Why We Lie
Posted on October 21, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 858 words
| Trudie Dory
We all lie, all the time. It causes problems, to say the least. So why do we do it?
It boils down to the shifting sands of the self and trying to look good both to ourselves and others, experts say.
"It's tied in with self-esteem," says University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman. "We find that as soon as people feel that their self-esteem is threatened, they immediately begin to lie at higher levels.
[Read More]A Bloodsucker Goes to Washington: Is this the Chupacabra?
Posted on October 20, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 532 words
| Patria Henriques
A bizarre beast said to combine the characteristics of a kangaroo, dog, rat and deer was captured last week by workers at Prince George’s Hospital Center in Maryland near Washington, D.C.
Technicians on a smoke break wandered near a wooded area and found the strange, nearly hairless animal. The workers took cellphone videos of the beast, and eventually lured it into a cage with Chinese food as bait. Local news reporters interviewed the hospital workers, who offered a variety of opinions about the beast's identity.
[Read More]Addiction Drug Could Curb Binge Eating
Posted on October 20, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 364 words
| Arica Deslauriers
A medication used to ease the cravings of people addicted to drugs or alcohol also may help curb binge eating, a new study in animals suggests.
For the study, rats were turned into binge eaters ― consuming about four times as much food as other rats ― by being fed a high-sugar diet for one hour a day. But after the drug naltrexone was injected into the part of the rats' brains called the prefrontal cortex, binge eaters ate much less — close to the amount that rats on a regular diet consume, said study researcher Angelo Blasio, of the Laboratory of Addictive Disorders at Boston University School of Medicine.
[Read More]Close Friends Less Common Today, Study Finds
Posted on October 20, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 586 words
| Fernande Dalal
If asked how many friends you have, some may have trouble distinguishing between the lengthy list of Facebook friends and those close pals you confide in. Well, it turns out, Americans' lists of the close type has shrunk to two, down from three confidantes 25 years ago, a new study suggests.
The study also found that the number of us who have zero confidantes, or the socially isolated, has not increased over these decades, as scientists had suspected based on a 2006 study showing a near tripling of Americans' social isolation between 1985 and 2004.
[Read More]Fluids in Motion | Fun Science Experiments
Posted on October 20, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 933 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) was a Swiss mathematician and physicist best known for his work involving fluid dynamics. He began studying fluids because he was interested in studying the pressure and flow of blood in the human body.
His painful method of measuring blood pressure involved inserting a hollow glass tube directly into a patient’s artery and measuring the height of the blood pumped into the tube with each beat of the heart.
[Read More]Frankenstein star could be on the brink of a startling transformation
Posted on October 20, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 786 words
| Fernande Dalal
The discovery of a moon-size zombie star transforming into another type of stellar corpse could upend astronomers' understanding of how stars evolve.
The cosmic zombie — an embering core of a dead star, or a white dwarf — is about the size of Earth's moon, making it the smallest white dwarf ever found. Despite being tiny, with a radius of 2,670 miles (4,300 kilometers) compared to our sun's 432,470-mile (696,000 km) radius, the stellar corpse has a ginormous mass of about 1.
[Read More]How to Avoid Being Attacked By a Dog
Posted on October 20, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 632 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Question: I heard that older people are the leading victims of dog bites. Is this true?
No. More than 60 percent of the people who are bitten by dogs are children. The elderly are second and people like mail carriers and meter readers are third.
Children often don’t know how to act around dogs and frighten them into aggressive behavior. Older people are more prone to being bitten by an aggressive dog because they tend to be slower and weaker than younger adults.
[Read More]Humans Mastered Advanced Weapon-Making Technique 77,000 Years Ago
Posted on October 20, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 475 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
The discovery of 25 dangerously pointy stone weapons in a South African cave shows that humans mastered a complex weapon-creating technique during the Stone Age, some 77,000 years ago, according to a new study.
The discovery is the earliest evidence on record of a technique known as "pressure flaking," the researchers said. The technique is performed by using a pointed bone tool to remove small flakes of rock from a sharpened stone, the scientists said.
[Read More]Incredible Photos Capture Last Glimpse of Long-Tusked 'Elephant Queen'
Posted on October 20, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 367 words
| Trudie Dory
An elephant matriarch in Kenya that recently died of old age was an impressive sight to the very end, thanks to a pair of tusks that were so unusually long that they resembled those of a woolly mammoth.
The elephant, known as F_MU1, lived in Kenya's Tsavo region for more than 60 years, according to wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas, who captured stunning images of the stately pachyderm in the weeks prior to her death.
[Read More]Man Survives 'Hangman's Fracture' After Crash
Posted on October 20, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 355 words
| Fernande Dalal
A young man in Tunisia who was in a high-speed crash suffered a broken neck — in an injury doctors call a "hangman's fracture" — yet recovered with no lingering problems, according to a recent report of the man's case.
A "hangman's fracture" refers to a neck injury that occurs when a person's neck snaps backwards, as it would during a hanging.
And though the name refers to an act that's far less common today than it once was, the injury itself is not incredibly rare: Dr.
[Read More]