We all know what an egg looks like, right? Well, we might know less than we think—bird eggs can be spheres, teardrops, oblong, and anything in between. An interdisciplinary group of scientists may have made progress in cracking the mystery behind how these different shapes emerged.
Ticks are horrifying, plain and simple. Even if they weren't vectors for nasty infections, the fact that they swell up like tiny blood balloons and then burst if you don't remove them properly is enough to make you never want to set foot in the woods again. And guess what: they can also make you allergic to hot dogs and hamburgers, which is pretty darn unpatriotic for a tick named Amblyomma americanum.
"Are you allergic to any medications?" I've answered that query dozens of times since a childhood incident when penicillin, taken to treat a minor infection, instead gave me an itchy rash all over my body. So I respond automatically, and call out the common antibiotic. But I recently learned that this diagnosis could be wrong. Penicillin sensitivity can disappear over time, a fact researchers have known for years. So why hasn't my doctor told me to go get an official test? It could be because she doesn't actually know the allergy can fade.
On Wednesday, rapper Albert Johnson—better known by his stage name Prodigy—passed away at the age of 42 from complications of sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder he'd had since birth. Though some medications can help those with sickle cell manage their condition, no cure or real treatment exists to combat the disease. And while better care in the United States has extended the lifespan of those with the disease, they often face a lifelong battle with pain, infections, and extreme fatigue.
Every few weeks, a telepresence robot rolls by my desk. It's usually a co-worker in a distant office on her way to a meeting, or checking in on the progress of physical things in the office from the comfort of her home.
When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life. Everyone knows that classic line from Disney's "The Lion King". Kids and parents might have been slightly less charmed by this variation: The wildebeest must cross the river to eat, and a whole bunch of them die in the process. And then everything in the river gets to feast on their rotting remains. Oh, and their bones continue to leech nutrients into the water even after fish and insects have devoured their flesh. Other organisms also eats the algae that grows on the bones. Basically, some wildebeest need to die, Simba.
It is almost always hot in Phoenix, but today temperatures are expected to peak at 120 degrees fahrenheit, which has prompted some airlines to cancel flights out of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. The high temperatures alone aren't necessarily the culprit, but the environmental conditions that come with them can stifle attempts to get airborne. Mix in other variables like the type of plane, the length of the runway, and the conditions on the ground, and we're left with a complex situation that will only get worse as global temperatures rise.
It might seem like NASA is announcing a brand-spanking-new "Earth-like" exoplanetconstantly—some far-away world that might possibly maybe have the basic requirements for life as we know it. And it seems that way because, well, that's pretty accurate: it's all thanks to NASA's wildly successful Kepler Space Telescope, which uses the blinking and dimming of distant alien stars to spot planets that might orbit around them. But the latest Kepler finds (219 new planetary candidates, 10 of which are Earth-size and the right distance from their host star to hold liquid water) mark something of an end: this represents the final official planetary search results from Kepler's mission data.
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