“Why does my stomach hurt?” sounds like a simple question, but medically it is one of the broadest questions a person can ask. What we casually call the stomach is often the entire abdomen, an area stretching from below the chest toward the...
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Few animal sounds are as instantly recognizable as a cat’s purr. A hand reaches toward a warm patch of fur, the cat closes its eyes, and a low vibration begins somewhere inside its body. To...
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Imagine exchanging messages with an unseen stranger. The replies are witty, coherent and sensitive to context. The stranger remembers what you said earlier, catches a joke, explains a diffic...
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You may already have yawned simply because you read the word. If not, there is a reasonable chance that a photograph or video of someone opening their mouth in a long yawn would do the job....
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A dog stops halfway through a walk, lowers its head and begins grazing with the concentration of a miniature cow. For many owners, what happens next seems obvious: the dog must have an upset...
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It is one of those questions that sounds almost too simple to deserve a scientific explanation. Look up on a clear afternoon and the sky is blue. Yet that familiar color is the visible resul...
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For generations, chemistry books could place bismuth near the end of the periodic table's stable territory. Its naturally occurring isotope, bismuth-209, showed no detectable radioactive dec...
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In 1901, divers working an ancient shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera recovered statues, ceramics, glass and a badly corroded mass of bronze. The wreck had carried valuable cargo...
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On October 30, 1961, a Soviet Tu-95 bomber crossed the frozen landscape of Novaya Zemlya carrying an object so large that the aircraft had been specially modified to accommodate it. The bomb...
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From the ground, Earth is almost too large to understand. Nations fill maps. Mountain ranges divide regions. Oceans separate continents. Political borders seem concrete because they organize...
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