Families with newborns know babies follow their own schedule. But after a while, about the time a baby starts to smile, a rhythm develops. So babies do develop a sense of time. Research suggests this happens about the one-month mark. For example, in a 1972 study, researchers placed month-old infants in a dark room. A
Human nature never fails to amaze me. I’m sure you’ve all heard of placebos, those fake pills that are used as real drugs in scientific studies. The complication is doctors have been giving placebos to patients as a beneficial treatment for centuries, and their patients usually improve, even though there is no medicinal value. The
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, scientists have discovered something new about snakes. Snakes have a creepy enough reputation. There is something about an animal without limbs and slithers on the ground that elicits a primal fear. And of course there is a word for that — herpetophobia, or fear of reptiles.
On the surface, it’s a real mystery. The nation’s unemployment rate has been below five percent for months, but as of April, 2017, 1.6 million people have been out of work for six months or longer; almost a million of them have been without jobs for a year. Economists call it “long-term unemployment”; they calculate
The oceans are huge, right? Unfortunately, they’re not big enough, because the trash we’ve been dumping into these largest of waterways is becoming a real problem. In fact, there is an area of floating junk that’s become known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch ( https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/). Except there is actually more than one. But how
For many people, making a budget — and trying to stick to it — is one of the most frustrating experiences of day-to-day life. But in an article on the Science of Us website, Brad Klontz, a psychologist and certified financial planner, says the main problem with budgeting is its approach. “I think the entire
If you’ve been losing faith in our judicial system, I have good news. Today I learned that one bank was actually charged with fraud in conjunction with the mortgage scandals of 2008. Abacus Federal Savings Bank was founded in 1984 to serve the Chinese-American community in New York City. In May, 2012, the bank and
Sunday, May 14 was our annual national Mother’s Day. In commemoration, the Writer’s Almanac published some background information about how we got here. Like so many milestones, it can be traced back to one determined person. Mother’s Day was first celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia in 1908 when a woman named Anna Jarvis held a
Disney’s California Adventure and Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme parks both have an audio-animatronic and video theater show entitled “It’s Tough To Be a Bug”. One of the show’s messages is how essential bugs are to our world (“We’re Pollinators!”). Recently I’ve found another reason why bugs are so good to have around. According to the
I have always been fascinated with the stars. Now technological breakthroughs are giving us tools to explore the star systems around us, despite the unfathomable distances involved. What we are finding is stranger than fiction. These include huge black holes, colliding galaxies, and planets with bizarre orbits. One source for information is Astronomy magazine http://www.astronomy.com.