Mental Health
Sex is commonly portrayed as ending with pleasure, closeness, satisfaction, and relaxation. Yet for some people, the emotional experience after intimacy looks completely different. Within minutes of an otherwise enjoyable sexual encounter, they may suddenly feel sad, anxious, empty, irritable, restless, ashamed, or emotionally distant. Some begin crying without understanding
Medical Science
Plague is often imagined as a medieval horror that disappeared with plague doctors and crowded European cities. It did not. The bacterium Yersinia pestis still circulates among wild rodents and fleas, causing human infections in several parts of the world. Antibiotics can cure the disease when treatment begins quickly, but
Science
Why does the universe make mathematical sense? That question sounds simple, but it reaches into some of the deepest unresolved issues in physics and philosophy. Gravity follows equations. Electromagnetic fields can be described mathematically. Quantum particles obey probability rules of astonishing precision. Mathematical ideas developed with no obvious connection to
Space
A block of wood seems almost worthless compared with a diamond. On Earth, diamonds are gemstones locked deep underground, displayed behind glass and sold for extraordinary prices. Wood surrounds us in furniture, houses, forests, pencils and paper. But change the scale from Earth to the entire universe, and that comparison
World News
A ring advertised online as “925 sterling silver” should contain at least 92.5% silver. Instead, laboratory testing found something almost unbelievable. 92.3% of the ring was cadmium. Not 0.92%. Not a trace contaminant. More than nine-tenths of the tested metal was a toxic heavy metal restricted
Mental Health
Imagine having a stable job. Your bills are paid. You have money in savings. There is food in the refrigerator and no immediate threat of losing your home. Yet your mind keeps returning to the same thought: What if I lose everything? A recession could come. Your company could lay
Crime
On the morning of September 29, 1982, 12-year-old Mary Kellerman woke at her family's home in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, feeling sick. She had cold symptoms and took Extra-Strength Tylenol—one of the most trusted over-the-counter medicines in America. Within hours, she was
Pets & Animals
A cat with one half of its face orange and the other half black can look almost impossible. Sometimes the dividing line runs nearly perfectly down the middle of the nose. One eye may be blue while the other is green or amber. The contrasting colors can make the animal
Artificial Intelligence
For most of artificial intelligence history, humans remained firmly in charge of the development loop. People designed the architectures. People wrote the training code. People selected the experiments. People studied the failures, interpreted the results and decided what to try next. AI systems were the products being improved—not the
Medical Science
Psychiatric diagnoses can appear strikingly different on the surface. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is associated with differences in attention, impulsivity and activity regulation. Anorexia nervosa involves restrictive eating, intense fear of weight gain and disturbances in body image. Schizophrenia can alter perception and thinking, while depression is often dominated by
Wildlife
A few pieces of plastic floating in the ocean may not look particularly threatening. A bottle cap. A torn shopping bag. A piece of balloon. A fragment of rubber. Some discarded fishing line. Compared with a whale, turtle, or seabird, these objects can seem almost insignificant. But a major analysis
Earth
Earth’s history is written in layers of catastrophe. Entire groups of animals vanished. Oceans lost oxygen. Vast regions were buried beneath volcanic rock. Sea levels rose and fell dramatically. Continents reorganized, climates destabilized and ecosystems collapsed. These events are normally studied as separate chapters in the planet’s past.