trudie Dory

Odors have the power to alter moods, as I learned once sitting next to a shoeless fellow on a 22-hour delayed flight from China. But can smells heal the body, as is purported in the pseudoscience of aromatherapy? You may think so, depending on what you've been sniffing. But time and again, aromatherapy fails the test. Two studies published recently highlight the power of smell and the limitations of aromatherapy. [Read More]

Can we explain dark matter by adding more dimensions to the universe?

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  6 minutes  |  1276 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Dark matter could be even weirder than anyone thought, say cosmologists who are suggesting this mysterious substance that accounts for more than 80% of the universe's mass could interact with itself. "We live in an ocean of dark matter, yet we know very little about what it could be," Flip Tanedo, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California Riverside, said in a statement. Every attempt to explain dark matter using known physics has come up short, and so Tanedo and his collaborators are developing exotic models that might better match observations. [Read More]

Childbirth Painful for Neanderthal Women, Too

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  394 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Neanderthal women had different birth canals than humans today. But childbirth was probably just as difficult, a new study finds. Scientists used fragments of a fossilized Neanderthal pelvis to reconstruct the birth canal. Though its shape is different from that of modern humans, the researchers concluded that it would have been similarly painful for the ancient hominids to give birth. Neanderthals lived from about 130,000 to 30,000 years ago, and coexisted with our own ancestors. [Read More]

Did Kitty Litter Cause a Radiation Leak?

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  664 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

So-called "green" kitty litter may be a good idea for eco-conscious cat lovers, but it's a bad idea for nuclear waste storage. That's the assessment from an investigation into a radiation leak that occurred at the only nuclear waste storage site in the United States, the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) located east of Carlsbad, New Mexico. The radiation leak occurred Feb. 14: Nine days earlier, a truck inside the underground facility caught fire. [Read More]

In photos: Egypt's oldest mummy wrappings

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  351 words  |  Trudie Dory

A New Date for Mummy MakingA new examination of prehistoric Egyptian textiles suggests mummy making started in the region 1,500 years earlier than previously believed. Shown here is flax yarn from a burial wrapping, heavily saturated with tree resin, found at Egypt's Mostagedda cemetery, now kept at the Bolton Museum in Britain. Read more: Oldest evidence for Egyptian mummy making discovered Mostagedda GraveEnglish archaeologist and Egyptologist Guy Brunton is credited with discovering the late Neolithic Badarian culture, which flourished in Upper Egypt between 4400 B. [Read More]

Mary, Queen of Scots' rosary beads stolen in English castle heist

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  587 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

The prayer beads of infamous 16th-century ruler Mary, Queen of Scots have been stolen in a daring heist from Arundel Castle in England. The beads and other stolen items are worth around $1.4 million (1 million British pounds), but their historical importance is "priceless," according to a castle spokesperson. Thieves broke into the castle, in West Sussex, on May 20, less than a week after the site reopened to the public after being closed during most of the COVID-19 pandemic. [Read More]

Rhinos' Communal Toilets Are Poo-Powered Social Networks

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  597 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

In the world of Harry Potter, wizards and witches communicate via the magical Floo Network. White rhinos, however, use a less magical and smellier communication system: a poo network. Scientists recently discovered that white rhinos' dung contains status updates, with the feces odor broadcasting chemical signals about a rhino's age and sex, and about whether females are in heat or if males have staked out territory. And forget about private messaging — rhinos use shared defecation areas to leave dispatches that can be " [Read More]

Secret to This Dead Sea Scroll’s Incredible Preservation — And Inevitable Destruction — Could Be Salt

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  579 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a marvel. Buried for roughly 2,000 years under piles of debris and bat guano in a chain of caves in the Judean desert, the collection of nearly 1,000 fragmented manuscripts includes biblical texts, ancient calendars and early astronomical observations. Among these mysterious artifacts (many of which are now just ragged scraps of parchment) one impeccably preserved document stands out. The Temple Scroll, named for its description of a Jewish temple that was never built, is one of the longest (it stretches 25 feet, or 8 meters, long), thinnest and easiest scrolls to read. [Read More]

Snake Venom Changes with Age, Location

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  250 words  |  Patria Henriques

Like people with an accent, snakes from different regions pack different venom. A new study finds that antivenoms, the drugs created to combat snake bites in humans, need to take these chemical differences into account. Scientists have known for many decades that venom of snakes of the same species can vary geographically, causing snakebite victims to suffer different symptoms. Yet while these differences in symptoms had been studied, little research has been done on the chemical differences in venom within any given species. [Read More]