Apr 7, 2023 | Salon.com
“Sugar is bad for you” is an old health axiom, but the depths to which sugar can harm one’s body has perhaps not yet been fully tabulated. Indeed, according to a new study by the prestigious medical journal BMJ, sugar consumption is linked to 45 different ailments. Yes, you read that right: forty-five different health problems all exacerbated by or correlated with eating that sweet white powder....
Originally posted on salon.com
Apr 6, 2023 | Salon.com
If there ever were a science experiment that combined the power of artistic expression with the traditionally dry task of collecting data, it is the one conceived by Dr. Nicky Clayton and her PhD student, Elias Garcia Pellegrin. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Clayton is a dancer and Pellegrin has a background in performance theater....
Originally posted on salon.com
Apr 3, 2023 | Salon.com
More than half a century has passed since December 1972, when Apollo 17 astronauts landed on the Moon. That mission was the last crewed mission to the Moon and the last time that humans orbited the Moon.
Glover stated that “we need to celebrate this moment in human history” as “the next step in the journey that will get humanity to Mars.”
Apr 3, 2023 | Salon.com
There are well-documented mental health benefits to pet ownership, as much research has shown. Indeed, we know there are some physical benefits as well, as dog owners tend to have more active lifestyles. Yet when it comes to conditions like allergies, we tend to think of pet ownership as exacerbating, not alleviating them....
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 31, 2023 | Salon.com
You may not be able to see PFAS molecules around you, but they are ubiquitous: in our food, leaching into our water supplies, and in our blood. The class of water-resistant compounds used to make raincoats waterproof and nonstick pans stick-proof are also known as “forever chemicals,” so named because they do not naturally break down in the environment (or in our bloodstream)....
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Mar 30, 2023 | Salon.com
NASA’s 2024 budget request includes a near-total reduction in funding for a highly anticipated Venus mission — and now, a number of prominent scientists are saying that the decision amounts to an effective cancellation of a highly anticapated mission to the second planet.
Yet not all space scientists and engineers agree with that assessment, saying that NASA budget critics are misusing the word “cancel.”...
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 29, 2023 | Salon.com
It seemed like a nightmare come to life, as tornado after tornado devoured communities across the United States. At one point 30 million people were deemed to be at tornado risk as the series of devastating twisters struck large sections of the Deep South — including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia — leaving at least 26 people dead and thousands of buildings in ruins....
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 27, 2023 | Salon.com
Last November the Canadian province of Alberta experienced the largest earthquake in its recorded history. Shortly thereafter a geologist from the University of Calgary claimed that the series of seismic events — which registered a 5.6 on the Richter scale as it rattled homes down to their bones and knocked residents to their knees — told a local publication that the earthquake was “probably natural....
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 25, 2023 | Salon.com
“We have to learn how to live in our own filthy bathwater at this point.”
Dr. Moriba Jah’s words were hardly reassuring — but, then again, he was not trying to be. An associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Department, I’d asked Jah what it would take for Earth’s skies to be clear again for astronomers....
Originally posted on salon.com
Mar 24, 2023 | Salon.com
Even the most horrible tragedies can have their upsides. Take climate change: While it is causing mass extinctions and will, within decades, displace millions of people in coastal areas, it is also helping western dairy farmers keep their farms free of pests. Lending a helping hand? Local bald eagles.
This was the discovery made by the scientists behind a new study in the journal Ecosphere....
Originally posted on salon.com