Find out about the science of learning by learning about science. Whether you’re looking to brush up on your STEM subjects, find fascinating science books to read or want coding toys for kids, you’ll find a range of education-themed news, articles and features from our expert team of writers and editors. 

Discover more about education & STEM

—Why are kids such fast learners?

—Do STEM toys actually teach kids science and math? 

If you're looking to teach your young explorers about rocks and crystals, this National Geographic's hobby tumbler is an ideal place to start.

The best science kits for kids are an ideal way to connect adults and kids alike through the magic of education, and there are plenty of options - we even made a list. With microscopes, assembly kits, and much more, there's one you may have missed from your tour of wonders - geology.

The best rock tumblers can help build your child's increase in geology, and this deal at Amazon can help you do so at a bargain price. Right now, you can get the National Geographic Professional Rock Tumbler for just $84.99 at Amazon. This $15 discount isn't massive, but it is the cheapest we've seen this set so if you're on the fence, now is a great time to buy.

The National Geographic Professional Rock Tumbler includes everything you need to get started with, well, rock tumbling. Inside the box you'll find four polishing grits, a sifter, 5 jewelry fastenings, a 1 lb. bag of raw rocks with 9 different types of gemstones, and GemFoam to help enhance the shine on your finished rocks.

Alongside that, you'll find the tumbler itself, which is made of high-quality materials and a learning guide to explain how gemstones are found, refined, and traded.

The manufacturer notes that the motor will run for years, no doubt aided by an automatic shutoff timer.

It's not just educational, either -- the National Geographic Professional Rock Tumbler is ideal for putting together homemade jewelry, with included fastenings for creative hands to use once the rocks are polished.

Customer reviews are positive, too, with many praising its ability to polish rocks -- as long as you have the patience for it. Some have also noted the noise that the machine makes, so buyer beware if you're rock tumbling in the house, even with the noise-reducing barrel.

One day, they're a wobbly mess; the next, they're running through the halls. Or their gibberish turns to full sentences seemingly overnight. Children undoubtedly develop new skills quickly, all while learning how to effectively navigate a world that is strange and new to them. Adults, by contrast, may take many years to learn a new language or master certain elements of mathematics — if they do at all.

So, why do children learn so quickly? Is it simply a necessity, or is a child's brain more capable of taking in new information than an adult's brain is?

"It is a common way of thinking that 'children are like sponges' and have the magical ability to learn new skills faster than an adult, but there are some misconceptions here," Debbie Ravenscroft, a senior lecturer in early childhood studies at the University of Chester in the U.K., told Live Science in an email. "A child's cognitive development is age-related and, naturally, children perform worse than their older peers in most areas. However, there are times when being young confers an advantage, and this clusters around their earliest years." 

This advantage is largely due to neuroplasticity, meaning the brain's ability to form and change its connections, pathways and wiring based on experiences. Neuroplasticity is what gives children the capacity to learn — and, if necessary, unlearn — habits, routines, approaches and actions very quickly. This ability is most constant and rapid before a child's fifth birthday, when much of what they encounter or experience is novel.

"This [ability to learn quickly] is connected to several areas, including plasticity, their experiences with adults, their environment, and their biological drive to explore," Ravenscroft said. "Childhood is a place where children spend their time catching up with adults' more sophisticated abilities."

Related: Can you learn to wiggle your ears?

Language acquisition, in particular, is an area where children often have a huge advantage over adults, Ravenscroft noted. This is largely because "babies are able to tune in to the rhythm and sounds used in their native language, and can therefore become competent and fluent speakers by the age of four." This ability can help young children learn a second or third language with apparent ease, Ravenscroft said.

In a research paper published in April 2022 in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, the authors suggest that "human infants are born seeing and hearing linguistic information that older children and adults miss, although they lose this ability with more experience in their environments." Moreover, infants can "discriminate speech sounds and tones used in all of the world's languages, making them open to all input, regardless of the linguistic environment they are born into."

With language acquisition, time is an important variable. "If a child is not exposed to certain sound aspects of language by puberty, for example, it becomes impossible to discriminate between them," Ravenscroft said. 

Studies have found that, from birth to puberty, children are capable of learning language rapidly and effectively because of both their neuroplasticity and their "cognitive flexibility," or the ability to mentally switch between two different concepts or ideas rapidly, as well as being able to clearly think about numerous concepts at the same time. 

But what about skills other than language learning?

A 2022 study in the journal Current Biology suggests that children and adults exhibit differences in a brain messenger known as gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which the research suggests stabilizes newly learned material. 

The study found that children have a "rapid boost of GABA" when they participate in visual training and that this learning continues even once the training has concluded, whereas "the concentration of GABA in adults remained unchanged," the researchers wrote in the study. The findings suggest that children's brains respond to training in a way that allows them to more quickly and efficiently stabilize new learning. Consequently, the research supports the idea that children can acquire new knowledge and skills more rapidly than adults can.

"Our results show that children of elementary school age can learn more items within a given period of time than adults, making learning more efficient in children," Takeo Watanabe, co-author of the study and a professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University, said in a statement.

To learn quickly, however, children also need support, guidance and access to appropriate learning materials.

"While children do have the capacity to learn quickly, they will find challenges if they are not well supported by caring and compassionate adults who shape their environment and experiences," Ravenscroft said. "The best time for learning is as early as possible; reading to a baby offers a wonderful, shared bonding experience in addition to providing a love of language and ensuring connections are made in the early brain." 

Birth to age 5 is a "critical period" for children, Ravenscroft added. During these early years, a young child's brain is much busier than an adult's because the child is continually learning and figuring out the best way to approach and navigate any given situation. A child's ability to learn and understand, therefore, is linked to these interactions. 

"Very young children, for example, may have difficulty in self-regulating their emotions; but this is typical behavior, as the social brain develops almost entirely postnatally, and does not begin to mature until toddlerhood," Ravenscroft said. "What is needed is time for children to process and accept new knowledge and learning. In an endeavor to speed up children's learning, we can be guilty of rushing, whereas an environment which fosters a child's pace of learning offers so much more opportunity for children to develop a love of interacting with people and places, and engaging in active learning."

The best online coding courses can teach you a new skill, allowing you to work on side projects like games or websites. Some can improve an existing skillset and enhance your career prospects — after all, knowing how to code is a valuable skill to have. With Black Friday around the corner, now's a good time to look at signing up to a course, with many providers offering discounts. EdX has a 30% off for Cyber Monday deal live already, for example.

Some sites, like Codecademy, are designed specifically to teach you how to learn to code using an interactive environment with instant feedback. Others offer video-based courses. Before you sign up, make sure you have one of the best laptops for coding and programming to give yourself the best shot at success.

Some of the best online coding courses offer certifications or even degrees that you can add to your resume in order to begin applying for coding jobs or other advanced positions with technical requirements.

Best online coding courses providers

Coursera is more of a platform than a specific course: the site offers thousands (!) of different courses, ranging from under an hour to full semesters of university study. Some of the site’s most popular offerings are specific to different companies like IBM, Google, Facebook, and Salesforce. These credentials can look great on your resume and help to open doors, not just to their specific companies but to any companies that work in coordination with them as well.

You can take courses in languages like Python, Java, and SQL as well as topics like cryptography and IT support. But there’s also much to be said for Coursera’s general, more “academic” offerings, which include fully online degrees in a bunch of different fields.

Udemy offers a huge variety of courses that are clearly organized into broader topics like development (including coding) and financial analysis. From there, different specific things, including languages like Python and SQL, are divided into many more individual courses at varying prices. One standout is AWS Certification, meaning a credential in the Amazon Web Services platform that underpins the majority of everything we do online.

Udemy’s pricing is transparent and varies depending on the course, which makes it easy to browse and select what you want and can afford. Classes are typically pre-recorded videos of the instructor and their computer, making it easy to pace yourself and follow along with working examples of languages like JavaScript, Python, HTML, CSS, and much more.

freeCodeCamp is a donor-supported free website designed to teach coding skills in very specific areas. The site offers a fully interactive experience where you learn by doing, and the courses are detailed very clearly on the site, meaning there are no misunderstandings about what you’re signing up for.

You technically don’t even have to belong to the site to click through into the materials of the courses, although if you do, there are certifications to earn that you may find valuable to add to your resume. The site is refreshingly stripped down and straightforward, making it easy to use and without even a whiff of salesmanship.

Skillshare has an emphasis on creative skills, with no specific category for programming, just “web development” – you have to hunt a bit to find some of the coding classes. (Web development includes some programming languages, but not all coding is web coding.) Skillshare emphasizes particular teachers as well, with some famous people and institutions contributing to their selection of courses.

The cost is also very fair at about $14 a month for Skillshare Premium if you pay for a year in advance. With a flat rate, you don’t have to worry about paying for a course you don’t jibe with.

Codecademy boasts a more built-out teaching interface than some of the others on this list, offering an interactive environment where code is actually entered and validated in a realistic-looking text editor. That’s because Codecademy is targeted at coders, as the name suggests. Many of their basic courses are free, and Codecademy is often suggested to computer science students as a way to help support their skills.

The site’s premium membership covers some additional content, like career paths that involve full skill trees for jobs like software engineering. But the bulk of courses are free, and they include everything from broad-base coding basics as well as specialized languages like R (for statisticians).

MIT OpenCourseWare is a virtualization of the curricula of more than 2,000 real courses at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). That means the classes work much more like traditional university classes in sequence and scope, starting with Introduction to Computer Science using Python as the teaching language. (If you want to skip ahead, just like in real life, you need the instructor’s permission.)

They also offer individual language classes including Java, C, C++, MATLAB, and more. This is a great option for someone familiar with how traditional higher education works and a desire for the structure provided by a course catalog. It’s also nice to have materials curated by one of the foremost technical universities in the world.

edX is a collaboration among over 100 universities who have put their materials online for courses have an interdisciplinary flair, pairing computing skills with jobs that may not seem students around the world. There are also corporate participants like IBM and some nonprofit contributors. Because of that, edX has a nice blend of traditional academia (“Introduction to Cloud Computing,” “Computer Science for Lawyers”) and specific career credentials.

The base courses are usually free, but if you pay $99 apiece, your work is graded and returned to you and you receive a certificate upon completion. One standout attribute is that edX has readily available courses in Spanish.

If others on this list were formed by universities putting their heads together, Udacity is a resource built by industry to help train the kinds of people they want to hire. The site offers a variety of free courses on one-off topics like learning to add user inputs to Android apps, and some of these courses are combined in “nanodegrees” in, for example, Android development. Free courses also include introductory overviews like “What is programming?”

While the courses are divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced, many of the nanodegrees stack into progressions from beginner onward. Users who build certain basic skills will find a variety of options available to them. There are also free advanced classes in specific technologies and general topics like algorithms.

Pluralsight is an industry-oriented site with a really nitty gritty level of focus in its course offerings. The topics are very specific, with highly rated courses like: Deploying Exchange 2016, Upgrading to SharePoint 2016, Automating Cisco Meraki. These courses seem designed for professional IT people like server administrators who are looking for the industry version of “searching YouTube for my specific problem.”

The site also offers interactive labs for those looking for something more experiential. Like Codecademy and others, the site is very focused on computer science skills instead of a broader educational scope. Pluralsight also offers “paths” to some common IT certifications that professionals and job seekers will find useful.

Upskillist (formerly Shaw Academy) offers relatively brief overviews of some big coding and computer science topics. One major drawback is how few offerings there are – just 10 in the technology category, with a definite emphasis on the introductory end of things. With a four-week free trial, it’s very possible to front load a lot of content during that time and be ready to move on by the end of the trial.

Some courses are also partially or fully free, like the single module of Python or the first module of Computer Science. The courses are certified (for what it’s worth) by Austin Peay State University, a public university in Tennessee.

The best science book will not just educate; it will also enlighten and entertain. It has the power to transform a dry subject that you dreaded in school into a mind-boggling and captivating story. And it will give you a different perspective on the world around you.

£e have curated a list of the best science books that you should not miss out on — from captivating accounts of the history of the planet and universe, to illuminating insights into the human mind and body. These books make science accessible to all and we think that the list will have something for everyone.

If you’re after some more specific science knowledge, then our guides to the best physics books and best astronomy books will enlighten you. Or, if you fancy some fiction, then peruse our list of the best sci-fi books.

Best science books

How did it all begin? And how did we get here? Combining history and science, A Short History of Nearly Everything offers a comprehensive yet entertaining answer to these questions. Written out of dissatisfaction with his own scientific knowledge, Bill Bryson takes the reader on a dazzling journey through the greatest scientific discoveries in history.

Armed with his poignant wit and dry humor, Bryson infuses dry topics with color by telling the stories of discovery through the lives of the scientists who made them. Those quirky, eccentric, competitive, sometimes tragic, but resilient scientists bring the story to life.

