When we enter our deepest sleep—called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep—our bodies become mostly paralyzed, our eyes flicker behind our eyelids, and we experience vivid dreams. When we wake up, we can sometimes remember flying, falling, or watching in horror as our teeth fell out, but these memories tend to fade.
Most of the medicines we use today have been derived from substances found in nature, like plants or bacteria. Though we can grow some of these compounds in crops, this can take a long time, and crops are subjected to pests and other environmental hazards that may reduce their viability.
Want to lose weight or stick to your gym schedule? Remember a couple times you were able to in the past.
You’ve decided to go on a diet. For the first few days, things go well—you avoid the donut, you munch on carrots, and you deal without sugar in your coffee. But then, during a particular hectic time at work, you fall off the wagon—guzzling sodas and chowing down on pizza. Why does stress impact the way we eat?
Do you ever realize that you’re full, but finish that burger and fries anyway? There may be a scientific reason for that: too little of a hormone called GLP-1, which is thought to play a role in obesity (paywall).
That uplifting feeling you get when something good happens to you? Researchers now think they know the part of the brain responsible for it—and they suggest we may be able to train ourselves to make those positive emotions last longer.
The rail yards servicing New York Penn Station on Manhattan’s West Side don’t have much outdoor appeal. But soon, this area will have a public park built entirely above it.
Pollinators contribute $24 billion to the US economy—some estimates say $250 billion globally. These animals—bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and even some lizards and mammals—contribute to the agricultural system by spreading pollen to different plants so they can reproduce. And now, science shows that these animals play an important role in our health, too.
In the middle of the world’s southern ocean, there’s a mighty force that’s helping keep the sun’s rays at bay. The force is made up of many tiny things invisible to the naked eye: phytoplankton.
Polar bears have been a face of climate change for years. We’ve long understood that the melting sea ice is drastically reducing their means of foraging for seals, their main food source. We even know that pollution puts their penile bone density at risk.
The Velociraptors in Jurassic Park were pretty scary, but imagine how terrifying they would have been if they had wings?
There’s something about hearing a person scream that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. As it turns out, this visceral reaction may be unique to screaming itself.
Today we can genetically engineer life and stitch atoms together to create new chemicals. Yet, we still don’t know how life started a few billion years ago on Earth. One hint is that it got help from outer space, where some molecules seeded life on Earth.
It’s yet another feather in the cap of those who champion legalizing pot in the US.
For years, I’ve wondered what a hiccup actually is. We all get them. For me, spicy food is a trigger, but hiccups result from laughing too hard, drinking too quickly or even sudden excitement or stress. Even fetuses and animals can get hiccups.
It’s a nearly impossible challenge: Eat just one potato chip. Same goes for tater-tots, cheese, ice cream—high-fat foods can be addictive. Before you know it, you’ve finished your portion and moved on to the rest of the container.
We’ve spent the past couple of years worrying about the honeybee, but it looks like the bumblebee is in trouble as well.
Climate change affects animals in intense ways. Birds change their migratory patterns, polar bears have had to change their diets, and coral bleaching can lead to the depletion of habitats for entire marine ecosystems.
We tend to think of ants, and other social insects such as bees and termites, as busy little workers, but it turns out some of them may actually be quite lazy.
“Startup” already implies a degree of creativity, but some Greek start-ups have been forced to use their imagination just to access basic cloud computing services.
With 7 billion of us on the planet, it’s a great time to be alive for a human. But not the rest of the ecosystems in the world.
Scientists have been poking around in mice brains a lot recently. They’ve found that they have dreams, and that those dreams can be manipulated.
But what about the children?
Corals—like all marine animals—are at risk as oceans warm up because of climate change. But corals aren’t just organisms; they create an environment for others to thrive in. So losing them will mean losing the many diverse species that they shelter and provide food for.
