If a hummingbird has ever visited your garden, you’ve no doubt seen it flit from flower to flower, hovering mid-air, as it sips on nectar. That activity requires plenty of energy. So hummingbirds need a LOT of nectar to feed their hungry metabolisms. “In fact some of them probably drink two or three their body […]
In 1665 British scientist Robert Hooke published his book Micrographia: Or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made with Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon. It was one of the first scientific works to illustrate plants, insects and animals through the lens of a microscope. In the book, Hooke wrote: For the limits, […]
Have you been sleeping well this year? If not, you’re not alone. Nightmares about COVID-19—fears of being in crowded spaces, touching germy surfaces, feeling exposed without a mask—have been disturbing the sleep of people around the world. The pandemic seems to have introduced a new shared unreality, with dreams that are as alarming as that […]
Global efforts to address the steep, ongoing loss of biodiversity through a series of specified targets have failed, according to a dire assessment released by the United Nations today. The 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets were established under the U.N.’s Convention on Biological Diversity at a conference in Japan in 2010. Their aim was to protect […]
The French call them “the ugly years”: that awkward, searing time of physical change and overwhelming emotion summed up by the phrase “middle school.” Judith Warner, a journalist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, has set out to make sense of this time, drawing on psychology and social science, as well as […]
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. —Apocyphal, often attributed to psychiatrist Viktor Frankl “We need to learn to live with it.” That, essentially, is the current response being put forward by the United States government […]
This summer the American Postal Workers Union filed a grievance against the U.S. Postal Service over the agency’s plans to decommission 671 mail-sorting machines at facilities across the country. Although a few such machines are normally replaced each year because of wear and tear, this mass removal would involve a significant percentage of the more […]
It’s a classic television trope: Timmy has fallen down a well! Lassie can’t save him herself, so she runs to find help. Actually, Timmy never did fall down a well in the entire run of the TV show, but the idea that a dog could seek help from a human for help does have a […]
The UK trial of a leading coronavirus vaccine, which was abruptly halted last week because of safety concerns, restarted on Saturday after the university conducting the trial said an independent committee found that it was safe to do so. The University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca paused enrolment in the global trials of their vaccine candidate […]
It’s a classic television trope: Timmy has fallen down a well! Lassie can’t save him herself, so she runs to find help. Actually, Timmy never did fall down a well in the entire run of the TV show, but the idea that a dog could seek help from a human for help does have a […]