Even if you are not interested in science, this book will evoke a sense of wonder about the universe, encourage you to think big, and make you marvel at the incredible world we live in. This book is for anyone eager to learn more about our world and how it came to be.

How do helicopters work? Or elevators? Or cells? Randall Munroe, the creator of the XKCD webcomic, explains how things work using illustrations and only the most common 1,000 words in the English language. Washing machines become “boxes that make clothes smell better,” airplanes are “sky boats,” and microwaves are “food-heating radio boxes”.

Thing Explainer is an informative and entertaining guide to the science and technology that surrounds us, devoid of confusing jargon. This book will shift your perspective and approach to explanation. So, next time you’ll try to explain how something works rather than merely calling it by its name. A fun must-read for the curious minds who are wondering how things actually work and why.

Best physics books

In The God Equation, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku writes about his lifelong mission to find the “Holy Grail of physics:” a theory of everything. A theory to explain everything from the start to the end of the universe, unifying all forces at play.

Sounds like too heavy of a read before bedtime? Rest assured, Kaku writes about this mind-boggling topic in an understandable and engaging way. You’ll get a great historic overview of the major milestones in theoretical physics: both the scientists and the technologies that ultimately led to the development of the string theory — the concept that our universe is made up of tiny threads whose vibrations produce all physical phenomena.

Along the way, Kaku doesn’t lose sight of the practicalities of everyday life and explains how the scientific ideas he presents apply to our daily lives.

What does it feel like to fly into space? How do you prepare for it? And what is it like to return back to Earth? In his book, astronaut Tim Peake answers all the questions you never knew you had about going into space. Using an engaging Q&A format, he answers the questions he has most frequently been asked since returning back to Earth after his Principia mission on the International Space Station (ISS) back in 2015-16. The book gives insights into the cutting-edge science, as well as the practicalities and day-to-day life on board of the ISS. The format of the book lends itself to both extensive reading from beginning to end or just a quick read of only a couple of questions and answers. The accompanying illustrations, diagrams, and photos, paired with Peak’s humor and wit, makes this book a great read for armchair astronauts.

Published posthumously, Stephen Hawking’s book tackles 10 of the biggest questions in the universe, for example: Is time travel possible? Is there a God? Will we survive on Earth? The book is the final project of the physicist, who sparked curiosity and fascination for physics among the general public with his best selling books, most notably A Brief History of Time.

Completed after Hawking’s death with the help of his family, friends, and academic colleagues, this book draws on the physicist’s personal archive of essays, lectures, and speeches. It covers big physics concepts such as gravitational waves, the Big Bang, and general relativity, but also doesn’t shy away from addressing topics concerning the future of humanity.

Brief Answers to the Big Questions is a must read for the inquisitive mind curious about the grand questions of the universe. And it certainly instils a sense of wonder and curiosity — to say it in Hawking’s own words: “So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future.”

Best biology books

Oncologist and 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner Siddhartha Mukherjee distills the complex history of genetics into a gripping and comprehensible narrative. The author takes us on a whirlwind tour describing how the mystery of the gene was slowly unraveled. Starting from the discovery of the gene as the individual unit of heritability thanks to the garden pea experiments of the monk Gregor Mendel, right through to the most recent revolution in biotechnology, genomics, and gene-editing technologies.

The author laces the history of human genes with his personal history of how hereditary illnesses have affected his own family, staying true to his promise of an “intimate” history. Looking towards the future of the human race, Mukherjee questions the implications of our technical capabilities and cautions to keep the ethical implications of the newly emerging technologies in mind. This thought-provoking read is for anyone interested in learning more about the history, biology, and ethics of the units that form the basis of ourselves — our genes.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks takes us on a journey into the devastating, yet fascinating world of neurological conditions. In this collection of medical case reports, considered by some to be Sacks’ finest work, the author recounts the stories of patients with striking neurological conditions affecting their perceptions, emotions, memories, and actions: A musician who has lost the ability to recognize faces or familiar objects; a sailor whose mind is permanently stuck in the year 1945 and cannot form new memories; A woman who has lost the ability to sense the relative position of her extremities.

Rather than portraying his patients merely as interesting cases, Sacks’ paints them as deeply human through his poetic prose and vivid imagery. His storytelling is both compassionate and informative. These essays are more than just neurological case histories, they are, in Sacks’ own words, “clinical tales.” If you enjoy exploring the wonders of the human mind, then this collection of essays is for you!

Dr. Camilla Pang, who has a PhD in computational biology from UCL, was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of eight and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder at 26. As a kid struggling to understand the world around her, Pang asked her mother for an instruction manual to explain humans in order to help her understand and fit in. In a way, she created her own manual on how to human with this book, which won the Royal Society’s science book of the year award in 2020.

In her book, Pang shares how viewing the world through a scientific lens helped her understand and interpret human behavior. Each chapter draws analogies from a different field of science to explain the complexities of human nature, covering a variety of scientific concepts — machine learning, biochemistry, thermodynamics, quantum physics, and game theory. For example, Pang compares emotions to chemical bonds and reflects on how our relationships — just like chemical bonds — go through changes.

Part-memoir, part-manual, the book is an enlightening and insightful guide to understanding the world around us. A must-read for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of humans.

Best paleontology books

Our planet is ancient. 4.5 billion years old, to be precise. An unimaginable period of time. Riley Black, a science writer specializing in paleontology, takes us on a journey through the geological events that have shaped our planet, making those years palpable and at the same time underscoring the impressive age of our planet.

This book shows the story of our world as we know it, presented in a chronological and visually appealing way. The magnificent photos are supported by bite-sized, easily digestible explanations of key historical moments, like the dawn of the dinosaurs. But this book doesn’t just cover fossils. It also expands on key concepts in geology (the formation of the Grand Canyon), astronomy (the Hubble Deep Field), or biology (mitochondria or evolution).

Deep Time shines light on the traces and artifacts of ancient times that we can still find today, all around us. An informative and beautiful coffee book table to be dipped into rather than devoured in one sitting.

At least six different human species inhabited Earth 100,000 years ago. Today, there is only one — homo sapiens. How did this happen? In his number one international bestseller, history professor Yuval Noah Harari takes us on a journey through the history of homo sapiens.

Harari approaches the mammoth task of telling the history of our species with an engaging and oftentimes provocative narrative and draws on knowledge from history, anthropology, and evolutionary biology. Harari concludes with a skeptical look towards the future, considering our current scientific and technological advances in fields such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, which might blur the definition of “human.” While you may not agree with every statement and causal connection inferred, the book will certainly spark thoughts, questions, and reflection on humanities’ past, present, and future.

The fall semester is fast approaching and college will be starting up again soon, so now is the perfect time to upgrade your kit and get a new laptop during the Prime Day deals. While Amazon has some fantastic deals over the next few days, this pair of Dell XPS 13 laptop deals actually comes to us courtesy of Best Buy.

Right now, you can get the Dell XPS 13 with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD for just $1,699.99 at Best Buy, down from its original price of $2099.99. That’s a massive $400 saving on this incredibly capable laptop. 

• See all the Prime Day deals at Amazon US
• See all the Prime Day deals at Amazon UK

With its 12th Gen Intel Core i7, it’s got plenty of power for whatever tasks your life can throw at it, whether it's editing images and putting together student projects, or playing some games and relaxing in your downtime. It comes with a stunning 13.4” OLED screen that is perfect for editing images and watching Netflix too.

If that’s still a little too rich for your blood, you can also save $400 on a slightly lower spec’d Dell XPS 13 that comes with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. It’s currently on sale for $1,449.99, down from the usual price of $1849.99. It’s got a bit less RAM and a smaller storage drive, but you still get the same 12th Gen Intel Core i7 and stunning OLED screen. 

We’re huge fans of the Dell XPS 13, which is why we ranked it so highly in our round-up of the best laptops for students. It’s a premium laptop to be sure, but if you’re willing and able to spend a little extra cash, you certainly get your money’s worth. And now with these Amazon Prime Day deals, it’s far more affordable too.

If you’re looking for something a little bigger and more powerful, then this laptops bigger brother, the Dell XPS 15, is also on sale right now at Best Buy with up to $300 off. This beast is ideal for resource intensive tasks which is why we put it in our best laptops coding and programming guide.

It’s not just laptops that are on sale over Amazon Prime Day, there are loads of great offers out there on all kinds of fitness and health related products too. 

For more, check out our Amazon Prime Day Health Deals for 2022.

Take the best online physics courses today and learn from some of the top experts in the world – all from the comfort of your home and at your own pace. Topics range from introductory physics and classical mechanics to higher-level courses like quantum physics and string theory. While many of the courses are free, Black Friday is a good time to sign up because you'll likely be able to save on supporting materials like textbooks from retailers such as Amazon.

Whether you’re a student wanting to get clarity on more complex areas of physics, or you want to learn from renowned professors and scientists at the top of their respective fields, an online physics course could be ideal. Pair this with the best physics books and you’ll be swimming in knowledge!

We’ve done the research for you and have compiled a small collection of the best online physics courses currently available, so that you don’t have to spend your time sifting through the overwhelming amount of options out there.

How Things Work: An Introduction to Physics is everything the title promises it to be. This is a beginner’s course to the world of physics presented by Dr. Louis Bloomfield, who is entertaining and engaging as he gives examples and humorous anecdotes about the basic concepts in physics.

Over the course of 14 hours, you’ll learn the primary principles of physics in a way that’s easy to understand. You can also unlock a quiz in order to get a certificate at the end of the course (although you have to pay for this feature). While we don’t recommend this course for our advanced physics learners, it’s perfect for those just getting started.

The Fundamentals of Physics is a recorded course from Yale University taught by Professor Ramamurti Shankar. All lectures have been recorded and broken down into specific, organized sections. You’ll be able to download PDF worksheets (along with the answers!) to work alongside the course, just as if you were taking a live class. You can go at your own pace while watching these videos, and even take a final examination at the end to test the strength of your knowledge.

This is perfect for those with a basic understanding of physics and mathematics who would like to sharpen their expertise. As these are recorded sessions, you won’t have access to the professor, but you will be able to hone your problem-solving and reasoning skills in the area of physics.

This quick and easy tutorial is best for students wanting to boost their grades, succeed in their exams, or understand a concept that’s been harder to follow in the classroom. This course goes over the basic principles of physics such as electric force, electric charge, and electric fields. Using clear and easy-to-follow explanations of the various concepts in what’s considered to be one of the most difficult subjects, you’ll gain a stronger understanding of electric charges and electric fields so you can step confidently into your next class.

This is also a course intended for physics teachers who want to find a different way of teaching physics concepts to their students. It’s absolutely free and easy to fit into any schedule. If you want more content from this creator, however, you’ll need to sign up for their paid classes.

If you’re interested in exploring the deepest parts of our universe and all the unsolved mysteries surrounding them, this is the course for you. You’ll find thoughtful discussions about the topic of astronomy including black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, supernovas, and how modern astrophysicists investigate these mysteries.

While the course is free, a paid version is open to the public to get the most out of the experience. You’ll have access to both professors and will receive feedback on any applicable assignments. All are welcome, but a high-school level understanding of physics and astronomy is recommended. It’s only available for a short time (ends June 1, 2022)!

Taught by Professor Hitoshi Murayama, lessons are broken into weekly sessions followed by recommended readings and quizzes to enhance your learning experience about physics and astronomy. The course digs into the workings of everyday life and stretches all the way back to the birth of our universe. Covering immense topics such as dark matter, anti-matter, dark energy, inflation, and other relevant subjects, Professor Murayama will take you behind the scenes of our universe’s most incredible discoveries.

This course is free, packed with supplemental course materials and quizzes to help retain your growing knowledge. The course is meant to be interactive, so to get the most out of the course, you’ll want to complete all the readings and quizzes offered!

Physics and Our Universe is a set of 60 lectures that serves as a course dedicated to a multitude of topics within the field of physics. Presented with demonstrations, animation, and graphs to complement his lectures, Professor Richard Wolfson visually breaks down complex topics into accessible content. From Newtonian mechanics and thermodynamics to optics and quantum relativity, you’ll receive bite-sized lessons that you can squeeze into your day.

You’ll need to sign up for a free trial to get started, but if you like what you see, you can purchase a membership that best suits your needs so you can spend more time on the course!

Quantum Physics I is a readily available course broken down into three parts, beginning with basic concepts and then branching off into more complex areas including: the Schrödinger equation for one-dimensional potentials, 3-dimensional scattering theory, the Townsend effect, and much more. Lecture notes are available as downloadable PDFs to accompany the video lectures. You can even complete assignments and exams to test your comprehension of the lessons.

There is a prerequisite class for taking this course, so it might not be for everyone. However, we recommend that you take a look at the content yourself and decide if it’s a good fit for what you’re looking for.

