A Daily Can of Soda May Raise Diabetes Risk

 Posted on November 6, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  505 words  |  Patria Henriques

Drinking just one 12-ounce soda a day may increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes, a new study from Europe suggests. In the study, people who drank a 12-ounce sugar-sweetened soda daily were 18 percent more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes over a 16-year period compared with those who did not consume soda. And people who drank two sodas daily were 18 percent more likely to have a stroke than those who drank one; those who drank three sodas daily saw the same risk increase compared with those who drank two, and so on. [Read More]

Afterglow of Colliding Neutron Stars Would Outshine Our Sun

 Posted on November 6, 2022  |  6 minutes  |  1113 words  |  Trudie Dory

Back in March, astronomers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a distant point in space where two neutron stars had collided. Using Hubble's giant eye, they stared at that distant spot for 7 hours, 28 minutes and 32 seconds over the course of six of the telescope's orbits around Earth. It was the longest exposure ever made of the collision site, what astronomers call the "deepest" image. But their shot, made more than 19 months after the light from the collision reached Earth, didn't pick up any remnants of the neutron-star merger. [Read More]

Car-Size Salamander with Toilet-Seat Head Ruled Ancient Rivers

 Posted on November 6, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  542 words  |  Fernande Dalal

A small-car-size "super salamander" with a toilet-seat-shaped head may have perished some 220 million to 230 million years ago alongside hundreds of its kin when its lake home dried up, researchers say. An international team of scientists found several skulls and various other bones — including those of the arm, shoulder and backbone of the amphibian, now called Metoposaurus algarvensis — in an ancient lake bed in southern Portugal. From these bones, the researchers determined that the creature was a new species of metoposaurid, an extinct group of large amphibians. [Read More]

Do MRI Machines Affect Tattoos?

 Posted on November 6, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  534 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

From infectious diseases to allergic reactions, tattoos carry many risks but one often overlooked safety hazard is how tattoos react to MRI scans. MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machines are used to locate tumors and other abnormalities within the human body using extremely strong magnets. Along with these magnets, an MRI machine uses radio frequency waves to make protons in the body's cells react, emitting signals that show up as a grayscale image, according to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at the University of Florida. [Read More]

Earth's Mysterious 'Deep Biosphere' Is Home to Millions of Undiscovered Species, Scientists Say

 Posted on November 6, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  584 words  |  Patria Henriques

Life on Earth takes billions of shapes, but to see most of them you'll have to dig deep below the planet's surface. For the past 10 years, that's what the scientists of the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) have been doing. Composed of more than 1,000 scientists from 52 countries around the world, this group of scientists maps the weird, wild life of Earth's "deep biosphere" — the mysterious patchwork of underground ecosystems that exists between Earth's surface and its core. [Read More]

Famous Fangs: Tales of Our Favorite Vampires

 Posted on November 6, 2022  |  6 minutes  |  1227 words  |  Patria Henriques

Evolution of a VampireDirector Tim Burton brought vampires back to the big screen in May 2012 with "Dark Shadows," a horror comedy based on a gothic soap opera from the late 1960s. Johnny Depp plays an 18th-century vampire freed into the disco-loving 1970s and plagued by a vengeful witch. We've come a long way from the days of halting Romanian accents. Nevertheless, vampires have been staples of horror tales since at least the 1700s, with folklore about the hungry undead stretching back hundreds of years before that. [Read More]

Fossil of Cuddling Tiny Lobsters Discovered

 Posted on November 6, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  370 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Fossils of tiny lobsters nestled together in a seashell suggest the fearsome-looking crustaceans were sociable far earlier in their evolution than known. Modern clawless lobsters often cluster together for shelter, and fossils of extinct clawed lobsters found in Canada suggested these crustaceans might be found together in burrows approximately 70 million years ago. Now a 180-million-year-old seashell found in a rock quarry in southern Germany holds a trio of fossilized lobsters, suggesting that as menacing as the animals might seem, they have long known the value of cuddling up. [Read More]

From Brains to Brawn: How T. Rex Became King of the Dinosaurs

 Posted on November 6, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  638 words  |  Trudie Dory

The skull of a horse-size dinosaur, a distant relative of the colossal Tyrannosaurus rex, suggests that braininess was behind the beast's rise to dominance millions of years ago. The dinosaur fossils, discovered in the desert of Uzbekistan, suggest that although early tyrannosaurs were small animals, they had advanced brains, said study lead researcher Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. These keen brains likely helped tyrannosaurs become apex predators when they evolved into bigger beasts during the last 20 million years of the dinosaur age. [Read More]

Garmin Forerunner 620: GPS Watch Review

 Posted on November 6, 2022  |  8 minutes  |  1621 words  |  Fernande Dalal

The Garmin Forerunner 620 (FR620) is a GPS watch for runners. The watch is one of the only GPS running watches on the market with a color display and touch screen. At $370, the FR620(opens in new tab) (and the compatible HRM-Run heart-rate strap) is rich in features but falls at the high end of the price range for GPS running watches. The TomTom Runner Cardio, a GPS watch with a built-in heart-rate sensor, retails for $270 on Amazon. [Read More]