Seinfeld was one of the funniest TV shows ever. Pretty much everyone loved it. Everyone, that is, in the United States. And probably in many other developed countries, too. Because, after all, anyone engaged in the daily grind would connect with the...
Behavior like this, however, is reversed in a Costa Rican wasp species. The males in this species not only attack the ir sisters, who curl into submissive positions or flee, but they steal food from the queen herself, their very own mother. These was...
But it was hard for wolves. Wolves that have been raised by people should have had the same success at finding the sealed container, but they didnt. Even chimpanzees, which are very smart animals indeed, werent as fast at finding the food as dogs. Wh...
Then that foot stops and the other one accelerates. And so on. Thinner, lighter things are easier to accelerate than heavy, massive ones. So if you want speed, put the muscles up high and the skinny down low. Speed If you really want speed, you could...
Until recently, that is. Geological surveys of the area have detected two faults, or cracks in the earths crust, intersecting directly under the oracles chamber. Samples from Delphic spring water and rock from the intersecting faults revealed traces...
If youre planning a trip to Greece in the future, youll want to schedule a visit to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. This famous temple was the home of the Pythia, a specially chosen and trained woman who, according to legend, channeled the voice and...
What can be done? A new treatment being tried out by a few doctors, including Dr. Robert Levy, a neurosurgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, involves zapping with electricity certain nerves that innervate the face. Its like a marathon in which th...
Researcher Molly Cummings and her coworkers at the University of Texas at Austin placed a female swordtail in a tank with two males visible at either end. One of the males, however, was surrounded by filtering glass that blocks UV light. They found t...
If youve ever had a migraine headache, you dont need me to tell you it hurts. Doctors report that about twenty million people suffer from serious headaches, and ten percent of these have intractable painmeaning it doesnt go away. But heres a surprise...
There are many dung beetles competing for a limited amount of food at a dung pile, so when an individual is finished rolling a ball of dung it is in its best interest to make a quick escape. The fastest way to travel is in a straight path. Scientists...
A number of animals, including honeybees and butterflies, use sunlights polarization in their navigations, but the dung beetle is the first animal ever discovered to use moonlights polarization to guide its travels. Polarization happens when some of...
With the age of electronics, it was found that hearing your own voice played back to you almost as soon as you speak helps a stutter as well. Thats called the Delayed Auditory Feedback effect. Altering the pitch of the playback gives an extra boost t...
Remember that kid in your grade school class who stuttered? Well, he was in good companya whopping three million people in the United States alone are affected by this problem. It isnt life threatening, but it certainly can be life hampering, as anyo...
Vesta is quite far away. Like many asteroids, it has an orbit out between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers first spotted it when looking for a new planet they thought should exist between these two. As I said, Vesta is quite smallabout thr...
You can see the planet Jupiter on a clear night, but Jupiter is humongous. Mars and Mercury are smaller than that, and you can see them, too. Wait a minute, our moon is even smaller, and you can see that. Could anything smaller than the moon be visib...
