7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You
Posted on October 27, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 987 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
What Type Are You?Our personalities do more for us than determine our social circles. Temperament can impact a person's physical health.
"The idea that behavior or personality traits can influence health is one that's been around for a long time. We're just now getting a handle on to what extent they do," said Stephen Boyle of Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina.
From those with a chill demeanor to the completely frazzled types, mental factors are ultimately tied to physical health.
[Read More]Book Excerpt: 'This Is Your Brain on Parasites'
Posted on October 27, 2022
| 12 minutes
| 2400 words
| Trudie Dory
In "This Is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulates Our Behavior and Shape Society," Kathleen McAuliffe presents a riveting investigation of the myriad ways that parasites control how other creatures—including humans—think, feel, and act. The book is both a journey into cutting-edge science and a revelatory examination of what it means to be human. Below is an excerpt from McAuliffe's "This Is Your Brain on Parasites" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).
[Read More]Burn, Baby, Burn: Australian Birds Steal Fire to Smoke Out Prey
Posted on October 27, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 883 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Grassland fires that are deadly and devastating events for many kinds of wildlife are a boon to certain types of birds known as fire foragers. These opportunists prey on animals fleeing from a blaze, or scavenge the remains of creatures that succumbed to the flames and the smoke.
But in Australia, some fire-foraging birds are also fire starters.
Three species of raptors — predatory birds with sharp beaks and talons, and keen eyesight — are widely known not only for lurking on the fringes of fires but also for snatching up smoldering grasses or branches and using them to kindle fresh flames, to smoke out mammal and insect prey.
[Read More]California Dam Emergency: 5 Dams That Did Fail
Posted on October 27, 2022
| 7 minutes
| 1405 words
| Trudie Dory
More than 100,000 people were evacuated from below the United States' tallest dam on Sunday, after an auxiliary floodway threatened to fail.
The Oroville Dam in Northern California looked poised to release floodwaters from Lake Oroville into the Feather River, threatening thousands of homes and businesses. According to the Los Angeles Times, rains had filled the reservoir to capacity, sending water over the dam's emergency spillway for the first time.
[Read More]Can Pee in a Pool be Revealed by Chemicals?
Posted on October 27, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 443 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Childhood is filled with seemingly arbitrary rules about what to eat, when to sleep and how to behave. No wonder we become so good at finding loopholes, and no wonder we relish getting away with something – especially right under out parent’s noses. Add to that the trials, taboos and dirty tricks common to public swimming pools, and you have a recipe for some micturition mischief.
Of course, sometimes you just can’t be bothered to stand in line at a bathroom.
[Read More]Cosmic Art Glows With Fluorescent Bacteria
Posted on October 27, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 575 words
| Fernande Dalal
At an upcoming art exhibit, glowing images of heavenly objects — stars, galaxies, nebulae and remnants of supernovae — will have unusual frames: the clear rims of Petri dishes, the sort typically used to grow microbes.
There's no coincidence here. The images of these astronomical structures have been created from the bacterium E. coli, a more typical resident of the cell culture dishes.
The artist behind these new images, Zachary Copfer, a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, knew he wanted to create something that reflected the concept of "
[Read More]Deadly, Lesser-Known Head and Neck Cancers Can't be Ignored (Op-Ed)
Posted on October 27, 2022
| 9 minutes
| 1721 words
| Fernande Dalal
Dr. Kavita Pattani and Dr. Rafael Torro-Serra, surgical oncologists at UF Health Cancer Center-Orlando Health, contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
The public doesn't hear about head and neck cancers as often as other cancers, possibly because they comprise about three percent of all forms of the disease.
But, the statistics are still shocking. According to an estimate from the National Cancer Institute, in 2012 alone, more than 52,000 men and women were diagnosed with head and neck cancers in the United States.
[Read More]Eggs Don't Deserve Their Bad Reputation, Studies Show (Op-Ed)
Posted on October 27, 2022
| 7 minutes
| 1458 words
| Fernande Dalal
Katherine Tallmadge, M.A., R.D., is a registered dietitian, author of "Diet Simple: 195 Mental Tricks, Substitutions, Habits & Inspirations(opens in new tab)" (LifeLine Press, 2011) and a frequent national commentator on nutrition topics. This Op-Ed was adapted from an article that first appeaared in the Washington Post. Tallmadge contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
My clients regularly ask me, "Should I be eating eggs? My doctor tells me they're 'poison,' and to avoid eggs because they'll increase my cholesterol.
[Read More]How Does PrEP, the HIV-Prevention Medication, Work?
Posted on October 27, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 797 words
| Arica Deslauriers
At the 22nd International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam last month, a group of researchers announced that, although their HIV-prevention trial isn't over yet, they know that the treatment is going to be a success. This isn't the first study of its kind to go extraordinarily well; a few years ago, a trial was stopped early because the treatment was obviously working.
Both of these teams were looking at a treatment method called PrEP, which prevents individuals who are at risk of contracting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from getting infected.
[Read More]How Sleight-of-Hand Magicians Trick Our Brains
Posted on October 27, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 547 words
| Fernande Dalal
When watching an expert magician make a playing card vanish, pick-pocket a volunteer or perform any other startling sleight-of-hand trick, it seems that the harder you try to pay attention to their lightning fingers, the more easily you're fooled.
This is no coincidence. As you will learn on "Brain Games," a new series on the National Geographic Channel that illustrates the minor miracles required to pay attention and form memories, brains run on just 12 Watts of power.
[Read More]