Microwaving Your Meals: Skipping 1 Step Can Make You Sick
Posted on September 29, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 346 words
| Trudie Dory
An outbreak of Salmonella that sickened 44 people highlights the need for consumers to follow all directions when it comes to microwaving food — including letting food "stand" after cooking, according to a new investigation of the outbreak.
During the outbreak, which occurred in summer 2010, people in 18 states fell ill with a type of bacteria called Salmonella enterica. The outbreak was later linked with consumption of Marie Callender's frozen chicken-and-rice meals, which were subsequently recalled.
[Read More]RV-size asteroid to get closer to Earth than the moon
Posted on September 29, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 403 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
An asteroid will get awfully close to Earth this Thursday (Sept. 24), when it whizzes by our planet closer than the moon orbits.
The asteroid — known as 2020 SW — isn't expected to collide with Earth, according to the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. But it will get close, passing about 16,700 miles (27,000 kilometers) away from Earth, according to the Virtual Telescope Project.
[Read More]Smart Strategy: Think of the Brain as a Muscle
Posted on September 29, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 733 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Students who are told they can get smarter if they train their brains to be stronger, like a muscle, do better in school, a new psychology study shows.
Many people have various theories about the nature of intelligence. Some view it as a fixed trait, while others see intelligence as a quality that can develop and expand.
These ideas have can have a profound effect on the motivation to learn, said researcher Carol Dweck, a child and social psychologist at Stanford University.
[Read More]Tallest Mountain in US Arctic Crowned
Posted on September 29, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 636 words
| Trudie Dory
Mountaineers and other adventurers now have a more accurate map of which peaks in the U.S. Arctic are the tallest.
Though Denali is the uncontested highest peak in North America — with a summit elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190 meters) — there has been a more than 50-year debate over which U.S. mountain can be crowned the tallest beyond the Arctic Circle. U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps from the 1950s show either Mount Chamberlin or Mount Isto as the highest mountain in the eastern Alaska Arctic region.
[Read More]The More Severe-Burn Patients Eat, the Faster They Heal (Op-Ed)
Posted on September 29, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 868 words
| Trudie Dory
Dr. Larry Jones, director of the< a href="http://wexnermedical.osu.edu/patient-care/healthcare-services/burn-care">Comprehensive Burn Center at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, contributed this column to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Patients with severe burns, understandably, suffer from substantially diminished appetites because they're in a considerable amount of pain and are often sedated, as a result. So it may seem counterintuitive to ask severely burned patients to consume considerably more calories than they're used to while in the hospital.
[Read More]The Science of Boredom
Posted on September 29, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 1058 words
| Patria Henriques
Although boredom is as familiar a feeling as excitement or fear, science has only begun to understand what makes people bored. Recently, six scientists who emerged after living for a year in isolation on the Mauna Loa volcano as part of the HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) experiment, which simulated the isolation that future space travelers might experience traveling to and living on Mars, said that boredom was their biggest challenge.
[Read More]What's Up with This 'Half-Fish, Half-Bird' in China?
Posted on September 29, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 624 words
| Fernande Dalal
At least that's how people have been describing this unusual creature since a video of the catch went viral online, showing the strange fish gasping for air as onlookers exclaimed. China's Guizhou Urban Newspaper, which broke the news, identified the fish as the common freshwater carp (Cyprinus carpio). But that hasn't stopped people from speculating that the creature could even be some kind of half-fish, half-bird — with its beak-like mouth and the small fins on its sides giving the appearance of wings.
[Read More]Why 'Dumpster Fire' Was 2016 Word of the Year
Posted on September 29, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 413 words
| Trudie Dory
Last year was the hottest year on record, but it wasn't just high temperatures that people will remember — Americans had to handle a fiery, contentious election, and people around the world experienced violent, political strife. It seems fitting, then, that "dumpster fire" has been selected as the word of the year for 2016.
In a vote held in Austin, Texas, on Jan. 6, the American Dialect Society chose "dumpster fire"
[Read More]Why Fall Colors Are Different in U.S. and Europe
Posted on September 29, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 640 words
| Patria Henriques
The riot of color that erupts in forests every autumn looks different depending on which side of the ocean you're on.
While the fall foliage in North America and East Asia takes on a fiery red hue, perplexingly, autumn leaves in Europe are mostly yellow in color.
A team of researchers has a new idea as to why the autumnal colors differ between the continents, one that involved taking a step back 35 million years in time.
[Read More]Why Older People Repeat Stories
Posted on September 29, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 438 words
| Fernande Dalal
There may be a reason grandparents repeat the same stories over and over again. According to a new study, older people are more likely than younger people to forget with whom they've shared information.
The study investigated two types of memory: source memory, or your recollection of who told you a piece of information; and destination memory, which is your recollection of which people you've informed. Not only were older people bad at remembering to whom they'd told information, they were very confident in their mistaken memories.
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