News Articles

There is a saying that goes 'lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice' but it was never wise to bet your life on it. What it means is that getting hit at all is rare, for a human well over a 1 in 1,000,000 chance, but even if only 300 people are hit and under die, it still happens a lot to other things. The Empire State building in New York City gets hit 25 times each year.

A recent study finds that chewing gum laced with a plant-grown protein named ACE2 serves as a “trap” for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, reducing viral load in saliva and potentially tamping down transmission.Vaccinations for COVID-19 have begun to stamp out the pandemic but even people who are fully vaccinated can still become infected with SARS-CoV-2. Scientists are on the hunt for new ways to neutralize the virus before it can harm people with co-morbidities.

People age differently but it is unclear why. Some argue it is mitochondria while others contend it is equally nebulous epigenetics - a broad umbrella term for changes in genes that don't impact DNA but have been correlated to everything from probiotic yogurt to homeopathy.Because so-called “epigenetic clocks” occur at different times in different people they don't seem like clocks at all. There is little use for a clock that only gives you subjective time. A new study hopes to change that, and argues that one such clock, named “GrimAge”, might be a predictor of lifespan and health.

An examination of undergraduate textbooks commonly used for linguistics courses and another of over 1,000 articles published in linguistics journals finds persistent gender bias.Gender bias is subjective, which makes it both ironic and ideal for a linguistics paper. The authors rely on the scourge of evidence-based thinking, implicit bias, which controversially contends everyone is biased, it is just how biased that needs to be determined. Even when you are conscious of implicit bias you are still doing it, the belief goes.

Oymyakon, Russia is the coldest town on earth - but that doesn't stop fires.According to Accuweather, the temperature in Delyankir, Russia, about 300 miles (483 km) to the north of the Sea of Oshkosh, fell to 75 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (59.2 degrees below zero Celsius), the lowest temperature there since January 2014. The entire region is known for its extreme cold but Oymyakon, located about 90 miles (145 km) to the southwest of Delyankir, is the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth. In 1933, it claimed a record low of 90 below zero F - 67.8 below zero C.

Do you know people who just can't help themselves when it comes to buying things or engaging in behavior you and they know they will regret later?Deemed “negative urgency,” a clinical form of impulsivity, it is linked to depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders, self-harm, bipolar disorder and ADHD. A new test believes such pathological impulsivity can be predicted based on how fast you react to stimulating visuals, especially disturbing ones.Negative urgency is traditionally measured with a self-report questionnaire, but to provide a more reliable measure, researchers developed what they call an “emotional stop-signal task.”

The ancient relative to modern humans Australopithecus sediba walked like a human, but climbed like an ape, filling in a gap in the fossil record long posited by biologists, finds a new analysis.The recovery of new lumbar vertebrae from the lower back of a single individual of the human relative, Australopithecus sediba, and portions of other vertebrae of the same female from Malapa, South Africa, together with previously discovered vertebrae, form one of the most complete lower backs ever discovered in the early hominid record and give insight into how this ancient human relative walked and climbed.

In a new epidemiology paper, men taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs had different  prostate cancer screening results than non-users - in statin users, screening did not increase the incidence of prostate cancer as it did in other men.The data came from the Finnish Prostate Cancer Screening Trial which started in 1996–1999. A total of about 80,000 men were included in the study, of whom just under 32,000 were screened with the PSA test every four years. 

A survey of 1,111 Americans who own houseplants wanted to find out which varieties are most popular and how much people spend on the hobby, but they also found out how much they anthropomorphize their leafy little friends.During the pandemic, 68 percent of Millennials took up a new hobby and nearly as many grew their houseplant collection. Perhaps that's become part of the new cultural dynamic. 57 said having a houseplant supported their mental health while 81 percent say houseplants are a reasonable substitute if they are far from nature. 

A demographically representative sample of 5,000 single adults between the ages of 18 and 98 finds a big switch in a post-pandemic world; only 78 percent believe being physically attractive is most important, compared to 90 percent in 2020.And marriage is back. The number of singles who want a partner desiring marriage jumped from 58
percent
 two years ago to 76 
percent
this year, with men and younger adults leading in the change.  Now, 42 percent of men are ready to find a long-term romantic relationship while women are just at 29 percent.Not this year, men are leading the charge in heart's desire.

Do cats adjust their behavior to what works to get what they want or do they nag humans until people begin to respond in more agreeable ways?Some cat owners, and probably most dog owners, might argue that cats engage in the latter and when it seems like the former it is just a lucky meeting of personalities. A new study in Animal Cognition finds they 'read the room' better than expected.Cats were presented with a solvable task (an easily accessible treat in a container with a loose lid) and an unsolvable task (a treat in a closed container) in the presence of either an attentive or inattentive caregiver.

For the last 10,000 years the earth has been in a warming cycle. The latest ice age ended around that time, a recurring phenomenon in nature where 90,000 of every 100,000 years were ice ages.How warm has it gotten compared to other warming bursts since the last ice age ended? A lot. Maps of global temperature changes for every 200-year interval going back 24,000 years finds that the magnitude and rate warming over the last 150 years far surpasses the magnitude and rate of changes over the rest of the period - including when we were leaving an ice age.