Mary Joy is an undergraduate student at Dartmouth University’s Department of Anthropology — and, additionally, is a climber and runner. Indeed, Joy’s athletic interests have fueled her scientific endeavors in at least one important way: They helped her develop a hypothesis about the evolution of shoulders, elbows and wrists in human beings....
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An encounter with a puppy or a baby, it doesn’t matter, can often draw out the same behavior, almost involuntarily. You know the one: A high pitched cooing, an exaggerated drawl, a tone beaming with unconditional love. Scientists call this “exaggerated prosody.” To ordinary people, we know it as “the cute-sie voice.”...
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Climate change is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels, as well as other activities that produce greenhouse gases. But that blame is not evenly distributed amongst the entire human species.
A recent study published in the journal PLOS Climate emphasizes that the society’s elites are disproportionately responsible for the extreme weather events linked to climate change like heatwaves, droughts, floods, tropical storms, hurricanes and rising sea levels....
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If you could wander inside your own lungs from a microscopic vantage point, it would seem like a horror-fantasy universe straight out of Guillermo del Toro or H. P. Lovecraft.
As you wander through the tubes of your upper and lower respiratory tract, you’d be surrounded by mucus and hair-like structures known as cilia....
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Hexagons are mutually associated with bees and wasps, as both insect species build their nests using this humble six-sided shape. Anyone who stumbles upon a bee or wasp nest in nature will be greeted by rows and rows of dozens of tiny symmetrical hexagons. But these bug aesthetics are completely functional and used by the insects to store their food and raise their young....
Originally posted on salon.com