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New Research

Melting Glaciers Are Liberating Ancient Clothes, Like This 1,700-Year-Old Sweater

The well worn, patched up tunic turned up after sections of Norway’s quickly-melting Lendbreen glacier retreated

Most sound (99.9 percent) bounces off the frog, but the mouth captures and amplifies key vibrations needed for the frogs to pick up on one another’s croaks.=

This Frog Hears With Its Mouth

The tiny Gardiner’s frog does not possess an eardrum, but it has come up with a convenient evolutionary hack to get around that

Whales Can Get Sunburned, Too

While we slather sunscreen on our skin, whales don’t have the hands or the technology to do the same

When You Don’t Have Enough Money, It’s Hard to Think About Anything Else

Subjects consumed with money, they found, dropped an average of 13 IQ points, or the equivalent of zapping our brain by pulling a mind-numbing all-nighter

There Might Soon Be a Cure for (Your Pet Mouse’s) Jetlag

Scientists have found the protein that prevents your (mouse’s) body from adjusting to changing time zones

Dung Beetles Offset Climate Change

Even the most determined dung beetles can’t offset all of those emissions, so don’t feel too relieved about that steak or burger

Guilt Is Contagious

Shaking hands with a cheater made study participants feel guilty themselves

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The Star Tau Boo Flips Its Magnetic Field, Too

Scientists watched the magnetic field of a star 51 light years away flip back and forth

New Element 115 May Finally Be Added to the Periodic Table

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry will make the final call of whether or not the time has arrived to confirm ununpentium’s existence

Haters May Have a Natural Disposition to Hate

The researchers coined the term “dispositional attitudes” as a new means of assessing a person’s baseline outlook on the world

Can Wikipedia Edits Predict Box Office Success?

How do you quantify the buzz around a movie? One group of researchers suggests looking at Wikipedia edits

The Bullialdhus Crater. It looks little, but it ain’t.

The Moon Had Water Since the Day It Was Born

The Moon was birthed from the Earth—a blob of molten rock sent spiraling off into space in the aftermath of a massive collision 4.5 billion years ago

Lyme disease can be carried by ticks, like this deer tick.

Lyme Disease Is Ten Times More Common Than We Thought

A recent CDC release says 300,000 Americans get Lyme disease each year

Football Team Losses Make Fans Eat Their Feelings

A fan’s closeness to his team may be so tied up in his personal identity that his body interprets the loss as an effrontery to his own psyche

Most of China’s Infamous Black Carbon Smog Comes From Cars And Cook Fires

Surprisingly, until now authorities struggled to pinpoint the main pollution culprits behind the black carbon, or soot

There’s Now Evidence That Other Europeans Beat the Vikings to the North Atlantic

Someone, and we don’t know who, beat the Vikings to the Faroe Islands by as much as 500 years

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To Control Feral Cat Populations, Cut the Tubes of Dominant Males

Rather than taking the goods entirely from feral cats, researchers now propose vasectomies are the way to go

No, Scientists Have Not Developed Hangover-Free Beer

Scientists added electrolytes to beer, which might help drinkers retain fluids but won’t necessarily keep the hangover away

Magic Mushrooms, LSD And Peyote Don’t Seem To Be Bad for Your Health

There may be some reasons for justifying making these products illegal, but detrimental impacts on health are likely not one of them

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