Archive for December, 2009
A Circadian Conundrum: Sleep and the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus
Insomniacs have it rough: imagine a long day of tedious work and activities after which you come home to even more chores. Exhaustion finally sets in, and you are ready to collapse into bed, eagerly looking forward to those precious hours of sleep when you can finally rest your mind and body. Yet, as the [...]
How Do You Say “Dot Com” in Chinese?
Here you see two URLs, or internet addresses: <http://www.dhs.gov> and <http://www.dhs.gοv>. One of them is the homepage for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and one of them is not. Can you tell which one? Squint hard. Confused? You should be. But should you be worried? The first web address is the correct URL for [...]
Sweeter than Honey
For most people, bees bring to mind one of two things: delicious honey or nasty stings. If someone were to tell you that a bee product was being used medicinally you might be inclined to think that it was a spoonful of honey for a sore throat or something equally benign. Recently, however, scientists have [...]
Guns, Germs, Steel, and An Alternative Explanation for Eurasian Hegemony
After 1492, Europeans were able to conquer and subjugate the people of the New World because of their access to gun technology, germs to which Native Americans were not immune, and steel manufacturing, a fact that few students of history question. But why wasn’t it the Native Americans with access to these fateful resources? Why [...]
Kellogg Under Fire: Have Advertisements Gone Too Far?
This year’s outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu has triggered various controversies, especially with respect to the necessity and safety of the vaccine recently made available to the general public. Although such health concerns are understandable and valid, a less rational argument has also surfaced. At the center of this debate is the Kellogg Company, [...]
Add HEALTH to the Dow
What if “health” could be viewed as an industry monitored by the stock market, like the Dow Jones average? Some days it may soar with favorable reports, and others it may tank as fear circulates the nation. It turns out the United States has its own health and happiness meter.
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