Category: Odds and Ends

Obesity is a widespread health concern affecting around 1.9 billion adults and 380 million children across the globe, with reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) saying that more people are now dying as a result of being overweight than underweight. Obesity has long been known to cause devastation to vital organs and vessels, but new research published in the journal Obesity Reviews highlights how the changes it causes both to our bodies and on a cellular level reflect those of aging. Obesity increases your risk of developing diseases that can…

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Ever find yourself eating less for dinner because you’re saving yourself for dessert? These cuttlefish feel that. In a recent study featured in the journal Biology Letters, European common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) were found to eat fewer crabs for lunch if they suspected they’d be getting shrimp for dinner. But before I explain how or, perhaps more pertinently, why scientists felt the need to study this, first let’s have a little chat about cuttlefish and shrimp. In the wild, cuttlefish have quite a generalized diet including crab, fish, squid, and shrimp.…

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On January 23, the Chinese government ordered the quarantine of Wuhan to try to contain the coronavirus outbreak. As part of this, all flights, trains, and public transport have been halted in the city, and many of the routes out closed. Vehicle use is also prohibited in Wuhan’s downtown, except for cabs and authorized vehicles carrying supplies. It’s the biggest quarantine in history, and makes for an eerie atmosphere, if this footage captured by drones over the city is anything to go by. An estimated 5 million residents left Wuhan before…

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Researchers have identified an exoplanet that may have the right conditions for life. K2-18b is a peculiar world, much heavier than our planet and quite a bit larger, with an atmosphere rich in hydrogen. It is also located in the habitable zone around its star where liquid water can exist. Researchers now believe that the planet might just have the right conditions for liquid water. K2-18b sits in between Earth and Neptune in mass and size, bordering between the two nebulous categories of super-Earth and mini-Neptune. The planet intrigued researchers…

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For decades divers and underwater microphones have picked up loud but rare cracking sounds from grey seals during mating season. Seventeen years ago, Dr Ben Burville was astonished to observe the sound came not from the seals’ throats, as everyone thought, but from their front flippers clapping together while underwater. Now, after years of effort, Burville has caught the moment on film, revealing a form of communication never previously reported in a marine mammal. Burville is a medical doctor who has a hobby of swimming with seals, rather than a…

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ShareTweetPin “What do you do when you can’t keep your child safe when you’re out and about anymore? What do you do when your child sees no danger, they just run? And boy is he fast. I often say he would give Usain Bolt a run for his money. He just keeps going. Nothing is in his sights — not a car, a bus, or a person. He just runs. When my little boy was diagnosed with autism at 2 years and 9 months, he was small. He was cute.…

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ShareTweetPin I guess if any relationship was doomed for failure, it was ours. I had come off the tail-end of heartbreak hard and fast. After six years of marriage, my ex-husband had come home and told me he didn’t love me anymore. Already an injured bird, it didn’t take much to rip off my wings, ensuring I would never fly again. Indeed, I was a woman who based her worth on the people who loved her, or sadly, in the event of divorce, the man who didn’t. And there you…

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