Moods and Booze: Alcohol's Effects Different in Men and Women

 Posted on September 9, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  563 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Gender may influence which emotions drive heavy drinkers to drink, and how they feel the next day, according to new research. But the study also showed that neither men nor women who drink heavily effectively drown their sorrows with alcohol. "Some people say they want to use alcohol to improve their mood, and that's not what we found happening," said Valerie S. Harder, lead author of the study, published in June in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism. [Read More]

Rare snow covers Acropolis of Athens in dazzling white blanket

 Posted on September 9, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  365 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Unusual weather blanketed the Acropolis with snow on Tuesday (Feb. 16), turning the iconic site in Athens into a scene from a holiday card.  An aerial image of the complex, which is perched on a fortified hill above Athens, shows the Parthenon against a backdrop of white. The smaller Erechtheum, a temple dedicated to the deities Athena and Poseidon, is also visible.  Snow is a rare sight in Athens, but much of Europe has been experiencing unusually frigid temperatures in the past week. [Read More]

Statue of mysterious woman with 'Star Wars'-like headdress found in Mexico

 Posted on September 9, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  826 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

A 500-year-old statue of a mysterious woman wearing a large, "Star Wars"-like headdress has been discovered in central Mexico, according to Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). The 6.5-foot-tall (2 meters) limestone statue depicts a young woman dressed in elaborate clothes and jewelry, including a circular pendant, known as an "oyohualli," on a thick necklace; tassel-like earrings; and a headdress that rivals the head ornamentation of "Star Wars" Ahsoka Tano, a former Jedi apprentice turned warrior in the sci-fi series. [Read More]

STEVE is smearing green 'streaks' across the sky, and nobody knows why

 Posted on September 9, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  594 words  |  Trudie Dory

The mysterious, aurora-like phenomenon calledSTEVE just got a little weirder. If you don't know STEVE (short for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) by name, you may know it from photos. Unlike the infamous Southern andNorthern Lights, which blanket the sky in ethereal green swirls near Earth's magnetic poles, STEVE appears as a purplish-white ribbon of light that slashes diagonally toward the horizon, stretching hundreds of miles through the atmosphere. It can appear closer to the equator than a typical aurora, and is often accompanied by a " [Read More]

This 87-Year-Old Woman Donated Her Body So Doctors Could Slice It into 27,000 Pieces

 Posted on September 9, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  718 words  |  Trudie Dory

Susan Potter knew before she died that she, or at least her body, would make history: Not only would hers be the first diseased cadaver (and one containing a titanium hip) to be frozen, sliced up and digitized for all to study, but she also came with a detailed backstory. That's because the Texas woman, when she proposed to doctors that her body be immortalized for medical students, thought she would die in the near future. [Read More]

Why hasn't contact tracing managed to slow the massive surge of coronavirus in the US?

 Posted on September 9, 2022  |  10 minutes  |  2055 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Tracking the close contacts of people who test positive for COVID-19 should, in theory, allow health departments to identify and isolate new cases of the virus before they spark surges of infection — and yet, in the U.S., daily coronavirus case counts continue to rise in many states. So why isn't contact tracing working to slow the spread? Experts told Live Science that states could improve their contact tracing programs. [Read More]

Why Women Have Bad Teeth

 Posted on September 9, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  446 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Women had poor dental health compared to men back in the hunter-gatherer era, and it got worse as societies turned to farming. Now an anthropologist is pointing to an overlooked explanation — hormonal and dietary changes related to higher pregnancy rates. Anthropologists usually argue that women's poor dental health resulted from culture-driven factors, such as cooking duties and the ongoing nibbling that can go along with that. But that narrow focus may overlook biological factors connected to women bearing more and more children in agricultural societies. [Read More]

'Powerful, maybe even frightening' woman with diadem may have ruled in Bronze Age Spain

 Posted on September 8, 2022  |  7 minutes  |  1398 words  |  Trudie Dory

Archaeologists in Spain have discovered "one of the most lavish burials of the European early Bronze Age": the grave of an elite woman wearing a silver diadem in what might be one of Western Europe's first palaces. She might even have been a queen of sorts who ruled over the realm. The woman's remains were buried next to a man who was slightly older and died a few years earlier, the researchers found. [Read More]

Common cold virus may predate modern humans, ancient DNA hints

 Posted on September 8, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  991 words  |  Patria Henriques

Inside a pair of 31,000-year-old baby teeth, scientists discovered DNA remnants from several viruses and used that genetic material to reconstruct the pathogens' evolutionary history.     Their analysis suggests that human adenovirus C (HAdV-C), a species of virus that typically causes mild, cold-like illnesses in children, may have originated more than 700,000 years ago, long before Homo sapiens walked the Earth, the team reported in a recent study, posted June 28 to the preprint database bioRxiv, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. [Read More]

Epic sea level rise drove Vikings out of Greenland

 Posted on September 8, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  608 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

The Vikings are remembered as fierce fighters, but even these mighty warriors were no match for climate change. Scientists recently found that ice sheet growth and sea level rise led to massive coastal flooding that inundated Norse farms and ultimately drove the Vikings out of Greenland in the 15th century. The Vikings first established a foothold in southern Greenland around A.D. 985 with the arrival of Erik Thorvaldsson, also known as " [Read More]