Isoprene
“The Blue Ridge Mountains conjure a romantic vision of the central Appalachian Mountains on the east coast of the US, immortalised by Dolly Parton, John Denver and the Grateful Dead, among others.”
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NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Is So Good, We Might Need Improved Planetary Models
“It has become exceedingly clear, over the past few months, that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope does exactly what it set out to do.”
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The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver
“For 52 straight days this winter, Shannon Hovey woke up in the company of five other men in a metal tube, 20 feet long and seven feet in diameter, tucked deep inside a ship in the Gulf of Mexico.”
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These Charts Show July Stock Market Rally May Prove a False Dawn
“The list of obstacles to the stock market rally gets longer by the day. Equities had a blast in July with those in Europe and the US rising the most since 2020, yet it’s a long way from a short-term bear market rally to a sustained move higher.”
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What is Epigenetics?
“Your genes play an important role in your health, but so do your behaviors and environment, such as what you eat and how physically active you are. Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work.”
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How to See the First James Webb Telescope Images
“We all held our collective breath late last year when NASA launched the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope on its monthlong journey to a destination nearly a million miles away.”
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Humans can’t endure temperatures and humidities as high as previously thought
“According to the researchers, while previous studies have theorized that a 35°C wet-bulb temperature was the upper limit of human adaptability, that temperature was based on theory and modeling and not real-world data from humans.”
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Regular caffeine consumption affects brain structure
“Coffee, cola or an energy drink: caffeine is the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive substance. Researchers from the University of Basel have now shown in a study that regular caffeine intake can change the gray matter of the brain. However, the effect appears to be temporary.”
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Cowfish: The Mutant Superheroes of the Ocean
“Stan Lee, creator of the mutant superheroes X-Men, wishes he could have come up with a mutant power as awesome as the cowfish.”
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NASA-funded Study : Gulf of Maine’s Phytoplankton Productivity Down 65%
“The Gulf of Maine is growing increasingly warm and salty, due to ocean currents pushing warm water into the gulf from the Northwest Atlantic, according to a new NASA-funded study. These temperature and salinity changes have led to a substantial decrease in the productivity of phytoplankton that serve as the basis of the marine food web.”
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The Airlines Most Likely to Suck, According to Department of Transportation Data
“If you’re booking summer travel and faced with a choice of similarly priced tickets on different airlines, it’s worth doing a little homework first.”
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CNN cutting back on over-hyping everything as “breaking news”
“CNN’s new boss Chris Licht says that beginning today, CNN has added a “Breaking News” guideline to its stylebook, to address overuse of the breaking news banner across its network and cable news writ-large. Why it matters: Licht and Warner Bros.”
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Why You Can’t Trust Your Fitness Tracker on Calorie Burn
“There was a time, before Fitbits, when nobody knew quite how many calories they were burning on a daily basis. Sure, you could calculate a rough estimate based on your body size, sex, and age; and you could choose whether or not to believe the calorie readout on the treadmills and bikes at the gym.”
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Let’s Do a Tick Check
“As scores of city dwellers in the United States have ditched their urban lives for more land and bigger homes, many may be facing new foes this spring and summer: bloodsucking ticks. Ticks, which like wooded, leafy areas where wildlife roam, are most active between April and September.”
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‘Being the Smoke’: One Man’s Choice to Be Cremated Under the Open Sky
“CRESTONE, Colo. — Philip Incao was about 6 years old when he asked his mother if it was true he would die. Yes, she replied. And what happens afterward? he asked. It was a profoundly unsatisfying answer, and one that Dr. Incao later identified as the starting point for a lifetime of study.”
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One-third of all US child Covid deaths occurred during Omicron surge
“As many as a third of all child deaths from Covid in the US have occurred during the Omicron surge of the pandemic. Children seem to be facing increasing risks from Covid-19 even as mask mandates drop across the country, and vaccination rates among children stall out at alarmingly low rates.”
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Buried by the Ash of Vesuvius, These Scrolls Are Being Read for the First Time in Millennia
“A revolutionary American scientist is using subatomic physics to decipher 2,000-year-old texts from the early days of Western civilization It’s July 12, 2017, and Jens Dopke walks into a windowless room in Oxfordshire, England, all of his attention trained on a small, white frame that he carries w”
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Are We “Brain Washed” during Sleep?
“New research from Boston University suggests that tonight while you sleep, something amazing will happen within your brain. Your neurons will go quiet. A few seconds later, blood will flow out of your head.”
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Supermountains controlled the evolution of life on Earth
“Giant mountain ranges at least as high as the Himalayas and stretching up to 8,000 kilometres across entire supercontinents played a crucial role in the evolution of early life on Earth, according to a new study by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU).”