Indholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2024 i Discover

I WAS 10 when I saw my first total solar eclipse. It was 1979 and we were staying in Canada, where my dad worked for a time as a welder. He was a great science buff and had been talking about this eclipse for what seemed like (and probably was) years. He just didn’t tell me and my brother that we would have to get up at the crack of dawn and head out into the frigid February weather to experience this event. Dad told us we were lucky even to be near the path of totality, and noted that unless we were prepared to travel extensively, our next chance to see a total solar eclipse likely wouldn’t happen until the 21st century. So, we rode in sullen silence out…

IN A DENSE Salvadoran rainforest, a conservation detection dog named Niffler is engrossed in a peculiar training exercise. Like a determined scavenger-hunt participant, his mission is clear: locate carnivore scat samples that his handler, Kayla Fratt, co-founder of K9 Conservationists, has hidden along a trail. Niffler searches tirelessly for his target, signaling his find by laying in front of the sample, paws and nose framing it on three sides. This critical exercise is not just a game — it’s Niffler’s final test to prove he’s ready to join Fratt and her team in their upcoming large-scale research effort. In the fight to save Earth’s flora and fauna, some researchers have found an unexpected but effective ally: dogs. Equipped with keen noses and unparalleled tracking skills, these fourlegged research assistants are…

VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) is becoming more popular in corporate offices, thanks in part to the rise of remote work in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. VR headsets, wearable devices that immerse the user in a computer-generated, 3D virtual environment, offer many potential employee benefits, from a more private and customizable virtual office to more engaging training sessions. By donning one of these high-tech headsets, personnel can immerse themselves in workplace simulations that might otherwise be cost-prohibitive, hazardous, or difficult to replicate. According to Deloitte, a consulting firm that’s digging into the phenomenon, by 2024, around 25 percent of company meetings will include a virtual reality component. But this increase in virtual training is already driving up the number of hours employees wear a headset, causing many experts to become…

Whether as self-help touchstone or counterweight to post-COVID gloom, the science of happiness is having a cultural moment. Yale University psychologist Laurie Santos’ “Science of Well-Being” course is the most popular the school has ever offered, enrolling more than 4 million additional online students. Meanwhile, The New York Times launched a week-long Happiness Challenge to kick off 2023, promoting seven research-backed exercises to boost well-being. And podcasts like Ten Percent Happier and The Happiness Lab promise science-fueled breakthroughs that can galvanize lasting mood changes. Still, the deluge of research reports and self-help tips tends to obscure just how subjective happiness is, and how stubbornly it resists definition. There’s a wide spectrum between the sensory joy of gulping a milkshake and the state of deep flourishing Aristotle called eudaimonia. In the…

For a lucky 32 percent or so of humans, happiness may seem like a matter of good genes. That’s because their DNA encodes for certain personality traits, like extroversion and low anxiety, that are closely linked to increased levels of life satisfaction. In studies of twins, those genetic differences help explain why one twin was happier with their life than the other. But a happy life isn’t entirely determined by genetics. For the most part, our happiness is impacted by environmental and behavioral factors, aspects of our lives over which we can exercise some control. And there are more direct ways to boost your happiness quotient, too. “Absolutely, you can teach people to be happier,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside. Often referred to as…

DESPITE HAVING roamed the planet millions of years ago, dinosaurs aren’t as inscrutable today as they once were. Over the past decades, in addition to studying what dinos acted like, including their habits and diets, researchers have specialized in reconstructing and depicting what they looked like — all the way down to specific details like texture and color. But how do scientists go about pinpointing these details for creatures that died 65 million years ago? It turns out, we know more about dinosaur looks than you might think. “We actually know way more than paleontologists tend to convey and also way more than the average person gets,” says Darren Naish, a vertebrate paleontologist specializing in reevaluating dinosaurs. “We’re doing really well, actually, in terms of what we know.” For scientists, reconstructing…

On a warm July morning, Sasmit Roy was easing into his day at Centra Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia. As a consulting nephrologist, Roy gets called in when patients have kidney issues the general hospital staff need help with. He was reviewing the patients on his caseload when he was alerted to a new patient, admitted the night before, in potential kidney distress. Jeanne’s face was turned toward the window when Roy walked into her room, but he could immediately tell she was worried: The 74-year-old was undergoing treatment for endometrial cancer, where cancer cells are found in the lining of the uterus. Now, she was up against another medical challenge. Retired and looking forward to her granddaughter’s upcoming wedding, she just wanted to be healthy enough to spend time…

Researchers agree we all need enough money to cover basic needs like housing and food, but there’s little scientific consensus about how much money is enough to make humans happy. One 2010 study suggests an annual income of $75,000 is the magic number (at least, it was at that time); after that, higher incomes didn’t necessarily lead to greater happiness among the participants. But other research finds no such cutoff point. Money may not be a path to absolute bliss, but it can certainly help — though not always in the ways we think. Here are a few research-supported suggestions on how to get the most happiness out of your spending: EXPERIENCES MAKE US HAPPIER THAN THINGS A new dining room table might seem like a better (and more permanent)…

