Polar bears bash walrus skulls with boulders and ice blocks, study suggests
Posted on September 22, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 1010 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Picture a polar bear stalking an unsuspecting walrus in the frozen Arctic: The predator slowly inches closer, camouflaged by ice and snow, until it's close enough to pounce. And then it delivers the killing blow — by bopping the walrus on the head with a large rock.
That might sound like something you'd see in a cartoon, rather than in nature. But for centuries, Inuit people in the Arctic have shared such stories with non-Native explorers and naturalists, describing polar bears killing or stunning prey with stones and chunks of ice that the bears grasp in their paws (or throw off cliffs onto animals at the bottom, according to a memorable 19th-century engraving).
[Read More]Scientists Say Elon Musk's 'Nano' Claims Don't Make Any Sense
Posted on September 22, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 329 words
| Trudie Dory
Elon Musk is in the middle of a very public meltdown right now.
It began when the PayPal billionaire turned SpaceX and Tesla founder tangled with Twitter users about complaints of union-busting tactics in his factories, along with a report from the nonprofit investigative reporting outfit Reveal suggesting Tesla failed to disclose and properly guard against workplace injuries. But it's since spiraled, and Musk has doubled down against "the media" writ large, and gotten into snits with a number of other Twitter users.
[Read More]T. Rex Troubles: The Last Dino Legal Battle
Posted on September 22, 2022
| 6 minutes
| 1169 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Almost a year ago, headlines proclaiming the sale of a largely complete T. rex-like dinosaur sparked an international custody battle that featured a confrontation at a public auction, a federal seizure of the fossils, charges related to smuggling against Eric Prokopi, the man who attempted to sell them — and, finally, his guilty plea.
This case appears to be winding down. Prokopi is awaiting sentencing, and, during a ceremony in New York City on Monday (May 6), the fossils will be returned to Mongolia — the country from which Prokopi admitted he took the ill-gotten fossils.
[Read More]Tall Women More Likely to Have Twins
Posted on September 22, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 290 words
| Arica Deslauriers
A researcher who specializes in multiple-birth pregnancies has confirmed that taller women are more likely to have twins.
Taller women have more of an insulin-like growth factor that has been linked to height and to the rate of twins in previous work. Dr. Gary Steinman, an obstetrician at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, compared heights of 125 women who had twins and 24 who had triplets to the average height of U.
[Read More]That 'Feeling in Your Bones' Has Nothing to Do with the Weather
Posted on September 22, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 512 words
| Patria Henriques
Some people say their joint or back pain changes with the weather, but a new study finds no link between achy joints and rainfall patterns.
The study analyzed Medicare insurance claims from more than 1.5 million Americans ages 65 and older, along with daily rainfall data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Using the insurance claims, the researchers looked at the number of patient visits to doctors for joint or back pain on rainy days versus nonrainy days.
[Read More]The Omicron variant: What we know so far
Posted on September 22, 2022
| 6 minutes
| 1188 words
| Arica Deslauriers
On Nov. 26, the World Health Organization (WHO) named a new coronavirus variant "Omicron" and designated it as a "variant of concern."
But what makes this SARS-CoV-2 variant different and why are scientists worried about it? Because the variant has only been recently identified, there's a lot we don't know about it.
Scientists are concerned that Omicron has a very high number of mutations, many of them in genes that code for the spike protein, which the coronavirus uses to latch onto and invade human cells.
[Read More]What Nobel Prize Winners Do With Their Money
Posted on September 22, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 585 words
| Fernande Dalal
The Nobel Prize confers significant prestige on its winners, but it also comes with a nice cash bonus.
This week the 2012 prizes are being announced in Stockholm, Sweden, and the awards will be presented there in December. Each prize includes a grant of 8 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million); the prize used to be worth 10 millionkronor ($1.4 million), but was downsized this year because of the financial crisis.
[Read More]Why 5 or More Hours of TV Daily Is Bad for You
Posted on September 22, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 627 words
| Patria Henriques
Bad news for couch potatoes: Spending hours parked in front of the TV may increase the risk of dying from a blood clot in the lung, a new study from Japan finds.
People in the study who watched TV for 5 hours or more each day were 2.5 times more likely to die during the study period from a blood clot in the lung, also called a pulmonary embolism, compared with people who watched TV for less than 2.
[Read More]Why Did Ancient Europeans Just Disappear 14,500 Years Ago?
Posted on September 22, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 711 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Some of Europe's earliest inhabitants mysteriously vanished toward the end of the last ice age and were largely replaced by others, a new genetic analysis finds.
The finds come from an analysis of dozens of ancient fossil remains collected across Europe.
The genetic turnover was likely the result of a rapidly changing climate, which the earlier inhabitants of Europe couldn't adapt to quickly enough, said the study's co-author, Cosimo Posth, an archaeogenetics doctoral candidate at the University of Tübingen in Germany.
[Read More]11 Moles on Your Arm May Signal Higher Melanoma Risk
Posted on September 21, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 692 words
| Arica Deslauriers
People who have 11 or more moles on one of their arms could have a higher risk of the deadly skin cancer melanoma, according to a new study.
Researchers counted the number of moles that study participants had on 17 sites on the skin of their bodies — such as the left leg, the chest and the back — and found that the arms were the site that was the best indicator of the total number of moles on the whole body.
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