The University of California, Irvine, offers an extensive library of online courses available as free resources. Included in their expansive collection is a recorded lecture of Einstein’s General Relativity and Gravitation. Designed for undergraduates, this is an introductory course to Einstein’s theory of gravitation conducted by Professor Herbert Hamber. Alongside the video lectures, you can also view past student presentations to help you feel like you’re part of the class.

This is a comprehensive and detailed course perfect for students – and any enthusiastic learner – who wants to expand their knowledge in the field of physics. While you won’t have access to the textbooks, you will still benefit from these informative sessions.

This course not only focuses on Einstein’s theory of relativity, but also takes a deep dive into Einstein himself, his predictions, and ideas that led to the creation of this special theory. Dr. Larry Lagerstorm of Stanford University has taught over 30,000 students worldwide, and his passion for Einstein has resulted in a published novel and a Tedx Video: “Young Einstein: From the Doxerl Affair to the Miracle Year.”

In this course, you’ll explore topics such as the nature of Einstein’s genius, the meaning of relativity, and the nature of the fourth dimension. While the class is considered one of the longer free courses available, this is perfect for beginners looking for flexibility in their education and schedule.

If you’re looking for mini lessons from award-winning string theorist, Cumrun Vafa, this is the course for you! Videos only average 10-15 minutes in length, expertly breaking down the fundamentals of stringy theory. Not only do you get quick and approachable videos, you also have access to summaries that get straight to the point, office hours with designated questions that Vafa answers in recorded videos, and finally, a discussion section where you can interact with other physics learners.

Easy to listen to and tightly organized, you can track your progress as you make your way through each module. These are not extensive lessons, so these modules are meant for those looking to gain more knowledge specifically in the area of string theory.

The best physics books can help us answer some of the biggest questions: What is our place in the universe? How do we explain what happens around us?

Physics can be a dense and detailed study, with complicated theories and exploration of ideas that can be difficult for anyone to fully comprehend. The best physics books explain these concepts in ways that are approachable and will continue your journey of understanding our physical world.

We’ve collected the best physics books written by some of the world’s most renowned scientists, including Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, and Richard Feynman. If you're looking for physics books that specifically deal with the cosmos, then you can check out our guide to the best astronomy books.

Written by one of the world’s most renowned string theorists, The Elegant Universe takes complex topics and makes them easily accessible to any reader – with or without a science background! Greene creates an impactful and visual reading experience as he navigates through the mysteries of the universe. This international bestseller inspired a major Nova special and leans into Green’s expertise in superstring theory.

The Elegant Universe brings thoughtful discussion surrounding special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics, paving the way towards an explanation of all forces and matter. Simple analogies and footnotes break down heavier topics with a dash of humor. Readers will be delighted by the approachable way in which Greene ties in string theory to help our understanding of the vast universe.

Unmissable content for any student – and those eager to learn more about this expansive field – who wants a foundational introduction to physics written by beloved Nobel laureate, Richard P. Feynman. The Feynman Lectures on Physics is a collection of his most profound lectures, reprinted and corrected in collaboration with CalTech. Inside this three-book box set, you’ll find the basic principles of Newtonian physics through more complex topics such as general relativity, quantum mechanics, and beyond.

Feynman's lectures are accessible without sacrificing relevant information. His passion is evident throughout the pages, never shying away from asking the tougher questions and challenging his audience to expand their thinking. This is a box set designed for each generation, setting up the future for emerging scientists.

Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum is the second book in the Theoretical Minimum series. If you’re a reader with some knowledge of linear algebra and calculus who wants to dive deeper into the world of quantum mechanics, this is for you. Susskind and Friedman make it easy to follow along with the subject matter, getting to logical explanations quickly. Susskind deploys notations in earnest, condensing information into manageable symbols.

It’ll get you thinking about the information differently, trying out a new way to speculate and approach complicated topics. This book will connect the dots, build the bridges between each concept presented, and explain all the core ideas of theory coherently.

Gamow possesses an engaging, entertaining way of presenting the very basics of quantum physics and its progression over the span of three decades. As Gamow was personally acquainted with the scientists presented in this book – Bohr, Pauli, Dirac, and Heisenberg… just to name a few – the result is a level of humanity and personality behind the origins of some of physics' most complex theories and equations.

This is a book about how science has changed and developed in the last century, and Gamow writes this in a way that is accessible to a general audience. Covering prominent events between 1900-1930, you’ll get the inside story on the course that shaped modern physics.

Written by the late Stephen Hawking – one of the most renowned scientists of this century – A Brief History of Time delves into topics such as black holes, wormholes, uncertainty principle, space and time, expansion of the universe, time travel, and so much more.

Hawking manages to be accessible, while still speaking to those with years of scientific experience under their belts. It’s quick and to the point, providing clarity around some of the most complex mechanics of how our universe works. Logically organized, humorous at times, and immersive, you’ll be taken on a journey that spans from our world’s earliest astronomers to the latest on the future of the universe.

Carlo Rovelli is a widely respected and renowned theoretical physicist who introduces you to the modern world of physics. It’s a short book, with the paperback only coming in at 81 pages, but it’s packed with playful and entertaining takes on our world and the role we play in it. Moving quickly through Einstein’s general relativity, quantum mechanics, and other complexities of our known universe, Seven Brief Lessons outlines how physics arrived to where it is now.

Written confidently and in a way that is accessible to any reader, the intricacies of this book is written with vivid clarity. Beautifully written, and almost lyrical in its presentation of Newton, Bohr, and Einstein, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics is not one to miss.

Fans of pop culture will delight in the insights presented in this engaging and humorous book. Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist and bestselling author, explores the possibilities of teleportation, force fields, interstellar spaceships, and other future technologies you’ve seen only in science fiction. Are they truly as impossible to achieve as it seems?

In this informative yet widely imaginative look at the universe and the laws of physics, the very topic of scientific possibility is on full display. Kaku looks into the several branches of physics – from Newtonian mechanics up to relativity and quantum mechanisms of the 20th century. Sci-fi technologies are broken down into accessible ideas as Kaku explores the possibilities of building starships, time travel, and invisibility.

Famous for popularizing science with his other works, Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist presenting another engaging question for his audience: How do we fit within the universe? Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is exactly what the name promises – this is for readers who want simplified, understandable, and manageable information on the nature of space and time.

Tyson’s passion and wit leap off the page as he guides through the concepts of the forces that make up our universe. A short, palpable read for those who want something easy to digest in one or two sittings. This is an easy, fun-to-read book that will get you thinking about the world around you.

Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is a treat for the eyes with its illustrated chapters. Not only that, The Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, is a 13-part television series meant to accompany the book as you’re taken along a journey through cosmic evolution. Covering a wide variety of topics – from the astronomical to the historical – Cosmos will trigger a deeper way of thinking about our existence and our roles in the universe.

This is for the endlessly curious and those who want to know how we came to be and where we’re headed. Sagan makes the complex simple, while never losing the grand scale and drama that is the nature of the cosmos.

John Gribbin tells the story of how Schrodinger’s Cat came to be - of how quantum mechanics emerged. With a thorough look at the scientists who developed quantum theory, Gribbin explores topics such as radiation, time travel, and the birth of life. This is a delightful, thought-provoking introduction to quantum physics. Gribbin makes a complicated topic easily accessible for the average reader. This is perfect for those we want to confront the understanding of how the world works.

In Search of Schrodinger's Cat is a scientific lesson in quantum physics without feeling like you’re reading from a textbook. Extensive and well-written, you’ll be presented with a modern view of quantum physics without feeling overwhelmed.

As an ethical brand, Live Science places great value on a transparent review process that ensures readers get advice they can trust on every product that we recommend. Whether it’s student tech, STEM toys, fitness equipment or home devices, our team is committed to helping you find the right product for your needs. Our dedicated team of reviewers spends countless hours rigorously testing each product, identifying strengths, weaknesses and unique features.

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We also analyze reader reviews from leading online retail sites to gauge current owners' opinions, likes and dislikes for further insight on a product's pros and cons. This means that not only are we testing a product's claims, but we're also gathering data about how those products perform in real life, in a variety of conditions, over a longer period of time.

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A child science prodigy has wowed his professors and classmates by becoming a college graduate at the age of 13. Elliott Tanner recently graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in physics, with a minor in mathematics. 

"I feel ecstatic," Elliott, a Minnesota resident, told Live Science. "It is a truly surreal experience."

Though incredible, this achievement does not make Elliott the youngest college graduate in U.S. history. That title belongs to Michael Kearney, who graduated from the University of South Alabama with a bachelor's degree in anthropology in 1992 at the age of 10, according to the BBC. 

Related: The 18 biggest unsolved mysteries in physics

Elliott's parents are "incredibly proud" of the hard work and dedication he displayed to get his degree at such a young age and are pleased that he has become an inspiration to lots of people. "While he has an amazing capacity to learn, he's also a kind and funny human being," Michelle Tanner, Elliott's mom, told Live Science. "He inspires us to be better people everyday."

Elliott plans to earn a doctorate if his parents can raise the necessary funds. In the future, Elliott aims to be a professor at the University of Minnesota and become an expert in high-energy theoretical physics, the study of the most elementary building blocks of matter and the fundamental forces between them. "I can't wait to get started," he said. 

Age is just a number 

Elliott's parents first realized their son was gifted before he started school; he displayed remarkable language and math skills from the age 3. When he was 5, Elliott enrolled in his local kindergarten but was quickly taken out of school when it became clear that a traditional education experience would not be a good fit for him. 

"He was talking about particle accelerators when he was 5 years old, when other kids were pretending to be Superman on the playground," Michelle said.

Elliott was then homeschooled by his parents, who supported his inquisitive nature and appetite for knowledge on their own. The pair tried to limit Elliott to the curriculum of his peers, but despite their best efforts, he advanced at an astonishing rate.

"Elliott ended up learning and consuming information quicker than we could provide it," Tanner said. "His room was filled with textbooks that he would read immediately." He often chose to spend his birthday money on books instead of toys or games, she added.

By age 9, Elliott had already completed most of the normal high school curriculum, and his parents were struggling to keep up with him. So they enrolled him at his local community college. "As parents, we were terrified," Tanner said. "But he excelled, and the school administration and other students took him under their wings."

It was at community college that Elliott really forged his passion for physics. "For a long time, I wanted to be a mathematician," Elliott said. "Then I was exposed to a physics class that really intrigued and inspired me to learn more about the secrets of the world." 

A unique college experience 

When he was 11 years old, Elliott transferred to the University of Minnesota to start studying physics and math. The ease with which Elliott transitioned to college life came as a shock to his professors and his significantly older classmates.

"There is sometimes a short period of confusion as to why I am there [in class], but that wears off quickly," Elliott said. Although his college experience is a little different from that of his classmates, Elliott still hangs out with his peers in the student lounge, discussing homework, debating physics topics or watching movies.

"Being exposed to people that are just as passionate about physics as he is has been incredibly rewarding for him," Tanner said. "It satisfies his mind to be able to dive deep in with others at his level and learn from amazing scientists."

Elliott has also had to deal with the media coverage that comes with being a prodigy. He is often compared to Sheldon Cooper, the main character in "The Big Bang Theory" spinoff "Young Sheldon," and he said he has even become friends with Iain Armitage, the actor that plays Young Sheldon. 

"Young Sheldon has shown some of the hardships I have faced," Elliott said. "And I do appreciate seeing other gifted people on shows."

Still a normal kid 

One of the biggest challenges Elliott and his family have faced is criticism, especially online, from people who do not understand his situation and make snap judgments about what his life must be like. 

"People seem to have a preconceived notion that Elliott's childhood has been stolen from him," Tanner said. "People also assume he must be lacking in social skills." But this couldn't be "further from the truth," she added.

However, Elliott has always enjoyed interacting with kids his own age, Tanner said. He loves playing with other neighborhood children, doing stuff like building cardboard armor, making board games, visiting amusement parks and playing "Dungeons and Dragons." And just like the other kids, Elliott goes trick-or-treating on Halloween, but with a decidedly academic twist: He dresses up as Albert Einstein or theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, his favorite scientist. 

What next? 

Elliott has been accepted into the University of Minnesota's physics doctoral program and is due to start his doctorate in the next academic year. Unfortunately, his acceptance into the program has not come with the financial support students would normally receive. 

Usually, the university provides students with a package that includes a stipend (basic salary), health insurance and a tuition waiver. In this case, however, the physics department opted not to because they have apprehensions about giving Elliott teaching responsibilities, which is a big part of the program. The decision came as a surprise to Elliott's parents, who were relying on the grant to support Elliott's education. They estimate that the entire doctoral program will cost around $90,000 to complete.

"We never imagined sending a 9-year-old to college, let alone a 13-year-old to graduate school, so we never had the time to build up a college fund," Tanner said. The only option left was to start a GoFundMe campaign, she added.

