The New England Journal of Medicine recently published a study suggesting that people who quit smoking tend to influence their friends and relatives into quitting as well. They studied over 12,000 participants over 32 years.
The same group of scientists also did another study that found similar social links to obesity.
You can read more about it […]
Owners of talking birds should take note:
So this African grey parrot flies out of his cage in Nagareyama, Japan , gets found by the police and ends up spending the night at a vet’s house. After a few days, the bird starts chatting the vet up.
Among other bits of polly wisdom, the parrot introduces […]
What has four legs, is a cross between a frog and a salamander, and lived 290 million years ago? Gerobatrachus hottoni, of course!
The amphibious missing link, whose name means “elderly frog”, was first discovered in the ’90s. It’s just taken that long for scientists to confirm its missing link status. Hopefully those caecilian paleontologist picnics […]
Above is an artist’s representation of the Mopsitta tanta, nicknamed ‘Danish Blue Parrot’ after the monty python comedy sketch.
Fossil remains of the Mopsitta tanta were recently found in Scandinavia and are dated as being 55 million years old. Previously, the oldest parrot fossils found in the Southern Hemisphere were only about 15 million years old.
The […]
Nadezhda, whose name in Russian means Hope, was a cockroach. She was taken up into space on an orbiting laboratory with the appropriately sci-fi-sounding name of Foton-M, where she conceived last September.
Her little baby roach-onauts were the first roaches conceived in outer space. They were said to have matured at a faster rate than normal.
And […]
Tickets–check.
Food and beer–check.
Face paint–check.
Tick vaccine–check?
With some six million football fans expected to descend upon Switzerland and Austria for this year’s Euro 2008 in June, scientists are sending out an advisory to be careful of ticks.
13,000 people were hospitalized in Eurpoe for tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) last year, up 30% from last year. TBE is endemic […]
A group of researchers published an article in the scientific journal Perception that sought to answer the question, “which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?”
Of course the answer is that they weight exactly the same, but the study noted that a majority of blindfolded volunteers lifting two identical […]
E-mails have been going around referring to a fictitious scientific study that “proves” that being overweight has medical benefits ranging from protection from tuberculosis and Alzheimer’s to increased happiness and success in business.
According to the “report”, being 15 to 25 pounds overweight can protect you from emphysema, pneumonia and various infections and injuries , while […]
A report published in Singapore revealed a sharp increase in consumption of shark’s fins over the past year. More than 470 tons of shark’s fins (just the fins, mind you) were eaten in Singapore in 2007, compared with only 182 tons in 2006.
This increase was directly linked by the report to higher incomes and increased […]
Thousands of bats have been dying since March of this year due to a mysterious outbreak known only by the telltale white substance on the heads and wings of the bat carcasses.
“White-nose syndrome” was first observed February last year, and has continued to attack bat colonies and mystify scientists. Other symptoms seen in the dead […]