Adorable Hedgehogs Want You to Know About This Common Health Problem

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  518 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

To raise awareness about prediabetes, a new campaign features something most people can't resist — adorable animal videos. With videos staring puppies, hedgehogs and baby goats, the campaign aims to teach people about their risk of prediabetes by walking them through a brief, 1-minute prediabetes risk test. "Hedgehogs on vacation. A perfect way to spend a minute," one ad starts, while a background video shows hedges lounging on a tropical beach. [Read More]

Ancient Behaviors Hard-Wired in Human Brain

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  272 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Don't blame your lame smile or lack of an intimidating frown on your upbringing, a new study suggests. Such behaviors may be hard-wired in your brain. Scientists know many behaviors of lower organisms are innate. Ants instinctively follow other ants to a picnic basket. Birds operate largely on autopilot, dogs less so. In people and monkeys, however, behavior is largely something learned, so researchers have assumed our hard-wiring is limited. If that's true, however, why do many reactions, such as aggression, play out the same among diverse populations around the world? [Read More]

Ancient Mesopotamian Artifacts Smashed in New ISIS Video

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  501 words  |  Patria Henriques

To the horror of archaeologists and history buffs around the world, militants with the extremist group ISIS released a new video today (Feb. 26) that shows ancient Mesopotamian sculptures and other artifacts being smashed inside northern Iraq's Mosul Museum. The destruction — which comes weeks after ISIS deliberately destroyed library collections in Mosul — is part of an ongoing effort by ISIS militants to get rid of objects and structures they consider idolatrous, whether that means obliterating archaeological relics or demolishing Sufi shrines. [Read More]

Causes of Pakistan Earthquake & New Island Revealed

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  938 words  |  Trudie Dory

The powerful earthquake that hit Pakistan on Tuesday (Sept. 24) and killed more than 320 people struck along one of the most hazardous yet poorly studied tectonic plate boundaries in the world. The magnitude-7.7 earthquake was likely centered on a southern strand of the Chaman Fault, said Shuhab Khan, a geoscientist at the University of Houston. In 1935, an earthquake on the northern Chaman Fault killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed the town of Quetta. [Read More]

Does Heartburn Become More Frequent as You Age?

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  613 words  |  Patria Henriques

This Week’s Question: I’m getting heartburn a lot since I turned 60. Is more heartburn something that comes with more years? More than 60 million Americans experience heartburn at least once a month and  more than 15 million Americans experience heartburn daily. Heartburn is more common among the elderly. Heartburn two or more times weekly may be caused by gastroesophageal reflux disease or GERD. See a doctor if you have heartburn too often. [Read More]

Early Earth's Spin Helped Shape Its Molten Magma Ocean

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  787 words  |  Trudie Dory

The early Earth was an infernal place: hot, roiling, rapidly rotating and bombarded by space debris, including a Mars-size body whose impact created the moon. That same impact also turned the entire surface of the newly formed Earth into a molten magma ocean. Now, new research finds that the rapid spin of the planet may have influenced how this molten sea cooled. The speed of the Earth's rotation may have affected where the mineral silicate crystallized and settled as the magma ocean solidified, the new study found. [Read More]

Eerie Sky Glow Called 'Steve' Isn't an Aurora, Is 'Completely Unknown' to Science

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  789 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Late at night on July 25, 2016, a thin river of purple light slashed through the skies of northern Canada in an arc that seemed to stretch hundreds of miles into space. It was a magnificent, mysterious, borderline-miraculous sight, and the group of citizen skywatchers who witnessed it decided to give the phenomenon a fittingly majestic name: "Steve." Given its coincidence with the northern lights, Steve was just thought to be part of the aurora — the shimmering sheets of nighttime color that appear in the sky when charged plasma particles streak out of the sun, sail across space on solar winds and jolt down Earth's magnetic field toward the planet's poles. [Read More]

Epidural May Prolong Labor More Than Thought

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  554 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Using epidurals for pain relief during a baby's delivery may prolong labor more than previously thought, a new study finds. In the study, the researchers looked at more than 42,000 women in California who delivered vaginally between 1976 and 2008, and compared the length of the second stage of labor, which is the time it takes for "pushing" the baby out after the cervix has fully opened, among women who had received epidurals and those who hadn't. [Read More]

Is the Internet Changing the Way People Feel About Religion?

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  711 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Spend enough time on the internet and you may well end up becoming an ordained minister of Dudeism. The vague religion dedicated to the mellow Zen of Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski (fictional hero of the Coen Brothers' cult smash film "The Big Lebowski") fills no church halls, but does offer a complete worldview that combines the chillest bits of Taoism, Buddhism and turn-the-other-cheek Christianity. It's a cobbled-together belief system that sociologists might label religious " [Read More]

Scientists Create World's Thinnest Balloon

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  425 words  |  Trudie Dory

Scientists have created the world's thinnest balloon, made of a single layer of carbon just one atom thick. The fabric that the balloon is made of is leakproof to even the tiniest airborne molecules. It could find use in "aquariums" smaller than a red blood cell, through which scientists could peer at molecules, researchers suggested. The balloon is made of graphite, as found in pencils, which is made of atom-thin sheets of carbon stacked on top of each other known. [Read More]