Category: General
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20 Things That Made the World a Better Place in 2023
It’s been hard recently to think about anything other than the wars and humanitarian crises raging around the world. Climate change has left its mark in what was almost certainly the hottest year in human history—there were unprecedented heat waves, intensified forest fires, torrential rain, and floods like those in Libya that caused devastation after…
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One Simple Technique Will Help You Stick to Your New Year’s Resolutions : ScienceAlert
Dick Coffee attended 781 consecutive University of Alabama football games. Meg Roh surfed through illness, storms and nightfall to maintain a seven-year daily surfing streak. Jon Sutherland ran at least 1 mile every day for over 52 years. An activity streak has the power to compel behavior, and marketers have taken note. Marketing researchers Jackie…
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Decades Ago a Huge Noise Roared in The Ocean. For Years It Was a Mystery. : ScienceAlert
In 1997, a deep belch echoed through the belly of Earth’s oceans. The super low-frequency sound came out like a sliding ‘bloooop’. For years, it remained the loudest unidentified noise ever recorded underwater. Scientists called it the Bloop. frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” allowfullscreen> Theories on where the eerie sound came from…
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UFOs and mammoth meatballs: 18 best eye-opening science images of 2023
A piece of rock broken off an asteroid hurtling through space, the first footprints of humans arriving in North America and a giant meatball made out of woolly mammoth. These are just some of the best images that caught the attention of BBC Science Focus editors in 2023. Rocket science Photo credit: SpaceX Boca Chica,…
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Cardio or weights first? A kinesiologist explains how to optimize the order of your exercise routine
When you enter the gym, which way should you head first? Toward the treadmills and spin studio to get your sweat on with a cardio session? Or toward the free weights and strength-training machines to do some resistance training? The American College of Sports Medicine suggests doing both types of exercise to take advantage of their unique…
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5 Plants and Animals that are Endangered in 2023
Most ecologists agree that the earth is currently experiencing a mass extinction event. All over the world, living organisms are looking down the barrel of climate change, habitat destruction and exploitation. The most conservative estimates place the number of species lost per year at 10 times the “background rate” (which is calculated from when life…
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What Are ‘Missed Period Pills,’ and How Do They Work?
Cari Siestra first learned about menstrual regulation when they were working on the Myanmar-Thailand border. At the time, abortion was broadly criminalized in both countries. But if a person’s period was late, it was relatively easy to get access to pills that would induce menstruation in just a few days. In Bangladesh, where abortion is…
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Jellyfish Can Regrow Their Tentacles, And We Finally Know How : ScienceAlert
Jellyfish don’t seem to have a lot going on. They’re gelatinous blobs that have neither brains, nor hearts, nor blood, often at the mercy of where ocean currents take them. But that doesn’t mean they are simple. Far from it. They’re extremely efficient, making them one of the most successful animal groups on the planet.…
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Expert Traces The History of Time Thousands of Years Into The Past : ScienceAlert
I once restored a 1950s timepiece for a customer who waxed lyrical about the intricacies of my work – all the while refusing to pay. They baulked when I presented them with the bill we’d previously agreed on. Then they garbled on about the philosophical nature of time, still resisting payment. It was during that…
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‘Beer goggles’ do not work by making faces appear symmetrical – study
Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Scientists have debunked a theory that the “beer goggles” effect works by people finding someone more attractive because their faces appear more symmetrical. The team from the University…