As of April 28, Elliott's GoFundMe page has raised more than $28,000, which means that he should at least be able to complete the first year. "We are so grateful that our friends, family, community and the general public have supported Elliott," Tanner said. "He wouldn't be able to continue his studies without the support."

Originally published on Live Science.

If your child is between 3 and 5, it can be tricky to find learning activities that feel more like play, particularly with electronics involved like an Amazon Fire tablet or iPad. What can be a powerful learning tool can also be an ideal way to catch up on cartoons or play games, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Osmo has been developing its line of educational tablet games for quite a while, but unlike something you’d find on your app store of choice, the Little Genius Starter Kit transcends the screen – offering a more tangible learning experience with physical play pieces.

Right now, the Amazon Fire tablet version is now £70.57 (a 41% drop), while the iPad version is £82.28 (a 31% drop), both down from £119.99 over at Amazon.

Setting up is simple: you download the Osmo app, put the tablet on the stand, and attach a reflector over the camera so that it can see immediately in front of it. That way, your child can move the play pieces around and each one’s movements can be tracked.

There are a series of games included, too, from Shape Builder which sees users creating furniture, to ABCs, which helps teach letter formation and phonics with over 300 words. There are maths games, too, to get a headstart on number work before starting primary school.

There are also two additional games focused on creativity. Costume Party tasks users with creating colourful outfits, while Stories sees them overcome puzzles and questions in fun ways.

The box includes the Osmo Base for your tablet of choice, the reflector, and plenty of play pieces to get your adventure started. There’s also another starter kit that offers four games instead of six. That’s 33% off for the Amazon Fire tablet version or 10% off for the iPad version.

If you want to find more great deals on science kits for your little ones, our best science toys for kids guide has more great suggestions. 

STEM education is a teaching approach that combines science, technology, engineering and math. Its recent successor, STEAM, also incorporates the arts, which have the "ability to expand the limits of STEM education and application," according to Stem Education Guide. STEAM is designed to encourage discussions and problem-solving among students, developing both practical skills and appreciation for collaborations, according to the Institution for Art Integration and STEAM.

Rather than teach the five disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEAM integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications. 

According to the U.S. Department of Education "In an ever-changing, increasingly complex world, it's more important than ever that our nation's youth are prepared to bring knowledge and skills to solve problems, make sense of information, and know how to gather and evaluate evidence to make decisions." 

In 2009, the Obama administration announced the "Educate to Innovate" campaign to motivate and inspire students to excel in STEAM subjects. This campaign also addresses the inadequate number of teachers skilled to educate in these subjects. 

The Department of Education now offers a number of STEM-based programs, including research programs with a STEAM emphasis, STEAM grant selection programs and general programs that support STEAM education.

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Education awarded $141 million in new grants and $437 million to continue existing STEAM projects a breakdown of grants can be seen in their investment report.  

The importance of STEM and STEAM education

STEAM education is crucial to meet the needs of a changing world. According to an article from iD Tech, millions of STEAM jobs remain unfilled in the U.S., therefore efforts to fill this skill gap are of great importance. According to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics there is a projected growth of STEAM-related occupations of 10.5% between 2020 and 2030 compared to 7.5% in non-STEAM-related occupations. The median wage in 2020 was also higher in STEAM occupations ($89,780) compared to non-STEAM occupations ($40,020).

Between 2014 and 2024, employment in computer occupations is projected to increase by 12.5 percent between 2014 and 2024, according to a STEAM occupation report. With projected increases in STEAM-related occupations, there needs to be an equal increase in STEAM education efforts to encourage students into these fields otherwise the skill gap will continue to grow. 

STEAM jobs do not all require higher education or even a college degree. Less than half of entry-level STEAM jobs require a bachelor's degree or higher, according to skills gap website Burning Glass Technologies. However, a four-year degree is incredibly helpful with salary — the average advertised starting salary for entry-level STEAM jobs with a bachelor's requirement was 26 percent higher than jobs in the non-STEAM fields.. For every job posting for a bachelor's degree recipient in a non-STEAM field, there were 2.5 entry-level job postings for a bachelor's degree recipient in a STEAM field. 

STEAM blended learning

What separates STEAM from traditional science and math education is the blended learning environment and showing students how the scientific method can be applied to everyday life. It teaches students computational thinking and focuses on the real-world applications of problem-solving. As mentioned before, STEAM education begins while students are very young:

Elementary school — STEAM education focuses on the introductory level STEAM courses, as well as awareness of the STEAM fields and occupations. This initial step provides standards-based structured inquiry-based and real-world problem-based learning, connecting all four of the STEAM subjects. The goal is to pique students' interest into them wanting to pursue the courses, not because they have to. There is also an emphasis placed on bridging in-school and out-of-school STEAM learning opportunities. 

Middle school — At this stage, the courses become more rigorous and challenging. Student awareness of STEAM fields and occupations is still pursued, as well as the academic requirements of such fields. Student exploration of STEAM-related careers begins at this level, particularly for underrepresented populations. 

High school — The program of study focuses on the application of the subjects in a challenging and rigorous manner. Courses and pathways are now available in STEAM fields and occupations, as well as preparation for post-secondary education and employment. More emphasis is placed on bridging in-school and out-of-school STEAM opportunities.

Much of the STEAM curriculum is aimed toward attracting underrepresented populations. There is a significant disparity in the female to male ratio when it comes to those employed in STEAM fields, according to Stem Women. Approximately 1 in 4 STEAM graduates is female.  

Inequalities in STEAM education

Ethnically, people from Black backgrounds in STEAM education in the UK have poorer degree outcomes and lower rates of academic career progression compared to other ethnic groups, according to a report from The Royal Society. Although the proportion of Black students in STEAM higher education has increased over the last decade, they are leaving STEAM careers at a higher rate compared to other ethnic groups. 

"These reports highlight the challenges faced by Black researchers, but we also need to tackle the wider inequalities which exist across our society and prevent talented people from pursuing careers in science." President of the Royal Society, Sir Adrian Smith said. 

Asian students typically have the highest level of interest in STEAM. According to the Royal Society report in 2018/19 18.7% of academic staff in STEAM were from ethnic minority groups, of these groups 13.2% were Asian compared to 1.7% who were Black. 

Additional resources

If you want to learn more about why STEAM is so important check out this informative article from the University of San Diego. Explore some handy STEAM education teaching resources courtesy of the Resilient Educator. Looking for tips to help get children into STEAM? Forbes has got you covered.  

Bibliography

• Lee, Meggan J., et al. 'If you aren't White, Asian or Indian, you aren't an engineer': racial microaggressions in STEM education." International Journal of STEM Education 7.1 (2020): 1-16. 
• STEM Occupations: Past, Present, And Future. Stella Fayer, Alan Lacey, and Audrey Watson. A report. 2017. 
• Institution for Art Integration and STEAM What is STEAM education? 
• Barone, Ryan, 'The state of STEM education told through 18 stats', iD Tech.  
• U.S. Department of Education, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, including Computer Science. 
• 'STEM sector must step up and end unacceptable disparities in Black staff', The Royal Society. A report, March 25, 2021.  
• 'Percentages of Women in STEM Statistics' Stemwomen.com  

Explore our list of some of the best free museums you can visit both in London and across the U.K. The cost of living in the U.K. is on the rise, but an entertaining and educational day out doesn’t have to break the bank. 

Whether you want to broaden your horizons, entertain the family during the school holidays or are simply looking for something free to do on a rainy day, a trip to a free museum might be just the ticket. 

Uncover the stories behind the artifacts, dive deeper into our planet's history, and hear the tales of those who came before us and shaped the world as we know it. Museums are a great way to learn about both local heritage and also culture on a global stage. They’re often brimming with rare objects from around the world and have the ability to bring history to life.

The U.K. is home to a wide variety of museums, there are over 30 free museums in London alone. Here we explore some of the best free museums from across the U.K. 

Related: Experiments for kids 

London

 The Science Museum 

Location: South Kensington, London. 

At the Science Museum, you can enjoy award-winning exhibitions and collections spanning the sciences. From Helen Sharman's iconic space suit to Amy Johnson's Gipsy Moth airplane, explore the extraordinary stories of human achievement and the challenges we have overcome.

You can even search through the museum's online collection and learn about objects that have changed our world and the exciting stories behind them. 

The Science Museum also boasts an impressive — recently renovated — IMAX theatre, tickets can be purchased online. 

Natural History Museum 

Location: South Kensington, London 

London's world-famous museum is home to over 80 million objects and specimens including plants, creatures, dinosaur fossils, rare bugs and more. Billions of years of natural history is all open to visitors, completely free of charge — you can even get up close to collections made by none other than Charles Darwin.

Conveniently located next door to London's Science Museum, the Natural History Museum is open 362 days a year (closed Dec. 24-26). 

Imperial War Museum 

Location: Lambeth Road, Lambeth, London 

Founded over a hundred years ago, Britain's national military museum chronicles the nation's experience of warfare across the decades. Over six stories of exhibits take visitors from the opening shots of the First World War, right up to the conflicts of the 21st century. 

As well as rare artifacts and impressive military vehicles, the Imperial War Museums' (IWM) London branch is also home to thousands of archives and records, which tell the stories of the real people caught up in conflicts at home and on the frontline. 

British Museum 

Location: Great Russell Street, London

Founded in 1753, London's oldest museum has everything from Egyptian mummies, to Aztec sculpture. Spanning two million years of human history — the oldest object being a Paleothithic chopping tool — you could literally spend days exploring the vast exhibits from across the world.

At the center of the British Museum, you can also visit the Reading Room, which served as the study space of some of the world's most famous writers and thinkers, including Mahatma Gandhi, Karl Marx, Mark Twain and Virginia Woolf.  

Victoria and Albert Museum  

Location: Cromwell Road, London

For art and design lovers, the Victoria and Albert (V&A) is the perfect free-to-visit attraction in Britain's capital. Named after Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, who laid the building's foundation stone in 1899, the V&A has an impressive collection of original masterpieces, contemporary art, architectural marvels and even a fantastic fashion gallery.

As well as dozens of free permanent exhibitions available in-house and online, the V&A also hosts temporary collections and events throughout the year, many of which are also completely free!  

North East

Discovery Museum 

Location: Blandford Square, Newcastle upon Tyne

The Discovery Museum offers a great selection of exhibits for the whole family. Here you can experience what it is like to fly with the RAF Red Arrows in the museum's new flight simulator or stand in awe at the world's first steam turbine-powered ship Turbina which stands proud in the central hall. 

The Discovery Museum also offers educational workshops and also provides a wealth of online content for virtual learning opportunities. You can even take a virtual tour and explore the "Charge! The Story of England's Northern Cavalry" gallery from the comfort of your own home.

North West

The Science and Industry Museum 

Location: Liverpool Road, Manchester 

Gets hands-on and witness science in action at the Science and Industry Museum. The museum's interactive gallery is sure to keep everyone busy. See how your reactions measure up against the speed of light, peer into the mirror of infinity, or watch your own skeleton ride a bike. 

You can also learn more about the historic cotton industry in Manchester in the museum's textile gallery and see how the "Cottonopolis" changed the world. Journey through Manchester's industrial innovations in the museum's revolution gallery, and discover the ground-breaking work that helped shape life as we know it. 

Yorkshire

Leeds City Museum 

Location: Millennium Square, Leeds

The Leeds City Museum consists of six impressive galleries: Life on Earth, The Collectors Cabinet, World View: Voices of Asia, The Leeds Story and Ancient Worlds.

The museum is home to an impressive collection of 800,000 animals, vegetables and minerals. The heavy-footed Moa skeleton — one of the largest birds ever to roam the planet — is not to be missed. In the Ancient Worlds gallery, you will find the final resting place of Nesyamun, the 3000-year-old Leeds Mummy, and the only known mummy known to hail from the 20th Dynasty.

East Midlands

Leicester Museum & Art Gallery 

Location: New Walk, Leicester

Formally known as the New Walk Museum, The Leicester Museum and Art Gallery is brimming with awe-inspiring collections and displays spanning the natural and cultural world. From ancient Egypt to wild animals, dinosaurs to Picasso ceramics, there is an exhibit for everyone. 

The Victorian Art Gallery contains a range of paintings dating up to the 19th Century and the Picasso ceramics collection was donated to the museum by Lord and Lady Attenborough. 

West Midlands

Lapworth Museum of Geology 

Location: University of Birmingham, Aston Webb A Block

Do you like rocks? If the answer is yes then the Lapworth Museum of Geology is certainly for you. Explore the last 3.6 billion years of Earth history with one of the UK's most impressive geological collections. 

And it is not just rocks! With a range of entertaining and interactive exhibits, from volcanoes to earthquakes and even dinosaurs, there is something for everyone. The museum boasts an extraordinary collection of over 250,000 specimens of rocks, fossils and minerals. There are also large collections of early geological maps and photographic material. 

