Have you ever eaten a lot of sugary stuff and still felt hungry? You’ve consumed lots of calories (probably too many), but your body doesn’t seem to care. What gives? Basically, all calories aren’t the same. Our bodies have a mechanism called satiety that will stop us from eating more than we need, but it
For my last big running event, when it came time to record any pertinent medical information on the back of my race number, I thought of my senior-citizen status and considered simply writing “Do Not Resuscitate.” But seriously, end-of-life considerations are becoming more and more complicated, thanks to technology. Health-care workers can now keep a
If you’re trying to lose weight, take heart. There is new evidence that the best strategy is to increase the intensity of your workouts for short periods, rather than have longer but easier sessions. It’s called “high intensity interval training” (Hiit). The technique is getting attention because recent research, published in the British Journal of
It’s true. According to the latest CDC figures, the average American woman will live to age 81, while the average man will only live to 76. In addition, those extra years also tend to be healthier. And it’s not just this country. “This gender gap in life expectancy is true for all societies, and it
Some headlines simply can’t be ignored. Like “Do You Actually Swallow a Bunch of Spiders When You Sleep?” There is an urban legend that the average person will ingest about eight spiders a year while sleeping. Presumably the spiders are active enough and most people sleep with their mouths open enough that, well, accidents will
When I was in the Air Force, during training a superior would occasionally ask “tell me a little-known but interesting fact.” To me, some of the most interesting facts are about the world above us. The Earth’s atmosphere actually extends beyond the moon. The outermost part of the atmosphere is the geocorona, and it extends
I’ve read so much about the unreliability of eyewitnesses. (For example, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/.) But can you trust your own memory? Ada JoAnn Taylor confessed to suffocating a sixty-eight-year-old widow in 1989 and for two decades believed she was guilty. As a result, she served more than nineteen years in prison before being pardoned when DNA evidence
What animal do you see in this picture? I have a special reason for asking. I’ve seen several examples like this on Facebook (and for me they get old in a hurry), but this particular picture is famous in psychology circles. It’s an original illustration by psychologist Joseph Jastrow (photo by him) that was used
If you’re like me, you’ve been reading a lot recently about how much plastic is piling up in the environment. About how plastics are expected to outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050, and bits of plastic debris smaller than 5mm, called microplastics, are being found in our water, our air, even in our bodies. The
If you are a zombie, I apologize — this is not what you think. What caught my eye was this headline — Brain donation is critically needed You read that correctly — someone wants you brain, but for legitimate scientific purposes. Here’s the sales pitch — One out of every six people is suffering from a