A History Of Love Gone Wrong, All In One Croatian Museum
From furry handcuffs to a toy bunny that a couple once shared, the Museum of Broken Relationships is filled with artifacts of romances that didn't quite work out.
Humans
Studying The Science Behind Child Prodigies
Matt Haimovitz is 42 and a world-renowned cellist. His mother took him to many concerts as a kid, but nothing in his family history explains where he got his extraordinary talent. And that's typical, says Ellen Winner, a psychology professor at Boston College who has spent much of her career studying prodigies.
How Our Stone Age Bodies Struggle To Stay Healthy In Modern Times
In The Story of the Human Body, evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman explains how our bodies haven't adapted to modern conditions. The result is "mismatch diseases" — ailments that occur because our bodies weren't designed for the environments in which we now live.
Phantom Phone Vibrations: So Common They've Changed Our Brains?
The feeling that your phone is vibrating when it isn't has been around long enough to warrant scientific research. One psychologist recommends taking regular breaks from our phones to keep anxiety down.
After Disasters, DNA Science Is Helpful, But Often Too Pricey
For decades, DNA has been used to identify victims of crime, even victims of war crimes. But there's no international standard for using DNA analysis for identifying bodies after a disaster. So some scholars are calling for an international group with the same reach as weapons inspectors.
Why Painting Tumors Could Make Brain Surgeons Better
Cut a tumor from a child's brain and you may save a life. But surgery can hurt the child if healthy brain cells are removed. A Seattle doctor is working on a substance that might help. It binds tightly to cancer cells and makes them glow, so they're easier to distinguish from healthy tissue.
Multitasking After 60: Video Game Boosts Focus, Mental Agility
The aging brain may be more flexible than we thought, a study of older adults now suggests. After playing a racing car video game an hour a day, thrice weekly for a month, adults age 60 and over were better at multitasking than untrained 20-year-olds.
Gut Microbes May Play Deadly Role In Malnutrition
The bacteria that live in humans' guts influence weight gain and health. By studying twins in Malawi, scientists have found that changes in this microbial community may also turn malnutrition into a fatal condition.
From The Fall Of Failure, Success Can Take Flight
Risking and embracing failure is part of the job for explorers and adventurers like aeronaut Salomon August Andrée. His fatal attempt at reaching the North Pole motivated others to push their own limits. The September issue of National Geographic investigates "famous failures" and why they mattered.
Enough With Baby Talk; Infants Learn From Lemur Screeches, Too
Even infants too young to discern the meaning of words seem better able to learn while listening to the sound of human speech than while listening to nonsense — speech run backward. Little surprise there, perhaps, but a study shows that recordings of lemur calls spark learning, too.