LONELINESS AND BONE DENSITY
A new study on loneliness is showing it may not only affect mental health, but it may also be bad for the bones. However, the study found it impacts one group in particular: men. Amid concerns about the rising epidemic of loneliness, researchers wanted to take a closer look at its effects.
Those working on the study exposed adult mice to social isolation and found that there were significant reductions in bone quality and mineral density, but only in the male mice, not the females. One doctor involved in this research did note that "future research is needed to understand how these findings translate to human populations."
HUMANS TILT EARTH
From 1993 to 2010, humans pumped over 2,000 gigatons of groundwater from reservoirs in the Earth's crust, and it changed the tilt of the earth's axis by 31 inches. According to the authors of a new study by the American Geophysical Union, the Earth's axis changes often, and the melting of the polar ice caps or rise in sea levels makes an impact on earth's rotation.
However, this shows that groundwater use also has an impact. By the way, if you've ever wondered how the planet came to be covered in H2O, a new theory published last week in the journal Nature suggests that 4.5 billion years ago, as Earth formed, it sucked up icy particles from space in a "vacuum effect."
The World Health Organization's cancer agency has deemed the sweetener aspartame — found in diet soda and countless other foods — as a “possible” cause of cancer, while a separate expert group looking at the same evidence said it still considers the sugar substitute safe in limited quantities.
More than a third of Americans were under extreme heat advisories, watches and warnings Thursday as a blistering heat wave that's been baking the nation spread further into California, forcing residents to seek out air conditioning or find other ways to stay cool in triple-digit temperatures.
Tourists in central Athens huddled under mist machines, and zoo animals in Madrid were fed fruit popsicles and chunks of frozen food, as southern Europeans braced for a heat wave Thursday, with a warning of severe conditions coming from the European Union’s space agency.
A new study published in Nature has found that more than 56 percent of the world's oceans have changed color in the past 20 years, and climate change is to blame.
Recently discovered teeth of a two-million-year-old human relative in Africa could give researchers new insight into genetics.
U.S. officials have approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill, which will let American women and girls buy contraceptive medication from the same aisle as aspirin and eyedrops.
The Webb Space Telescope is marking one year of cosmic photographs with one of its best yet: the dramatic close-up of dozens of stars at the moment of birth.