East of England

Colchester Natural History Museum 

Location: High Street, Colchester

Explore the natural history of Britain, with a particular focus on north-east Essex with the Colchester Naural History Museum. Hear about the earthquake that shook Colchester in 1884 and learn about the mammoths and hippos that used to roam the area. 

There is a range of interactive displays to try out from peeking into a badger's set to hearing the monumental roar of a mammoth. The family-friendly museum is impressive both inside and out and is housed in the former All Saints Church.

South West

Bristol Museum & Art Gallery 

Location: Queens Road, Bristol

Explore three floors of exhibits at the remarkable Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. Upon entering the museum you are greeted by a grand hall and a Bristol Boxkite aircraft soaring above your head. The second floor hosts a series of stunning paintings as well as one of the best collections of Chinese glass outside of Asia.

From ancient Egypt to Assyria, dinosaurs to minerals and even Banksy's Paint Pot Angel, the museum offers something for everyone. There is also a dedicated under 5's discovery area designed to entertain the youngest visitors.

Northern Ireland

North Down Museum 

Location: Bangor, County Down 

Situated in the beautiful ground of Bangor Castle, this little museum tells the story of the region's history, archaeology and wildlife.Here you can see examples of incredible archaeological treasures such as the Ballycrochan Swords, dating from 500 BCE. 

Ever wondered what life was like for the Vikings? Get a taste of Viking life in the museum's replica longhouse.

You can also explore the links between North Down and the Far East with the museum's Jordan Collection — a fine selection of decorative Asian objects. 

Scotland

The National Museum of Scotland 

Location: Chambers Street, Edinburgh

Immerse yourself in Scottish history, discover the wonders of nature and learn about global cultures, all in one place. At the National Museum of Scotland, you can stand in the shadow of a giant T-rex skeleton cast or strike a pose in the Fashion and Style gallery. You can also find out more about Scotland's most controversial monarch — Mary, Queen of Scots, and hear her fascinating story. The museum is also home to Dolly the sheep — the first cloned mammal to be created from an adult cell. 

Fancy seeing what the museum looks like before you make the trip? You can take a virtual stroll around the museum and see what it has to offer. You can also explore over 1,000 objects from the national collection that have been added to the Google Arts and Culture online collection. 

Wales

National Museum Cardiff 

Location: Cathays Park, Cardiff

Surround yourself with awe-inspiring collections of national art, geology and natural history at the National Museum Cardiff. Wales is home to over 1000 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) covering approximately 12% of the country's surface area, according to Natural Resources Wales. At the museum, you can discover what makes Wales so significant and explore some of the environments that make Wales unique. 

The museum houses one of Europe's finest collections of art from Wales and across the world. Explore 500 years of paintings, sculptures and ceramics as well as a striking collection of Impressionist art. 

Your pupils might be able to count … sort of. New research suggests a person's pupil size can change based on the number of objects an individual observes in their visual field. 

Pupils are holes located in the center of the eye, which change size to regulate the amount of light that enters the eye based on how much is available in the environment. The response of our pupils to light "is one of the most basic sensory responses," the authors wrote in the new study. But pupils have been found to change size based on factors other than light, such as arousal, Live Science previously reported. 

The researchers of the new study hypothesized that pupils may also change size based on the number of objects that a person sees in their environment. 

Related: 3 ways technology affects your eyes

It's thought that most species have a certain "number sense," co-author David Burr, a professor at the University of Sydney and the University of Florence, said in the statement. Previous research has suggested that humans may develop a "crude number discrimination" as soon as a few hours after birth, according to the study.

"When we look around, we spontaneously perceive the form, size, movement and color of a scene. Equally spontaneously, we perceive the number of items before us," Burr said. "This ability, shared with most other animals, is an evolutionary fundamental: It reveals immediately important quantities, such as how many apples there are on the tree, or how many enemies are attacking."

To figure out if this ability lies within the pupils, the researchers presented 16 adult participants with images of dots on a monitor in an otherwise quiet, dark room. As the participants stared at the screen, without being asked to count the dots, a machine measured their pupil sizes.

The images contained either 18 or 24 black or white dots, and each dot was either separate or coupled up with a small line, giving the person the illusion that there were fewer dots on the monitor than there actually were, according to the statement. 

The researchers found that the size of the participants' pupils changed depending on how many dots they perceived. The participants' pupils dilated, or expanded, when they perceived a greater number of dots and constricted when they perceived fewer dots. 

The finding suggests that the pupil is equipped with some mechanism that can sense quantity, according to the statement. "This result shows that numerical information is intrinsically related to perception," lead author Elisa Castaldi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pisa said in the statement. "This could have important, practical implications."

For example, similar methods could be employed to detect dyscalculia, a learning disability  that makes people have trouble doing math, in very young children, she said. "It is very simple: Subjects simply look at a screen without making any active response, and their pupillary response is measured remotely."

The findings were published Oct. 12 in the journal Nature Communications.

Originally published on Live Science.

For 60 years, medical students have practiced CPR on a dummy doll — dubbed Resusci Annie — compressing her chest and breathing air into her plastic mouth. The face of that dummy, it turns out, isn't made up. It's based on the face of a teenage girl found dead in the Seine river in Paris in the late 19th century whose body was never identified but whose visage was captured in a mold, or "death mask." 

A new paper in the Christmas issue of The BMJ — a special edition of the medical journal that can include lighthearted or outside-of-the-box research — tells how the nameless corpse became a CPR manikin and earned the title of "the most kissed girl in the world."

"Every year we have to carry out mandatory CPR training which utilizes these mannequins," Dr. Stephanie Loke, co-author of the feature and a dental trainee at Liverpool University Dental Hospital, in Liverpool, U.K., told Live Science in an email. She and her co-author Dr. Sarah McKernon, also of the university's School of Dentistry, "simply wondered who the face was!" she added. 

Related: Lifesaving Beats: Songs Can Help with CPR Training

The story of Resusci Annie begins more than a century ago, when the dead body of a girl who looked about 16 was pulled from the Seine, the authors wrote. Because her body showed no signs of violence, some people speculated that she had drowned herself intentionally. The body was put on public display in a mortuary in hopes that someone could identify the deceased — a common practice at the time — but nobody identified the teen. She became known as "L'Inconnue de la Seine (the Unknown Woman of the Seine)." 

Though anonymous, she was by no means forgotten. The pathologist who performed her autopsy was so taken with her serene expression that he had a model maker create a plaster "death mask" of her face. The mask was replicated and sold. In fact, the Lorenzi model makers, who, according to the paper authors made the original death mask, still sell copies of it today under the title "Noyée [Drowned Woman] de la Seine."

In the late 1950s, when medical students were just starting to learn and practice CPR, Archer Gordon, a member of the American Heart Association"s CPR Committee, realized that a CPR dummy could save medical students from the unnecessary pain and potential rib damage of practicing CPR on each other. To manufacture such a thing, he and a Norwegian colleague sought the help of Norwegian toymaker Åsmund Laerdal. 

It turned out, Laerdal had seen a reproduction of "L'Inconnue de la Seine" on the wall of a relative's house, and he decided to give the CPR manikin the same face. Thus, in 1960, when the Laerdal company built the first CPR manikins, "L'Inconnue de la Seine" became "Resusci Annie," the CPR dummy, or Resusci Anne, as Laerdal refers to the doll on its website. Before making CPR manikins, Laerdal had manufactured a doll named Anne. "Perhaps, this is the name that stuck," Loke said.

The doll, made of soft plastic, had a collapsible chest so that students could practice chest compressions and open lips so that they could practice mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. 

Making the CPR manikin changed the course of the Laerdal company from toys to medical devices, as it describes on its website, where Resusci Anne is still available for purchase. The company estimates that 300 million people around the world have been trained in CPR, most of them with the help of Resusci Anne. One of those people, it seems, was Michael Jackson, who included the refrain "Annie are you okay?" in the song "Smooth Criminal" after he was inspired by his own CPR training, according to the BMJ paper. (This line is also used in CPR training when trainees  check for a response in the patient.)

But what about the ethics of making reproductions of a deceased person's face and selling them without consent? In an editorial published in the same issue of BMJ, writer and ethicist Julian Sheather notes that although putting bodies on display and passing around death masks were common practices in the 19th century when "L'Inconnue de la Seine" died, those practices would be "ethically troubling" today. 

"Few people would want an image of a dead loved one widely circulated without consent," Sheather wrote. In the editorial, Sheather seeks a middle ground between judging the past by present-day standards and suspending judgment of history altogether. "While I probably wouldn"t seek to remove the manikins in circulation, if making them now I might be tempted, out of respect, to anonymize her face," he wrote.

Originally published on Live Science.

With a rocky year of pandemic-related educational disruptions ahead, many parents are looking for ways to help their kids learn at home. Toys advertised as teaching STEM might seem like one way to fill the gap. But do they really work?

The answer is yes, research shows that toys can indeed teach science, technology, engineering and math concepts — but don't focus on advertising or fancy labels to find the best bets. There's no minimum educational requirement that toys must reach to label themselves a "STEM toy," so almost everything on the market is untested. Instead, experts say, look for toys that encourage open-ended, active play and problem-solving. Some proven winners? Tinkertoys, board games, decks of cards and building blocks. 

Related: The best STEM toys of 2020

"If I had a huge amount of money, I would donate it to getting a nice classic set of hardwood blocks for every child on Earth," said Jeffrey Trawick-Smith, a professor emeritus at the Center for Early Childhood Play at Eastern Connecticut University. "The things we've seen children do — they use language, they do pretend play. [Blocks] are just magical toys."

Classics of childhood

Trawick-Smith's work is part of a large body of research showing that creative, open-ended play is how young children learn STEM concepts. In preschool, for example, the construction of complex block buildings is associated with an improvement in math learning, according to a 2017 study published in the Journal of Early Childhood Research. Blocks, puzzles and shape toys boost spatial skills, according to a 2014 review article in the journal Trends in Neuroscience and Education. Spatial skills, in turn, are associated with later math learning, suggesting that the early exploration of shapes acts as a springboard for more complex math concepts.

There are five characteristics that make for a good educational toy, said Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a psychologist at Temple University who studies learning in early childhood. The toy should be active, not passive like watching something on a screen. It should be engaging, encouraging the child to get into a flow of activity rather than distracting them with bells and whistles that interrupt their concentration. It should be meaningful, giving the child control and agency over play. It should encourage or allow for social play. And finally, it should be fun.

"One of the really cool things about everyday good, old-fashioned play is that it has these characteristics built in," Hirsh-Pasek said. 

Toys that allow children to build and create also have the advantage of being renewable, Hirsh-Pasek said. They're different every time children return to them, meaning that kids don't become bored of them easily.

Though adults certainly don't have to participate in the building of every block tower, some grown-up guidance can help boost kids' learning from play. In a study published in 2011 in the journal Mind, Brain and Education, Hirsh-Pasek and her colleagues gave preschoolers Mega Bloks (large, interlocking building blocks that look like giant LEGOs) to play with, alongside their parents. One group was told to play freely with the blocks. Another was told to build a helipad. The third group was given a preassembled helipad to play with. The kids who played with the goal of building the helipad exhibited the most spatial-related language compared with the other two, the researchers found. This is an example of the power of guided play, Hirsh-Pasek said. 

Caregivers can encourage kids' learning by asking open-ended questions and nurturing their curiosity, said Allison Master, a research scientist at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington. When kids feel more connected to others while doing a STEM task, they enjoy it more — and kids who think STEM is fun and enjoyable are more likely to persist in formal STEM education, Master told Live Science. Building STEM into things you're already doing that kids enjoy — measuring while baking, or making nature observations on neighborhood walks — can be very powerful, she said.

Playing games

One useful tool adults can use while playing with their children is "math talk," said Trawick-Smith. This kind of talk encourages kids to think more deeply about math. For example, when teaching a preschooler about shapes, kids learn better when parents point out features like corners, sides and curves rather than simply labeling a shape as a triangle or a square, he said.

Board games and card games tend to provide excellent opportunities for math talk, Trawick-Smith said. For example, a parent might ask a child what number he or she needs to roll to reach the end of the gameboard, or encourage them to figure out how many spaces there are between their own game piece and another player's. A card game like "War" requires kids to decide which of two numbers is larger, and parents can encourage mathematical thinking by asking kids how much larger one card is than another.

"These are less about naming numbers, rote memory counting and naming shapes, and more about really actually thinking about mathematical concepts," Trawick-Smith said.

Conveniently, math talk doesn't require any toy purchases at all. Parents can play guessing games with their kids like "Which is the Most?" (All the books on the bookshelf or all the eggs in the fridge? All the toys in your toybox or all the socks in your drawer?) or play simple scorekeeping games like drop-the-clothespins-in-the-jar.

