Red Sea's Glowing Corals are Rainbow of Colors

 Posted on June 8, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  557 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Deep in the Red Sea, beyond the reach of most scuba divers, coral reefs are putting on a glowing, colorful show, scientists have discovered. Researchers found the radiant corals more than 160 feet (50 meters) below the surface of the Red Sea, which separates Africa from the Arabian Peninsula. At these depths, corals stay mostly in the dark. Yet, despite their limited exposure to light, they glow brightly in fluorescent yellow, fiery orange, forest green and mustard yellow, in researchers' photographs. [Read More]

Shop 'Til You Drop? 7 Marketing Tricks Retailers Use

 Posted on June 8, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  1034 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Splurge, For SureWith the holidays nearing fast, even procrastinating gift-givers are headed to the mall. And they're not alone: A survey by the National Retail Foundation found that as of Dec. 10, 2010, only 10 percent of Americans had finished their Christmas shopping. Another 37 million hadn't even begun. The pressure is on for retailers, too, many of whom depend on the holiday shopping season to keep them in the black. [Read More]

Sobering Study: Most Don't Know What 'Sensible Drinking' Is

 Posted on June 8, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  581 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

"Drinking responsibly" is promoted by everyone from public health officials to beer advertisers, but it's unclear how many people understand what that means. A recent study from Sweden showed that between 94 and 97 percent of respondents did not know the line between sensible drinking and heavy drinking that can damage health. It's not clear that Americans would fare any better in their knowledge of the amount of drinking that threatens their health, though a comparable study has not been done in the U. [Read More]

Speed of COVID vaccine testing did not compromise safety, Fauci says

 Posted on June 8, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  591 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Moderna and Pfizer both recently announced that their coronavirus vaccines were around 95% effective in preventing COVID-19. Just one year ago, not a single person knew that the novel coronavirus existed.  This incredible speed in vaccine development is unprecedented. But it did not compromise the safety of the vaccine or the scientific integrity of the process, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said during a White House Briefing on Thursday (Nov. [Read More]

The Milky Way Is Totally Twisted

 Posted on June 8, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  438 words  |  Trudie Dory

The Milky Way's shape is a disk … with a twist. New research finds that at the edges of the galaxy, where the pull of gravity weakens, the shape of the Milky Way warps. Instead of lying in a flat plane, the galaxy takes on a bit of a twisted "S" shape. "This new morphology provides a crucial updated map for studies of our galaxy's stellar motions and the origins of the Milky Way's disk," [Read More]

Wind, Rain, Heat: Health Risks Grow with Extreme Weather

 Posted on June 8, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  766 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

ATLANTA — As climate change proceeds, there will be more extreme weather events, and these events pose a threat to people's health, experts say. The annual number of natural disasters appears to be increasing around the world, said Dr. Mark Keim, an emergency-medicine physician and the founder of DisasterDoc LLC. These include, for example, not only weather- and water-related disasters, but also geological disasters, such as earthquakes, and biological disasters, such as pandemics. [Read More]

2,500 Years Ago, Herodotus Described a Weird Ship. Now, Archaeologists Have Found it.

 Posted on June 7, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  670 words  |  Patria Henriques

One of the most elusive boats from the ancient world — a mysterious river barge that famed Greek historian Herodotus(opens in new tab) described nearly 2,500 years ago — has finally been discovered. Herodotus dedicated 23 lines of his "Historia" to this type of boat, known as a baris, after seeing the construction of one during his travels to Egypt in 450 B.C. In his writings, Herodotus described how the long barge had one rudder that passed through a hole in the keel, a mast made of acacia wood and sails made from papyrus. [Read More]

Bizarre Superfluid Could Explain the Existence of the Modern Universe

 Posted on June 7, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  1004 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Back in the first moment of the universe, everything was hot and dense and in perfect balance. There weren't any particles as we'd understand them, much less any stars or even the vacuum that permeates space today. The whole of space was filled with homogeneous, formless, compressed stuff. Then, something slipped. All that monotonous stability became unstable. Matter won out over its weird cousin, antimatter, and came to dominate the whole of space. [Read More]

Common Heartburn Meds Linked to Increased Risk of Death

 Posted on June 7, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  610 words  |  Patria Henriques

People who take a popular type of heartburn drug may be at an increased risk of dying over a five-year period, a new study finds. People in the study who took proton-pump inhibitors, or PPIs, had a higher risk of dying over the more than five-year study period than people who took another type of heartburn drug, as well as those who took no heartburn medications at all, the study found. [Read More]

Could COVID-19 immunity last decades? Here’s the science.

 Posted on June 7, 2023  |  6 minutes  |  1145 words  |  Trudie Dory

The body builds a protective fleet of immune cells when infected with COVID-19, and in many people, those defenses linger for more than six months after the infection clears, according to a new study. The immune cells appear so stable, in fact, that immunity to the virus may last at least several years, the study authors said. "That amount of [immune] memory would likely prevent the vast majority of people from getting hospitalized disease, severe disease, for many years," [Read More]