At the University of Washington, Neel Bhatt is an assistant professor of otolaryngology. This article first appeared on The Conversation.I frequently record my patients speaking as a surgeon who specializes in treating people with vocal difficulties. These recordings are helpful to me. They allow me to follow minor changes in their voices from a visit…
Jumping spiders, a spider family found worldwide, have four pairs of eyes and, as the name implies, a penchant for acrobatic jumping. These spiders don’t usually create webs to entrap their prey; instead, they utilize their silk as a “dragline” to help them improve their leaps or develop silken houses for mating, producing eggs sleeping…
The gadget you’re using to view this article very definitely works by storing zeroes and ones in bits of semiconductor, specifically silicon powered by electricity.That kind of energy utilization won’t cut it in the future where net-zero carbon emissions are the goal. Fortunately, researchers aim to fundamentally alter the way computers operate, leading to more…
As states began to expand COVID-19 vaccination eligibility to persons with pre-existing medical issues in March, a considerable number of people discovered that they were eligible for the vaccination just based on their height and weight. Anyone with a body mass index (BMI) more than 25 (what the CDC calls “overweight”) is officially at risk…
Summer is just a few months away, but the heat has already begun. Feeling heated (and cooling down) is now a part of the everyday grind, thanks to unyielding sunshine and sizzling barbecues. Welcome to August. Wildfires have made headlines worldwide in recent years, from California to Australia—but they are a threat to far more…
Justin Schmidt, a researcher from the Southwestern Biological Institute, was in a tree in Costa Rica in 1987. He was trying to climb closer to a black wasp nest hanging in the limbs of the tree to gather a few specimens for research, and he was shimmying over a branch that hung perilously over a…
A built-in keyboard is included with every smartphone. But there are instances when that isn’t enough. Perhaps yours is so unpleasant that you’ve settled for writing just two-letter words, acronyms, or—worst of all—sending voice notes. Fortunately, whether you have an iPhone or an Android, you can quickly customize your keyboard by downloading a third-party keyboard.…
Rod McCullom is a scientific writer based in Chicago who writes for Undark’s “Convictions” section. Undark, Scientific American, Nature, The Atlantic, and The Nation, among other journals, have published his work. This piece first appeared in Undark.The images are graphic and upsetting: Jahmel Leach, 16, lies on a hospital bed with a swollen face and…
In a frenzy of self-consciousness, the stethoscope was born in 1816. To avoid pressing his ear against a patient’s large chest, René Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec used a rolled-up sheet of paper on which to listen to an unwell woman’s Heart.Laennec pioneered the method of listening to sounds produced by internal organs (also known as auscultation),…
Until life-saving vaccinations are widely accessible, it will be challenging to bring the COVID-19 epidemic to a halt. That is a reality with which the world is increasingly confronted.However, vaccination for most of the world’s population remains a long way off for the time being, as scientists debate how to scale up vaccine manufacturing and…