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About 74,000 years ago on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, the largest volcanic event over the last two million years, 5,000 times larger than the Mount St. Helen's eruption in the 1980s, ushered in a worldwide "volcanic winter" that lasted up to ten years followed by a 1,000 year-long cooling of the Earth's surface.While how close humanity got to extinction is unknown, surviving Homo sapiens in Africa were said to have survived by developing new strategies that eventually enabled them to re-expand and populate Asia 60,000 years ago in a single, rapid wave along the Indian Ocean coastline.

In recent years the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have manufactured a lot of concerns they then ask Congress for money to help solve - Zika, Prediabetes, vaping in kids are all examples of where they hyped concern or even defy the international consensus to worry the American public.Hopefully there is one thing they can feel comfortable eliminating - telling adults to get diphtheria and tetanus booster shots every 10 years. A new study found that if adults were fully vaccinated as kids, booster shots are just increasing health case costs while subsidizing manufacturers.

Edgar Allan Poe, The author, poet, editor, and literary critic, died in 1849 at age 40 in Maryland. He was chronically depressed, he had even tried to commit suicide using laudanum a year before his death.But when he went to the hospital for the last time, having been found delirious and wearing a stranger's clothes, he hadn't been committing suicide, according to a heuristic look at his writing.

Merge is a controversial belief by some that human language faculty arose in humans through a single gene mutation, rather the evolving gradually.This human burst of genetic exceptionalism is embraced by some linguists, such as Noam Chomsky, but the science community has doubts. The basis for Merge is that humans are genetically equipped with a unique cognitive capacity that specifically allows us to implement computations over hierarchically structured symbolic representations.

Sildenafil (viagra) is used to treat erectile dysfunction and is safe, with known side effects, but a few people have experienced light sensitivity and color vision impairment at the highest recommended dose. That doesn't mean men who need it should stop taking it, the psychological consequences of erectile dysfunction are of more concern than side effects, which can include headache and blurred vision that disappear quickly. These occur because sildenafil was originally developed as a treatment for high blood pressure, and it also dilates blood vessels and relaxes smooth muscle in the penis, making it easier to achieve and maintain an erection. 

A recent study identified the coronavirus responsible for the pneumonia epidemic in the Hubei province of China and finds the bat-origin virus is related to other known pathogenic coronaviruses.The 2019 coronavirus (CoV) causes fatal pneumonia that has claimed over 1,300 lives, with more than 52,000 confirmed cases of infection by mid-February, along with various impacts to the lives of the scholars who revealed the virus against the wishes of the Chinese government. 

We know the left and right side of our brain are specialized for cognitive abilities like language (left hemisphere) and the right hand. That functional lateralization is reflected by morphological asymmetry too. The left and right hemispheres differ subtly in brain anatomy, distribution of nerve cells, connectivity and even neurochemistry. It can be seen on endocasts. Most humans have a combination of a more projecting left occipital lobe (located in the back of the brain) with a more projecting right frontal lobe.

Despite what you've heard, birds of a feather often don't flock together. In the real world, multiple bird species are often flying and feeding together. In the Amazon, 50 species may travel as a unit. But are birds in these mixed flocks cooperating with one another or competing?A new study suggests both. Just like a K-pop band such as BTS, Blackpink, or Red Velvet.

In a world of New York Times best-selling diet books and epidemiological claims about food and chemicals - even that if your mother used cosmetics it may have made you fat - it can be difficult for the public to know what to trust.It won't be intermittent fasting, juice cleanses, or 10,000 steps, it will always be the calories. Energy balance matters, no matter how many times Center for Science in the Public Interest claims it's conspiracy to claim calories are why we gain weight.

After the 2020 census, it is expected that California will lose a seat in Congress and Texas will gain it. Texans tout greater personal freedom and lower taxes but a new study says it may be water.California is mostly desert and gets the bulk of its water from other states. After another drought a few years ago the pubic demanded new water infrastructure, noting that California hasn't undertaken a major program since the 1960s while the population is over 100 percent greater. Housing costs are high because new construction can't take place without a water contract, forcing people to stay in coastal cities.

Smallpox was wiped out by using mathematical containment rings coupled with vaccines and it makes sense that one way to contain an infectious disease outbreak is to limit travel.Unless travel bans are only bans for some people. In communist China, elites are still going on vacation, they are still traveling for business, they are still going to foreign colleges. The novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, now known as COVID-19, has infected tens of thousands and killing hundreds while spreading to at least 24 other countries. That led many governments, including the United States, to restrict travel to and from China.

Mosquitoes rely on sense of smell to get what they need to survive. Females need blood to produce their eggs, so they find a host to bite and spots to lay eggs, while both males and females feed on nectar.Their dominant source of food is nectar from flowers yet scientists know little about the scents that draw mosquitoes toward certain flowers, or repel them from others. Discovering this could help develop less toxic and better repellents, more effective traps, and lead to an understanding of how the mosquito brain responds to sensory information -- including the cues that, on occasion, lead a female mosquito to bite one of us.