Field director Emanuele Mariotti unambiguously calls it “the find of the century” — the most significant discovery in Mediterranean archaeology thus far in the 21st century, and maybe in the last century, too. In the autumn of 2022, his team excavating at the ancient thermal baths at San Casciano dei Bagni, Italy, revealed to the public the spectacular relics they’d pulled from the mud. Scholars and armchair archaeologists alike were gobsmacked, both by the abundance of artifacts — more than two dozen bronze statues and busts — and by their remarkable states of preservation, thanks to their long sleep under a blanket of airtight muck. The artistic value of the bronzes is indisputable, but what makes San Casciano so important, Mariotti says, is that the objects and the broader site…

By NASA’s current estimates, it would take around two to three years to get to Mars — assuming the trip takes advantage of opposition, the point at which Mars is closest in its orbit to Earth. And once you made it there, it wouldn’t exactly be an Eden, either. Mars is an arid, inhospitable desert, with temperatures reaching minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit regularly. What’s more, the Red Planet would not be habitable without spacesuits and a completely enclosed environment, because the planet’s air is about 95 percent carbon dioxide. There’s also, as far as we know, no liquid water found on its surface. Still, none of that has stopped humans from wanting to set foot on Mars themselves. So what would this type of planetary tourism really entail? VALENTINA SUMINI,…

CLASH OF THE TINY TITANS This extraordinary fossil preserves the prehistoric clash between a badgerlike carnivorous mammal, Repenomamus robustus, and its weakened dinosaur victim, the beaked herbivore Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis. You might think that a battle between a Mesozoic mammal and dinosaur would be destined to end in favor of the latter. But this new specimen, described in a 2023 study in Nature, turns those expectations around. A team of Chinese and Canadian researchers pointed to R. robustus as the likely instigator, as its fossil sits atop the prone P. lujiatunensis, gripping its limbs and biting its ribs. It’s the first time such antagonism between mammals and dinosaurs has been documented in fossil form, an encounter doomed when sudden volcanic debris flow buried both predator and prey.…

FOR YEARS, scientists and other intellectuals have been lamenting that major innovations seem increasingly hard to come by. But until 2023, the extent to which this trend has infiltrated all of science and technology was unknown. Across 45 million papers and 3.9 million patents, a team of researchers found that, from 1945 to 2010, the likelihood of any given paper being disruptive has declined across all fields of science and technology, even as the amount of scientific work published has increased. Publishing in Nature in January 2023, the researchers quantified scientific disruption using a metric that Russell Funk, sociologist at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, developed in 2017. Using the vast web of citations that connect every publication in the scientific literature, Funk’s team scored every paper…

For centuries, life on Hestur, a small Faroese island located halfway between Scotland and Iceland in the northeast Atlantic, was isolated: Streymoy, the biggest of the 18 islands that comprise the Faroe Islands, is almost ironically close, within eyeshot, but powerful currents in the fjord dividing the two islands long made travel between them difficult. Today, a modern ferry connects Hestur and Streymoy, but across most of its history, Hestur’s inhabitants were left to care for themselves. They survived on sheep, birds, and, most importantly, fish — though fishing came with its own dangers. In 1919, 11 men — about a third of the island’s men who were fit to work — died when two boats disappeared in the fjord during a storm. For many of the survivors, the accident…

OXYTOCIN This happy hormone, sometimes referred to as the “love hormone,” promotes feelings of social connection. It’s produced by the brain during sex, as well as during childbirth or breastfeeding. DOPAMINE This neurotransmitter, also called the “feelgood hormone,” is part of the brain’s reward system. It’s released when you do things that feel pleasurable or when you complete a task. SEROTONIN The brain also produces this neurotransmitter when you feel satisfied. It helps you balance your mood, while promoting long-lasting feelings of well-being and reward. ENDORPHINS The brain’s natural painkillers. These hormones help you overcome stress or discomfort, both by relieving pain and creating an overall feeling of well-being.…

Technology — everything from social media and apps to video chats — doesn’t do our well-being any favors. Or does it? While some studies have shown that too much online time can increase the risk of depression, others have found that the problem is overblown. For example, a 2020 review found a dearth of studies that look at the effects of internet use over a long period of time, meaning there’s still lots that we don’t know about the potential harms of prolonged time scrolling social media. Plus, there has been little research into any potentially positive effects of social media use, which suggests there may be benefits we’ve missed. One thing is clear, however: Modern technology can enhance our social connections. And for some people, that does more than…

If every rock has a tale to tell, those of the Waitaki District on New Zealand’s South Island would fill a library. This is a land of limestone, sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone — basic sedimentary rock. Yet from this simple matter, time, wind, and rain have composed a wondrous story. The narrative is in the Elephant Rocks, giant dollops of limestone scattered among grazing sheep on a farmer’s field. Their scooped shapes take on different forms, depending on where you stand and at what elevation. (Yes, visitors are allowed to scramble all over them.) These are the remains of shells, sea urchins, coral, plankton, and diatoms that drifted down to what was a seabed 25 million years ago, forming thick sheets of limestone. If you perch atop one of those…

From March to October, on the outskirts of San Antonio, one of the world’s largest bat colonies performs a nightly aerial spectacle. As dusk settles, an estimated 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) spill from the mouth of Bracken Cave to gorge themselves on insects. These migratory creatures trek a long way to get there. Most bats overwinter in Mexico and South America, where the weather is warmer and food is plentiful. As early as February, they begin their exodus to Texas. By early spring, the females flock to maternal colonies like Bracken Cave to birth and raise their young, doubling the cave’s population by the summer. The tiny, hairless newborn pups drink their mom’s ultra-rich milk for just a few weeks before they are ready to take flight.…