The History Of Smallpox In Shakespeares day, wishing a pox on someone was a terrible curse. Ten percent of the population in 17th century London died gruesomely of smallpox, a virus spread easily by airborne particles or contaminated clothing. Infect...
Why Does My Body Want To Snack? Sometimes a snack quiets your growling stomach. But sometimes you just feel like munching, even though youre not really hungry. French researchers recently found that this second type of snack attack is harder on your...
Parents May Be Happier Than Childless Couples Dear A Moment of Science, Im a parent of two young kids. Its challenging, but overall a very rewarding experience. Yet I keep hearing about studies suggesting that parents are less happy than childless co...
Scientists have searched for the origins of human speech in the hoots, grunts, and other vocalizations made by primates. It would seem to make sense, after all, that such sounds may be related to the more varied and articulated sounds we humans make....
Wouldnt it be great if we could trade genes with other species? For example, suppose you could trade the family cat your genes for intelligence for its genes for physical coordination! Well, okay, thats not likely to happen anytime soon. But DNA trad...
Even as adults we still enjoy blowing bubbles, dont we? If youve ever wondered why blowing on a thin film of soapy water creates bubbles, this is your lucky day. All liquids have a property called surface tension. Take water, for example. Water molec...
The ozone layer is thinner than it used to be. This fact has motivated humans to keep themselves protected from the suns ultraviolet, or UV, rays. But just because we can protect ourselves from these rays doesnt mean that they dont still existthey ex...
Everyone knows the story of the Titanic, the great ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic. Less widely known is the icebergs story: where did it come from, and how did it get in the way of the ship? Although the vas...
In the 17th century, the French scientist Pierre Gassendi knew that light traveled faster than sound. When a gun fired far away, he could see the flash of gunshot long before he heard the report. Gassendi tried to measure the speed of sound by clocki...
In the early 1800s, a French physician named Ren Laennec had a dilemma. He needed to listen to the heart sounds of a young woman with signs of heart disease. But the only method of listening to heart sounds known to Western medicine at the time was s...
