Stroke is the number one cause of adult disability. But it doesnt have to be that way. In fact, if someone having a stroke gets to the hospital in time, drugs used to break up the blood clot in the brain thats causing the stroke can prevent much of t...
Without the search for mates or the ensuing courtship rituals, parthenogenesis means big savings in time and energy: in just one season, a single aphid can give rise to billions of descendants.But in the fall, fresh food gets harder to find and there...
Sometimes its easy to understand how an evolutionary change took place, but its more difficult to understand why. For example, consider the beautiful birds of paradise which live in the forests of New Guinea. The males of many bird-of-paradise specie...
William: In terms of cultural differences Joe, I mean like there are lots and lots of cultural differences aren't there between the UK and the States... Joe: Yeah. I think it was Bill Bryson who said that Americans live like they're never going to di...
Now, even small dogs are genetically programmed to function like predators, which makes sense considering they are close relatives of wolves. And birdsyou can probably figure out why the only way youd find out your bird is sick is when it dies. The s...
Scientists conducted a range of cognitive tests with older adults in their 60s and 70s. They then chose two smaller groups from those subjectsthose who performed high on the tests, and those who performed low. The scientists administered two of the s...
Parallax is a phenomenon by which we can judge the distance to things just by looking at them. Astronomers use parallax to calculate the distance to stars. Do you need a gigantic computer-based observatory to use it? Not at all. Your finger will do n...
In 1509 Henry VIII ascended the throne.He would be King of England until his death. Author Alison Weir wrote the book, Henry VIII: The King and Court and here are some extracts from it. Henry VIII succeeded to the throne in 1509 to great acclaim. He...
The prefrontal cortex is the region of the brain located just behind the forehead. This is where higher-level cognition occurs, such as recalling whether a word was heard aloud or read. Most people show evidence of more processing on one side of the...
Although snails can and do successfully mate without stabbing each other, studies have shown that darted snails store one-hundred-sixteen percent more sperm than undarted snails....
Now heres the strange part. About once a week, as garden snails share caresses, pressure builds up in the area surrounding a sac near the genital region housing a calcium dart. Just for the moment of sexual penetration, the impregnating snail stabs i...
If youve ever driven in LA, you know that people dont cooperate terribly well. Traffic jams, folks cutting folks off, people shouting at you out their windows . . . its a real headache. Wed all do a lot betterat least, wed all move through congestion...
No matter the species, mating rituals are pretty weird. Take the praying mantis. After an intimate tryst, the female mantis bites its partners head off. But when it comes to sexual hijinks, nothing beats the garden snail. During sex, garden snails of...
Dogs do have much shorter life spans than we humans do. In an attempt to gauge our pets stage in life in a way we can relate to, we often use the popular myth of multiplying their age by seven. One problem with the formula is that it doesnt consider...
In his book Cosmos, the late scientist Carl Sagan talks about the way in which the earth is regularly struck by material from outer space. These collisions with space debris can be minoras in a shooting star on a summer nightor amazingly destructive,...