For those who are looking to expand their board game collection, Trawick-Smith recommends picking games that include dice, spinners or other counting-based methods of moving.

Batteries included

Educational experts aren't in agreement about the relative benefits of screens and tech in teaching kids. But when choosing educational tech, the same rules of active, engaging, meaningful, social and fun apply.

There are plenty of tech toys and apps that allow for open-ended and creative play, said Sudha Swaminathan, a professor of early childhood education at Eastern Connecticut State University. For preschoolers, coding robots like Fisher-Price's Code-a-Pillar and Terrapin's Bee-Bot offer an introduction to programming; kids rearrange segments of the caterpillar or press buttons on the robot bee to direct its movements. A small study, not yet peer-reviewed, by Swaminathan and undergraduate researcher Jenna Mazza found that preschoolers who learned to program Bee-Bot to travel from one point to another actually improved their abilities in other math tasks, like completing patterns and comparing lengths.

For older kids, the free apps Scratch (for 8 and up) and ScratchJr allow kids to program their own characters and stories. The apps were developed by researchers from Tufts University, MIT and The Playful Invention Company. Research in press from Tufts University shows that kids who play with coding toys show improved problem-solving skills in other tasks. A recent study in the journal Educational Technology Research and Development involving kindergartners, first- and second-graders who used ScratchJr found that kids' ability to grasp complex programming problems rose with age, though even the youngest grasped the foundational concepts.

Regardless of what STEM avenues parents want to pursue — whether planting some marigold seeds in a pot or playing with a programmable robot — the important thing is to make sure to keep the pressure off, Master said. 

"As long as you're teaching your kids to have fun and enjoy doing STEM, I think that's the most important thing," she said.

Originally published on Live Science.

This article was updated on April 3, 4:21 p.m.

Schools worldwide have closed in response to COVID-19, leaving parents and caregivers scrambling to find daily activities for their children. 

Today (April 3) Live Science updated our list of lessons, games, science experiments, live demonstrations and virtual tours, to help you find options that are educational, creative and entertaining during this uncertain period of self-isolation, social distancing and quarantine. 

Some of today's highlights include immersive virtual dives at marine sanctuaries; making dinosaur shadow puppets; behind-the-scenes glimpses and digital content from Shakespeare's Globe Theater; and a live butterfly camera.

Related: The ultimate kids' guide to the new coronavirus

New today (April 3)

Visit with butterflies from Central, South and North America in the San Diego Zoo's Hidden Jungle greenhouse, through their butterfly cam livestream. You can also find instructions for starting your own butterfly garden. 

New York City-based bookworms can use their New York Public Library (NYPL) cards to check out any of 300,000 e-books in the NYPL collection, via the library's SimplyE app, available for iOS and Android.

Make dinosaur shadow puppets with templates from the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, and stage your own stories about these extinct giants.

Tour marine sanctuaries and ocean habitats with a collection of virtual dives from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Dive into colorful coral reefs, swim with seals, or explore a shipwreck, sanctuary views can be seen on a personal computer or a smartphone. 

Theater-lovers can browse a range of classroom activities from the legendary Shakespeare's Globe theater. Weekly blogs and other resources introduce the cast and crew behind a new production of "Macbeth," created especially for young audiences.

San Francisco's Exploratorium offers activities to help kids understand the science behind viruses, how they affect the human body, and how we can protect ourselves against infection.

How do butterflies eat? What's the difference between frogs and toads? The Nature Museum in Chicago has videos and activities to acquaint kids with the natural world and to inspire their curiosity about the plants and animals in their own backyards.

Resources from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute introduce students to the impacts of climate change on marine habitats; explain the adaptations of animals that live in the deep sea; and present the challenges faced by ecosystems invaded by nonnative species, such as the so-called zombie shrimp. 

Head of the class

Scholastic launched a Learn at Home website with daily lessons that combine videos, stories and prompts for drawing and writing activities. Grade levels include pre-K and kindergarten, grades 1 and 2, grades 3 to 5, and grades 6 and up.

Khan Academy, a free online learning resource offering lessons, exercises and quizzes, has daily schedules for organizing at-home learning for students ages 4 to 18 years. On weekdays, Khan Academy is also offering daily livestreams on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to help parents and educators best utilize the website's tools and resources.

Crash Course is a YouTube channel offering engaging educational videos suitable for high school students. The channel features a wide range of subjects, from anatomy to world history.

ABCmouse.com is offering a free 30-day trial of its comprehensive early learning academy for children aged 2-8 and includes educational games and activities designed by teachers.

In response to school closures, dozens of companies that produce educational materials have made their resources available as free subscriptions; you can find links on the Kids Activities website. Links to free K-12 educational resources such as audiobooks, e-books, videos, multimedia materials and more are also available on the Open Culture website.

PBS KIDS and PBS LearningMedia are offering tools to help support learning at home, including educational videos and games from favorite series, and related skill-building offline activities.

Subscribe to Time Magazine's Time for Kids for elementary and middle school students, digital subscriptions are free for the duration of the school year. This is the first time that the magazine is fully accessible at home.

Virtual museums and field trips

More than 2,500 museums around the world have made their collections accessible online through Google Arts and Culture; you can also use Google to access virtual tours of national parks in the U.S. 

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City offers online learning materials for science fans of all ages. Their Ology science website provides games and activities for kids and covers a range of science topics, including archaeology, paleontology, astronomy and marine biology. AMNH courses on Khan Academy delve into subjects such as human evolution, earthquakes and volcanoes, the universe, and, of course, dinosaurs. You can also peek behind the scenes on the museum's YouTube channel, or take a tour of the universe in videos created for the Hayden Planetarium. 

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Air and Space Anywhere webpage provides virtual tours of the museum, and educational podcasts, games and activities about aircraft and spacecraft. And educators can turn to the museum's K-12 learning resources for STEM lessons, activities and videos on topics such as flight, planetary science, space, and engineering and technology.

All online programs and digital content at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum are now available for free.

Science learning

Every weekday at 10 a.m. PDT, the California Science Center is livestreaming "Stuck at Home Science," a new video series of science activities you can do at home.

Miami's Frost Science Museum's Frost Science@Home will give curious kids plenty to do, providing science activities and DIY science experiments. 

Teen science fans will nerd out over Nova Labs at PBS, where they'll discover multimedia experiences that combine video, animation and games to delve into fascinating scientific topics, such as polar ecosystems, solar storms and renewable energy.

NASA isn't just sending missions into space; the agency has also launched Teachable Moments, connecting classrooms — and homes — with resources for investigating the latest discoveries about our universe. There are a range of activities and lessons that are suitable for grades K-12.

NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is another source of free online content. Educators share daily Facebook Live videos that pair with hands-on activities (instructions are available as free downloads) using materials that can be found at home. Topics include rocketry 101, tours of Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Astronaut Training Experience, and living in space and on Mars.

"Space Racers," an animated series for preschoolers about spacefaring cadets at the Stardust Space Academy, also offers science-based lessons, games and space-related educational activities that families can explore together.

Ranger Rick, the children's magazine of the National Wildlife Federation, is making its website free to all visitors through the end of June. Free Ranger Rick Educator’s Guides and Ranger Rick Jr. Parent Reading Guides are also available to parents and educators.

Beginning physics students will find plenty to discover in the Physics Classroom, and there are teacher toolkits for supplementing the site's online lessons with videos, animations, simulations and exercises.

Want to have a family Q&A with a scientist? Sign up at Skype a Scientist and get matched with an expert, for a live Skype chat with your family about real scientific research. 

stemCONNECT uses video conferencing to bring together students and experts in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The site also has a free video library of Florida-based STEM experts talking about STEM application in a range of careers.

Explore simple plant science with this list of Live Science experiments, or learn about non-Newtonian fluids by making colorful slime — regular or extra puffy — with glue and food coloring.

Creative and relaxing fun

Color Our Collections offers free PDF downloads of coloring pages created from art in the collections of 117 institutions, including The New York Academy of Medicine Library, Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, RISD Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art, The Canadian Canoe Museum and The Royal Horticultural Society libraries.

Got a 3D printer? You can download digital 3D models from NASA and print miniature satellites, landing sites, asteroids, spacecraft, spacesuits and astronaut tools.

If you have a regular printer (and paper), you can print and build paper models of Rosetta and Philae, the space probe and lander that visited comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in 2014. More paper models of satellites and observatories are available for download from the European Space Agency's website.

Artist and writer Mo Willems (author of "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!") is hosting daily Lunch Doodles video sessions every weekday at 1 p.m. EDT. Each daily episode is accompanied by a downloadable activity page. 

What could be more soothing than watching jellyfish drifting serenely through the water? In "MeditOcean," the Monterey Bay Aquarium hosts a soothing 11-minute guided meditation video, featuring the undulating and graceful ballet of several aquarium jellyfish. 

Children in grades 3 to 12 can learn to write their names in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, in this step-by-step guide from the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada.

A good story sounds even better when it's read in microgravity. Story Time from Space sends children's books to the International Space Station (ISS), where the books are read on video by astronauts as they orbit hundreds of miles above Earth.

Snap Circuits are educational kits that teach kids — and adults! — about engineering and how electronics work. To help teachers, parents and students, the company has made its how-to guides available to download for free. 

Get moving with fitness instructor Joe Wicks! His new video series, P.E. with Joe, presents a daily 30-minute workout that kids can perform at home.

There are 10 live webcams at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where you can peek at sharks, sea otters, penguins and more. The San Diego Zoo has 11 animal webcams, Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute has four animal webcams, and there are six webcams at the Houston Zoo. 

And if you're feeling really adventurous, you can visit the surface of Mars in a spectacular high-resolution, 360-degree photo tour, created from images captured by the Curiosity rover.

• Coronavirus in the US: Map, case counts and news
• The 12 deadliest viruses on Earth 
• 11 surprising facts about the respiratory system 

Originally published on Live Science.

Below is an excerpt of "The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird" by Joshua Hammer, published by Simon & Schuster on Feb. 11, 2020. 

Read more about the amazing true story of the man who spent decades smuggling and selling wild falcons, some of which commanded prices in the tens and thousands of dollars.

The man had been in there far too long, John Struczynski thought. Twenty minutes had elapsed since he had entered the shower facility in the Emirates Lounge for business and first-class passengers at Birmingham International Airport, in the West Midlands region of England, 113 miles north of London. Now Struczynski stood in the corridor outside the shower room, a stack of fresh towels in the cart beside him, a mop, a pail, and a pair of caution wet floor signs at his feet. The janitor was impatient to clean the place. 

The man and a female companion had been the first ones that day to enter the lounge, a warmly decorated room with butterscotch armchairs, a powder-blue carpet, dark wood columns, glass coffee tables, and black-shaded Chinese porcelain lamps. It was Monday, May 3, 2010—a bank holiday in the United Kingdom—and the lounge had opened at noon to accommodate passengers booked on the 2:40 p.m. Emirates direct flight to Dubai. The couple had settled into an alcove with a television near the reception desk. Minutes later the man had stood up and headed for the shower, carrying a shoulder bag and two small suitcases. That had struck Struczynski as strange. Who brings all of his luggage into the business-and-first-class shower room? And now he had been in there two or three times longer than any normal passenger. 

A tall, lean man in his forties with short-cropped graying hair and a brush mustache, Struczynski had spent a decade monitoring 130 closed-circuit television cameras on the night shift at a Birmingham shopping mall, a job that “gave me a background in watching people,” he would later say. That February, after the security firm laid him off, a management company had hired him to clean the Emirates Lounge. The first week he was there, the contractor enrolled him in an on-site training course to identify potential terrorist threats. The course, he would later say, heightened his normal state of suspicion. 

As Struczynski puttered around the hallway, the shower room door opened, and the passenger—a balding, slender, middle-aged white man of average height—stepped out. He slipped past Struczynski without looking at him. 

The cleaner opened the shower facility door and looked around the room. 

My goodness, he thought. What do we have here? 

The shower floor and glass partition surrounding it were both bone-dry. All the towels remained stacked and neatly folded. The toilet for the disabled hadn’t been used. The washbasin didn’t have a drop of water in it. Though the man had been inside the room for twenty minutes, he didn’t appear to have touched anything. 

Struczynski recalled the terrorism workshop that he had taken three months earlier, the exhortations from the instructor to watch out for odd looks and unusual behavior. This passenger was up to something. He knew it. Not sure what he was looking for, he rifled through the towels and facecloths, rummaged beneath the complimentary toothpaste tubes and other toiletries, checked the rubbish bin. He mounted a footstool and dislodged two ceiling tiles, wedging his hand into the hollow space just above them. Nothing. 

