“Sundial with Prism,” “Sundial with Compass,” and “A Variety of Colors Created with the Shadow of a Prism #4 (Color Separation with Three Black and White Paper Negatives),” photographs by Caleb Charland © The artist
Archaeologists suggested that a fourth-millennium bc Mesopotamian figure of a human-ibex grasping a pair of snakes expressed the “paradoxes of urban living ” and the “continued presence of the unexplainable,” and that broken, early Bronze Age mace-heads found at Tel Bet Yerah “symbolized the distribution of power in the community and resistance to centralized authority.” Genital cutting may persist in spite of its physiological costliness because it maintains social structures. A pregnant tortoise was found preserved in the ruins of Pompeii, and the bones of three hundred and fifty frogs and toads were found near an Iron Age roundhouse at Bar Hill. The city revealed in the Mosul reservoir by a catastrophic drought may be the ruins of Zakhiku, which was destroyed by an earthquake. Citizen-operated seismograms detected explosive attacks on ATMs in Bonn and Kürten. The resonance of sonic booms is amplified by the man-made canyons of cities. Soot particles introduced into the upper atmosphere by space launches have five hundred times the heat-trapping capacity as soot particles released by aviation. Some marine RNA viruses trap carbon in the deep ocean. Plastics in the ocean may harbor novel antibiotics.
Researchers created a brain atlas of the bearded dragon, reported that the median time for snapping turtles to recover from vehicle-induced partial carapace avulsion is three months, and described a case of marijuana toxicity in a mini rex rabbit. Males over the age of eleven become liabilities in mongoose warfare. U.S. bestiality laws have remained vague, moralistic, and dependent on the assumption that zoophilia is linked to violence against humans. Males of the orb-weaving spider Philoponella prominens spring away at speeds of up to eighty-eight centimeters per second to avoid being eaten after mating. Ubiquitous follicular mites are becoming symbiotic with humans and may be responsible for unclogging our facial pores. The Black Death came from Kyrgyzstan. The drug resistance of the Candida auris fungus is boosted by its occasional sexual reproduction. Comic books were found to be an effective therapeutic intervention for adolescent rape victims in the Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement. Nightmares may be an early symptom of Parkinson’s, and people who consider religion personally irrelevant have a tenfold higher risk of developing the disease. Buddhist and Taoist nurses tend to accept death neutrally, whereas Catholic nurses treat it as an escape from life’s miseries.
Social and mental health problems as well as sexual dysfunction were reported among men with adult acquired buried penis. Fathers who use nicotine before their child’s birth have more anxious offspring. Seattle community-college students use twice as much marijuana as students at four-year colleges, who drink twice as much alcohol. In the previous decade, mortality among white people declined much more steeply in Democratic counties than in Republican ones. Conspiratorial thinking may be linked to support for progressive taxation. Dispatching mental health responders instead of police for 9-1-1 calls reporting nonviolent offenses in Denver reduced crime by 34 percent and spending by 75 percent. The self-made rich are less sensitive to the plight of the poor. More intelligent people are more impaired by lack of sleep. Most men, when paired with women, walk to the right, possibly so that they can fight more effectively. The ventral striatum is activated in the brains of couples who are asked to compliment each other, suggesting that the anticipation is itself rewarding. The emoji most associated with anticipation, joy, positivity, and surprise is the birthday cake.
