A man died on in Germany after he was hit in the head by a flying piece of metal from a blown up condom machine that he and two accomplices destroyed in an apparent robbery attempt. The 29-year-old man was taken to the hospital in the western town of Schoeppingen, near the Dutch border, by the two other men who […]
Read more
The frigid continent of Antarctica could prove to be the next location to become a geopolitical battleground, as China announcedthat it is preparing to build its first permanent airfield at the South Pole. The location, about 17 miles away from the Zhongshan Antarctic Station, was surveyed by the 33rd Antarctic expedition in 2017 and will “greatly facilitate the nation’s research […]
Read more
Africa’s lions are dwindling toward extinction at an alarming rate, Duke University researchers say. Using new high-resolution satellite data from Google Earth, they’ve discovered that the savanna habitat that lions need to survive has shrunk by 75 percent over the past 50 years and is far more fragmented than conservationists previously realized. Over the same period, the lion population is […]
Read more
Residents of rich countries are more likely to be affected by depression than those who live in poorer nations. That’s the startling conclusion World Health Organization researchers reached when they interviewed nearly 90,000 people in 18 countries about their mental health. France and the U.S. were the most depressed; 21 percent of French people and more than 19 percent […]
Read more
Smokers or those who are exposed to secondhand smoke may require heavier doses of anesthesia and painkillers during surgery. A new study found that cigarettes—which are filled with more than 4,000 chemicals—can not only affect the metabolism of anesthetic drugs in the liver but may also influence nerve cells involved in the sensation of pain. Among 90 women who underwent […]
Read more
Luckily for most of the U.S., the likelihood this eruption would happen is pretty low: about one in 100,000 any given year. If it did happen, it would be pretty devastating, though. “Thinking about a Yellowstone super eruption is like imagining a large asteroid hitting the Earth,” says Jacob Lowenstern, a research geologist with the USGS and Scientist-in-Charge of […]
Read more
Researchers using a high-tech aerial mapping technique called LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) revealed contours hidden by dense foliage. They may have found tens of thousands of previously undetected Mayan houses, buildings, and pyramids in the dense jungle of Guatemala’s Petén region. The researchers believe that there were millions more people living there than previously thought. The estimate is that […]
Read more
People living in Changchun, northeast China’s Jilin province have called for old public toilets that were partly converted into a restaurant to be put back to their original use, according to chinanews.com. “Why can’t we use this public toilet? I have to climb up six flights of stairs back home to use the toilet,” a senior resident surnamed Zhao said. […]
Read more
Suddenly everyone wants to be low-caste, said Badri Narayan. It used to be considered an extreme disadvantage to be in one of India’s oppressed castes or indigenous tribes. But decades of affirmative action and quota systems have changed all that. Now, many lower-middle castes are agitating to be reclassified as “more backward,” in effect “struggling to move down the ladder […]
Read more
Feeling itchy from a sunburn, a bug bite or some other skin irritation is miserable, but the pleasure you get from scratching it isn’t just the absence of pain. It feels legitimately good to scratch, and the reason is fascinating. A 2008 study at Wake Forest University hooked people up to a MRI scanner and monitored brain activity when they […]
Read more