He shifted his attention to the baby-changing area. In the corner of the alcove stood a plastic waist-high diaper bin with a round flip lid. Struczynski removed the top and looked inside. He noticed something sitting on the bottom: a green cardboard egg carton. 

In one of the middle slots sat a single egg, dyed blood-red. 

He stared at it, touched it gently. What could it mean? 

He recalled the recent arrest at Heathrow Airport outside London of a man trying to smuggle rare Indian box turtles in egg cartons. But that seemed so odd. More likely this passenger was moving narcotics—like the gangsters in Liverpool who wedged packets of heroin and cocaine inside plastic Kinder Egg containers. That’s it, he thought. It must have something to do with drugs. 

Struczynski approached the reception area, a few steps from where the man and his traveling companion were sitting, and spoke softly to the two women working at the front desk. We may have a problem, he murmured, describing what he had just observed. He suggested that they call airport security, then returned to the shower and locked the door so that no one could disturb the evidence. Soon two uniformed security men entered the lounge, interviewed Struczynski, and examined the shower. The facility couldn’t be seen from the alcove in which the passengers were sitting, and so, absorbed in conversation, the couple failed to notice the sudden activity. 

The security guards summoned a pair of airport-based plainclothes officers from the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit. Formed in 2007 in the wake of the London bus-and-underground bombings, the unit had grown from seventy to nearly five hundred officers, and was chiefly concerned with combating Islamist extremism. Counterterrorism forces had recently arrested a gang that had conspired to kidnap and behead a British officer and post the footage online, and had helped foil a plot by a Birmingham-born terrorist to blow up transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives. These men, too, questioned Struczynski, examined the egg box in the diaper bin, and asked the janitor to point out the passenger. They flashed the badges attached to lanyards around their necks, and chatted with him and his companion politely. Struczynski watched discreetly as the pair stood up and, flanked by the police, exited the lounge.

Excerpt from THE FALCON THIEF by Joshua Hammer

Copyright © 2020 by Joshua Hammer. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc, NY.

Originally published on Live Science.

Two grinning men pose for a video camera in front of a helicopter: "We're going on a tour," one of them says and laughs. But what they were about to do was no joyride; it was both dangerous and illegal. They were attempting to steal the eggs of rare falcons from the birds' nests, on a perilously steep cliff in Nunavik territory in northern Quebec.

Another clip shows one of the men, Jeffrey Lendrum, dangling from a harness, a pouch at the ready for holding stolen eggs. Recorded in 2000, the footage was found in Lendrum's luggage when he was arrested in May 2010 in the United Kingdom on suspicion of smuggling 14 peregrine falcon eggs out of the country, the BBC reported that year.

Lendrum pled guilty to that crime in August 2010, but the conviction wasn't his first — nor would it be his last. Over four decades, Lendrum steadily built a reputation as a master smuggler of endangered falcon eggs, stealing them from locations around the world and selling them to private collectors for tens of thousands of dollars apiece. His remarkable tale comes together piece by astonishing piece in the book "The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird" (Simon & Schuster) by Joshua Hammer, published today (Feb. 11).

Related: See gorgeous photos of birds of prey

Falcons are swift and graceful birds of prey, and people have trained and bred these raptors as hunters for thousands of years across the Middle East, where falcons are still highly valued, Hammer told Live Science. 

Breeding captive falcons for collectors is a tightly regulated and extremely profitable business. Healthy adult peregrines (Falco peregrinus) may fetch as much as $25,000 from eager collectors in Qatar, while the Arctic gyrfalcon (Falco rusticolus), the largest of all falcons, can command a price of up to $250,000, Forbes reported in 2015. 

"Some Arab sheiks are willing to pay $400,000 for a single white gyrfalcon, which is considered the most beautiful and rarest of birds," Hammer said.

In fact, demand across the Persian Gulf for wild falcons is so high that opportunities abound for people like Lendrum, who steal and sell the protected birds and their eggs. Research into Lendrum's underworld network revealed just a glimpse of an extensive black market for illegal falcons, Hammer added.

"Lendrum's not the only one who would go off to remote corners of Russia or Pakistan or any place you find wild raptors, and catch these birds and then smuggle them," he said. 

When writing "The Falcon Thief," Hammer tracked down the camera operator who shot the Quebec helicopter footage, an associate of Lendrum's named Paul Mullin. That story became one of the centerpieces of Hammer's book, and the "outlandish, expensive operation, apparently financed by the sheiks," marked the pinnacle of Lendrum's criminal career, according to Hammer.

"It was kind of all downhill from there," he said.

Multiple arrests

Though Lendrum is but a single player in the illegal falcon trade, he's arguably the best-known of these egg thieves, due to the spectacle of his airport arrests over the past 10 years. His capture in May 2010 at Birmingham Airport airport in the U.K. made headlines, and was accompanied by a photo of Lendrum wearing 14 swaddled peregrine eggs taped to his body in a custom sling to keep them warm, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). 

But Lendrum insisted that they were duck eggs, and that he was wearing them on his doctor's recommendation to help with back pain, Hammer wrote in the book. That excuse didn't fly with the judge, who sentenced Lendrum to 30 months in jail, the RSPB reported.

Related: World's fastest animals: The peregrine falcon and other speedsters

Lendrum was arrested again in October 2015 at Sao Paulo International Airport in Brazil, as he was trying to board a plane with an incubator holding four eggs he had stolen in Chile; those eggs were thought to belong to the rare peregrine subspecies Falco peregrinus cassini, or Cassini falcon, the UK National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU) reported. Chicks from these eggs would have commanded up to $80,000 each on the black market, according to the NWCU.

In January 2016, a Brazilian judge sentenced Lendrum to 4.5 years in jail, but Lendrum had already skipped bail and left the country (he is currently facing extradition to Brazil, The Guardian reported).

However, Brazilian officials will have to wait for Lendrum to first finish serving yet another sentence in the U.K. He was arrested in June 2018 arriving at Heathrow Airport from Johannesburg, South Africa, and he was carrying a substantial payload of purloined avian wildlife, a U.K. Border Control representative said in a statement.

"During a full search, he was found to be wearing a body belt concealing 19 bird eggs as well as 2 newly-hatched chicks," according to the statement. 

At the trial, Lendrum told the court that "his intention was to rescue the eggs after he encountered some men chopping down trees containing their nests." But wildlife experts overturned his story when they identified the eggs as originating from nests on cliffs, and on Jan. 10, Lendrum was sentenced to 3 years and 1 month in prison. 

"He can't stop lying"

For some people, serving a string of jail terms in multiple countries might be a deterrent to future crimes, perhaps encouraging them to rethink their thieving ways. However, that was clearly not the case with Lendrum, who to this day downplays the seriousness of his acts and continues to spin fabulous fabrications about his intentions for the eggs that he has stolen, Hammer said. 

"He can't stop lying," Hammer said. "I saw the interrogation tapes when he was on trial in Brazil; he'll tell these incredibly outlandish lies one after another, which the judge basically laughed at before sentencing him to five years in prison."

Lendrum's convoluted and fantastic explanations for his so-called conservation activities, along with his utter lack of remorse, likely also contributed to the length of his latest prison sentence in the U.K., Hammer added. 

"He was very opaque — sort of a self-deluding liar — and he remained in total denial about everything that he had done, even though the evidence was just so overwhelming," Hammer said.

As Lendrum himself said in an interview with Hammer: "I honestly didn't think that there would be a problem if I were caught."

Read an excerpt from "The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird."

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Originally published on Live Science.

Finding eroded hills

West Virginia University geologists Graham Andrews (shown in picture) and Sarah Brown, discovered glacier-eroded hills called drumlins, and their larger counterparts whalebacks and megawhalebacks while journeying through northern Namibia.

Measuring the structures

West Virginia University senior Andrew McGrady then used morphometrics, or measurements of shapes to figure out if these structures could have been carved by ice streams.

A map of Namibia

By analyzing the area using Google Earth, the researchers found that there were around a hundred or so of these drumlins and whalebacks sprinkled around the area of Twyfelfontein in Namibia.

A drumlin

Here is one of six or seven drumlins that the researchers found on their trip to Namibia.

A drumlin

These drumlins were crafted by ice streams that flowed over the area around 300 million years ago. Between now and then, hundreds of thousands of rocks covered the structures — and then eventually eroded again, re-exposing them.

A drumlin

These drumlins haven't been documented before.

A megawhaleback

Similarly, megawhalebacks are hills eroded by ice streams, but when seen from above, they are longer and more elliptical in shape than drumlins.

A megawhaleback

By looking at the location and orientation of these megawhalebacks, the team concluded that the ice stream likely flowed toward the northwest into shallow waters in modern-day Brazil. Their findings further confirm that southern Africa was joined with South America and sat over the South Pole during this late Paleozoic age.

A megawhaleback

This zoomed-in photo shows grooves carved into the bedrock by the ancient ice stream in Namibia.

Canada lynx

With spectacular images, the PBS Nature miniseries "Super Cats" showcases the beauty and diversity of wild cats around the world.

Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) are the most northerly cats — a record they share with their Eurasian cousins. Thick fur and huge snowshoe-like feet help them deal with arctic conditions and keep up with their equally specialist prey. Learn more at PBS Nature's "Super Cats" website.

Lion

Lions (Panthera leo) are the only cat to live in groups. In numbers they find the strength and audacity to hunt the most formidable prey.

Leopard

From the deserts of Southern Africa, to the Boreal forests of Russia to the bustling suburbs of Mumbai in India, leopards (Panthera pardus) thrive in more environments than any other wild cat.

Cheetah

A cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), Namibia. Cheetahs are not just the fastest cats but the fastest animals on land, too. The latest research is beginning to reveal that it is their extraordinary maneuverability that really gives them their killer edge.

Caracal

A caracal (Caracal caracal) in Namibia. Their long powerful legs enable them to leap as high as 10 feet and hunt birds on the wing.

Ocelot

Ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) are small and superbly camouflaged cats that thrive in the forests of Central America. Lightweight and agile, they can climb high up into the trees.

Serval

A serval (Leptailurus serval), South Africa. Proportionally, servals have the longest ears and legs of any cat, and are adapted to detect and leap for prey amongst tall savanna grass. The world's densest population of these small cats have made their home in a secure wasteland that surrounds Africa's biggest industrial complex.

Black-footed cat

Black-footed cats (Felis nigripes) hunt amongst the short desert scrub in the Karoo of South Africa. They are Africa's smallest cat, and the deadliest of the entire cat family — with a 60 percent hunting success rate. Anything that moves is a potential meal, from locusts to birds to gerbils.

Read more about these adorable, remorseless killing machines.

Fishing cat

A fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) and kitten, hunt for fish in Bangladesh. They are suited to a life in the monsoon wetlands. Beneath a long outer coat they have a short layer of insulating fur that acts like a wetsuit — and they have partially webbed feet.

Jaguar

A jaguar (Panthera onca), Central America. Jaguars are the biggest cat in the Americas. For their size, they have the strongest bite of any cat. On the coast of Costa Rica, they leave the jungle to hunt turtles on the beach.

Pallas's cat

Pallas's cats (Otocolobus manul) thrive in the remote grasslands of the Mongolian steppe. They are perfectly adapted to hide in this open landscape, as they have a wide head and low ears, and can flatten their bodies to look like a rock when hunting.

Desert lions

Desert lions (Panthera leo) live in small isolated prides and roam huge territories, relying on shared knowledge to find food in the harsh Namib desert. These three cubs were orphaned at barely a year old. They survive against the odds as the desert's youngest and most inexperienced pride.

Jaguar

A jaguar (Panthera onca) in Costa Rica, seen in an image from a thermal camera, has learned to hunt turtles on a pacific beach. For their size, they have the strongest jaws of any cat — powerful enough to break into a turtle's shell to feed on the rich source of food.

Uncommon viewpoint

Conservationist Kevin Richardson has immersed himself in a pride of lions (Panthera leo), discovering a unique perspective on their behavior.

Tech to the rescue

In order to study the sprinting abilities of cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus), Professor Alan Wilson built his own plane from scratch just to keep up with the world's fastest land animals.

Mountain lion cub

A young mountain lion cub (Puma concolor) is fitted with a GPS collar so scientists can follow her early life. Over time her striking blue eyes will darken.

Teasing out info

Dr. Natalia Borrego works with so-called lion whisperer Kevin Richardson to carry out IQ tests. She believes that they are smartest of all the cats.

Urban leopard cub

An urban leopard cub (Panthera pardus) drinks from a backyard pond. One of the largest cities on the planet, Mumbai is also home to the densest population of leopards.

Tigers

Tigers (Panthera tigris) are the biggest of all the cats — from the giant Siberian tigers that roam the frozen boreal forest of Russia, to the secretive swamp tigers of the Indian Sundarbans that bathe in seawater and patrol muddy shores. In the early 20th century, 100,000 tigers reigned across Asia and Europe, but today there are fewer than 4,000 in the wild.

