One year ago, Kali Hardig went swimming at an Arkansas water park and the next day was rushed to the hospital where doctors diagnosed her with a rare, 99% fatal condition: a brain eating amoeba. This is the miraculous story of how she lived.
Category: Science & Tech
Report: Climate Changing More Rapidly Than At Any Point On Record
COURTESY OF LUCA CARTURAN/UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA
A new look at the “vital signs” of Earth’s climate reveals a stark picture of declining health. As global temperatures rise, so do sea level and the amount of heat trapped in the ocean’s upper layers. Meanwhile, mountain glaciers and Arctic sea ice are melting away beneath an atmosphere where concentrations of three key planet-warming greenhouse gases continue to rise.
“Data show that the climate is changing more rapidly now than it has at any time in the historical record,” says Thomas Karl, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. “The numbers speak for themselves.”
Left Brain, Right Brain: Facts and Fantasies
Handedness and brain asymmetry are widely regarded as unique to humans, and associated with complementary functions such as a left-brain specialization for language and logic and a right-brain specialization for creativity and intuition. In fact, asymmetries are widespread among animals, and support the gradual evolution of asymmetrical functions such as language and tool use. Handedness and brain asymmetry are inborn and under partial genetic control, although the gene or genes responsible are not well established. Cognitive and emotional difficulties are sometimes associated with departures from the “norm” of right-handedness and left-brain language dominance, more often with the absence of these asymmetries than their reversal.
What Are Boys and Girls Made of? The Origins of Sexual Dimorphism
Snips and snails and puppy dogs’ tails, or sugar and spice and all things nice? From our animal-centered point of view, the distinction between males and female can seem rather obvious—many animals have male individuals and female individuals whose differences are often pretty evident at a glance. However, we’re also aware of more exotic variations like hermaphroditism and Tiresias-like midlife gender-bending. Indeed, the further we get from the birds and the bees, the more it becomes unclear what exactly we mean by “male” and “female.” Are these just tags, or are they fundamentally different? And if the latter, how did this fundamental difference come to be?
The First-Ever Expedition to Darvaza Crater: Turkmenistan’s “Door to Hell”
Turkmenistan’s Darvaza Crater—created more than 40 years ago when the ground under a Soviet drilling rig gave way—has been burning for decades. One man went in to explore the molten “Door To Hell”.