Adults can have a tough time learning a new language. Some opt for language immersion, in which the person spends all their time reading, listening to and speaking the new language. Now research reveals that immersion students do indeed learn the new...
It really is rocket scienceresearchers are using huge x-ray scanners from NASA to understand how sonar might be affecting the hearing of large ocean mammals. These scanners are usually used to inspect the space shuttles solid fuel rockets. Navy sonar...
Roughly 1,000 years ago, Europe enjoyed several centuries of balmier average temperatures. Dubbed the Medieval Warm Period, it was the last time before the present that agriculture could flourish in Greenland. This era also provided fodder for countl...
Maybe its happened to you. You think you have a fever. So you pop a thermometer in your mouth and try to breathe through your nose to get an accurate reading. But youre totally stuffed up, so you experience this moment of complete panic because you c...
Here in the U.S., its Thanksgiving week. And many of us are getting ready to stuff our faces, watch football and take advantage of all those Black Friday sales. But eat enough turkey and you may not want to shop. Because a new study, in the Journal o...
This January, the country Turkey will join a handful of European nations that require visual health warnings on every pack of cigarettes. These images include things like diseased lungs and a foot sporting a toe tag. But maybe a Petri dish overrun wi...
We humans are known to help out members of our own families. When it comes to business we call it nepotism. Now plants have demonstrated the same predilection, in a study published in the American Journal of Botany. Previous research showed that plan...
Theres nothing like a good nap. It can refresh your moodand possibly your memory. Because a new study in the journal Science shows that a quick snooze after a mental workout helps to consolidate learning. And that sounds heard during sleep can trigge...
You've probably heard the expression a heart attack on a plate. Maybe its fettuccini alfredo. Or maybe its a bacon cheeseburger, covered in batter and deep fried to artery-clogging perfection. Either way, it's clear that our modern diet is not always...
November 24th marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. On November 19th, a guy named Ray Comfort, who does not accept evolution, will celebrate the fact that when copyrights expire and works enter the public domai...
It seemed like a good ideabecause rivers and ponds in Bangladesh were contaminated with bacteria, Bangladeshis switched to wells. But soon after, in the early 80s, researchers realized those wells were harming Bangladeshis with a new poisonarsenic. T...
Algae seem harmless enough. These precursors to plants thrive throughout the world's waters. But these single-celled plants have global consequences. We can thank them for oxygen in the atmosphere, oil in the lithosphere as well as dead zones in the...
We all love getting something new. But then we have to move around our current clutter to find a place for it. Well, looks like things work the same way in the brain. Because according to a study published in the journal Cell, newborn neurons in the...
This book stinks! is really a bad review. But even a classic work can start to smell when it gets old enough. Now chemists have developed a technique that identifies what kind of degradation process an old book or historical document is going through...
What you eat affects more than physical health. Two new studies have added to the growing evidence linking the stomach and the brain. In a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers studied how junk food can trigger ad...