Snow leopard

A snow leopard (Panthera uncia), Indian Himalayas. The "Ghost of the Himalaya" is the world's highest living and most lonesome cat. They live in huge territories, where food is scarce and finding a mate is even harder.

Cheetah

Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus), Namibia. Cheetahs are not just the fastest cats but the fastest animals on land, too. The latest research is beginning to reveal that it is their extraordinary manoeuvrability that really gives them the killer edge.

Leopard

Leopard (Panthera pardus), Namibia. Leopards thrive in more environments than any other wild cat but that does not mean life is easy. Leopard mothers must leave their vulnerable young cubs if they are to hunt successfully.

Rusty spotted cat

Rusty spotted cat (Prionailurus rubiginosus), Sri Lanka. This miniature predator is the world’s smallest cat, so small that they are happy dining on bugs.

Pumas

Pumas (Puma concolor) are the widest-ranging mammal in the Americas, thanks to extraordinary adaptability and an eye for opportunity. They even stalk the most unlikely of prey: penguins.

Puma cubs

Puma cubs (Puma concolor). Puma, mountain lion, cougar: these are all names for the same cat. In fact, they hold the Guinness World Record for more names than other animal, perhaps thanks to their extraordinary range, from the North to the South of the Americas.

Margay

Margay (Leopardus wiedii), Central America. Margay are the tree-climbing experts of the cat world. They will never get stuck in a tree; their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to walk down vertically.

Jaguar

Jaguar (Panthera onca), South/Central America. Jaguars are the largest cat in the Americas and have a bite to match. For their size, it's the strongest of any cat, allowing them to dispatch monstrous prey such as caiman crocodiles.

It appears that a high school student in Davis, California, baked her grandfather's ashes into sugar cookies and gave them out at school on Oct. 4. Yes, people ate them. And, yes, this is a real news story. It was reported in the Los Angeles Times. Apparently, some of the sugar-cookie-eaters knew about the ashes in the sugar cookies before they ate the sugar cookies. Again, this is a real news story.

Sit with that for a moment.

It's probably a pretty good guess that most folks would agree that baking a dead person's ashes into sugar cookies and then feeding those crematory confections to teenagers is a bad thing to do. [9 Disgusting Things That the FDA Allows in Your Food]

But how bad is it really, at least from a health perspective?

Live Science reached out to microbiologist Rolf Halden, director of the Center for Environmental Health Engineering at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute and an expert in environmental contamination, for an answer to that question.

Halden said he didn't want to comment on this case in particular — Davis police are investigating the incident — but shared his views on the practice of baking cremated human remains (or "cremains") into sugar cookies and feeding those sugar cookies to other human beings.

It turns out that in some circumstances, this might not be much of a problem — at least in terms of making the cookie-eaters sick. (Whether it's an ethical problem is another issue.)

"Cremation essentially mineralizes the human body and produces ashes that are rich in carbon and not much of a health concern," Halden said.

So, the ash isn't toxic, and it's not like it would carry any diseases.

"Proper cremation will remove all infectious properties of the remains, thus allowing people to take the ashes home and store them in living spaces," he added.

That doesn't mean there are no possible dangers.

"The one potential concern worthy of consideration would be heavy metals, as can be found particularly in tooth fillings," he said.

But even that probably wouldn't pose a problem, Halden added, because those materials are often removed from the ashes after cremation, and also because you'd need to consume a lot of them for them to pose a significant danger.

So, the verdict on eating sugar cookies with someone's grandfather's ashes in them from a purely health and safety perspective? It's probably no big deal.

But one of the teenagers who ate one of the cookies told the Los Angeles Times that the ashes looked like "tiny gray flecks" and had a texture of sand "crunching in between your teeth."

So, you know, maybe avoid that.

Originally published on Live Science.

Today's college students have more perfectionistic traits than those of decades past, a new study suggests.

The study is one of the first to examine generational differences in perfectionism, which is defined as having excessively high standards for oneself and being overly self-critical.

In the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 41,000 college students in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom who had completed a survey called the "Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale." The students took the survey between 1989 and 2016. [9 DIY Ways to Improve Your Mental Health]

The survey measures three different types of perfectionism: "self-oriented" perfectionism, or placing high expectations on oneself; "socially prescribed" perfectionism, or thinking that others have high expectations of you; and "other-oriented" perfectionism, or placing high standards on others. Some of the survey's questions include: "When I am working on something, I cannot relax until it is perfect"; "I find it difficult to meet others’ expectations of me"; and "Everything that others do must be of top-notch quality."

The researchers found that today's college students had higher scores on all three types of perfectionism compared with students in earlier decades. Between 1989 and 2016, students' average score for self-oriented perfectionism increased by 10 percent, the average score for socially prescribed perfectionism increased by 33 percent and the average score for other-oriented perfectionism increased by 16 percent.

This rise in perfectionism may be due to a number of factors, including social media use and competition to get into the best colleges or land well-paying jobs, the researchers said.

"These findings suggest that recent generations of college students have higher expectations of themselves and others than previous generations," lead study author Thomas Curran, a social psychologist at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "Today's young people are competing with each other in order to meet societal pressures to succeed, and they feel that perfectionism is necessary in order to feel safe, socially connected and of worth."

For example, some data suggest that social media, which allows people to present a perfect image of themselves, may result in young adults feeling more dissatisfied with their bodies or more socially isolated when they compare themselves with these "perfect" images, the researchers said. However, more research is needed to confirm this, they noted.

In addition, young people face intense competition to get into the best colleges and to move up the social and economic ladder, the researchers said. For example, in 1976, about half of high school seniors expected to earn a college degree, compared with 80 percent in 2008. But the actual percentage of young adults who earn college degrees hasn't kept up with their rising expectations: The gap between the percentage of high school seniors expecting to earn a college degree and those who obtain a college degree doubled between 1976 and 2000, Curran said.

The rise in perfectionism could be affecting young adults' mental health, as there has been an increase in levels of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts among college students in recent years, Curran said.

The study was published online on Dec. 28, 2017, in the journal Psychological Bulletin.

Original article on Live Science.

Medical schools have historically used human cadavers to train students in anatomy and medical procedures, a tradition that dates back hundreds of years. However, a unique type of medical model provides a remarkably human alternative to working with preserved corpses.

SynDaver synthetic humans are anatomically accurate medical models fabricated by the company SynDaver Labs. All of the body's muscles, organs and systems are meticulously represented, and unlike traditional models made of rubbery silicon or rigid plastic, SynDavers' are moist and pliable, and they closely resemble living tissue.

One type of these human models, built to train surgeons and first responders, even mimics what happens in the body during surgery or trauma, presenting the biological functions in a living person in distress, such as fluctuating respiration, blood pressure and heartbeat, according to the SynDaver website. [In Photos: Explore a Biodigital Human Body]

"The patient simulator that we have actually replicates the condition of a real patient — right down to, basically, bleeding to death," Kevin King, SynDaver's vice president for global marketing, told Live Science.

"It mimics exactly the physiology you and I would have, if we were to sustain the same injury," King said. "The heart rate would speed up, the blood pressure would drop, respiration would speed up. Our model is able to replicate all of those things."

These simulators, which can cost as much as $100,000, not only include organs and tissues that feel real, they also contain dynamic internal systems that interact with software. Using a tablet controller, instructors can program elements in their "patient" such as heart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure, while a blood-like liquid drawn from refillable reservoirs circulates through the synthetic body and spills from its "wounds," providing a valuable learning environment for surgeons, King said.

"Throughout most of their training, most students would never have the opportunity to hold a human heart in their hand," King told Live Science. "Ours mimics all those properties, and it actually pumps, so they can see what a living heart would do."

Other SynDavers that are merely realistic anatomical models without moving parts come with a price starting at $60,000, and they have the same remarkably lifelike feel to their tissues, which are made from materials that mimic the tactile sensation, elasticity and physiological properties of human soft tissue, King said.

In fact, the television show "MythBusters," which recently returned to the Science Channel, used SynDavers as stand-ins to address the damage that could be done to the human body by some of the show's myth-busting scenarios, MythBusters' hosts Jon Lung and Brian Louden recently told Live Science.

"It is probably one of the most interesting tools we have in our arsenal," Lung said.

"You would really have to use a human cadaver to do the tests that we do as accurately as we do them — and you just can't do that," he said.

What makes SynDavers' faux-organic organs, skin and muscles so lifelike? Moisture is a key component of the polymer's secret recipe — "'Water, salt and fibers' is what I'm allowed to tell you," King said. [5 Amazing Technologies That Are Revolutionizing Biotech]

Realistic conditions             

In recent years, SynDaver is just one of many technological advances in medicine that have improved the tools that doctors use for training, diagnosis and surgeries.

Magnetic resonance imaging — MRIs — can visualize structures as delicate as the brain's individual blood vessels, allowing experts to model them in 3D and pinpoint brain regions for repair. Surgeons can use targeted radiation beams to destroy tumors or lesions in the brain and in other parts of the body.

Researchers are also developing stretchy, wearable electronics that could one day serve as ultrathin "smart gloves," helping doctors and nurses to diagnose or treat patients with a single touch.

Sophisticated virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) surgery simulations — sometimes incorporated with 3D-printed organ models — are also proving to be valuable for doctors and medical students, enabling them to learn or practice tricky surgical techniques under realistic conditions that carry no risk to a patient, Live Science previously reported.

However, while being able to virtually "lift" a 3D image of a still-beating heart out of a patient sounds visually impressive, VR and AR are ultimately no match for a hands-on, visceral experience when it comes to treating or studying the human body, King told Live Science.

"I would much rather them put their hands inside the technology, feel the real weight of a heart, feel the beating of a heart as it exists in its native environment, not floating through space," he explained.

Original article on Live Science.

If you're shopping for that someone who loves to learn and is just curious about the world, how about a book? Here's a look at some of the best book deals on Amazon this Cyber Monday that are sure to dazzle the science lover in your life.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Picador, 2015)

Five major extinctions have taken place over the course of Earth's geologic past; each wiped out significant portions of life on the planet. Could we be heading for a sixth mass extinction, spurred by human activity? As human populations have expanded across the globe, they have taken a toll on natural resources and reshaped ecosystems on land and sea. Author Elizabeth Kolbert outlines the many ways that people have changed the planet, noting the environmental costs along the way and the number of species that have already been lost — and hinting at losses that may be yet to come, unless we take action to preserve the precious biodiversity that still remains.

Everything All at Once: How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap into Radical Curiosity and Solve Any Problem (Rodale Books, 2017)

In his new book, Bill Nye helps you to unlock your inner nerd. How? By finding that thing you're passionate about. "With his call to arms, he wants you to examine every detail of the most difficult problems that look unsolvable―that is, until you find the solution. Bill shows you how to develop critical thinking skills and create change, using his “everything all at once” approach that leaves no stone unturned," according to Amazon.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017)

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gives you the quick and dirty explanations to all things astrophysics, from the Big Bang to black holes to quarks and more. Tyson has a way with words so that you'll not only understand concepts that seem ungraspable, but you'll have fun along the way. Right now, Amazon is selling the Kindle version of the book for $3.99.

Blast Off to the Moon! (Dr. Wonderful and Her Dog) Hardcover (Two Lions, May 2, 2017)

According to Amazon, "Dr. Wonderful loves asking big questions…and using science to answer them. She and her dog, Newton, want to know why the moon changes shape in the sky every night. But how can they study the moon when it’s so far away? By blasting off into space, of course! On their amazing journey, this detective duo gathers clues to solve their lunar mystery using the powers of science, curiosity, and teamwork."

Elon Musk and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Young Readers' Edition Paperback (HarperCollins, Jan. 24, 2017)

This book was written with exclusive access to Elon Musk, founder of revolutionary spaceflight company SpaceX. The book traces Musk's journey as he matured from a kid in South Africa to a young man in the United States, through his inventions and forward-thinking companies.

According to Amazon, "This fascinating and easily accessible young readers’ adaptation of Ashlee Vance’s New York Times bestselling Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future features black-and-white photographs throughout and an epilogue. The version for adults has been praised as 'riveting' (The Financial Times), 'spirited' (The Wall Street Journal), and 'masterful' (Vice). Now younger readers can read about this innovative leader who is revolutionizing three industries at once: space, automotive, and energy."

What Color Is My World?: The Lost History of African-American Inventors Paperback (Candlewick, Dec. 10, 2013)

In this kid-friendly book, basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reveals little-known African-American inventors, such as James West who invented the microphone in your cellphone and Fred Jones who invented the refrigerated truck that makes supermarkets possible. According to Amazon, "Offering profiles with fast facts on flaps and framed by a funny contemporary story featuring two feisty twins, here is a nod to the minds behind the gamma electric cell and the ice-cream scoop, improvements to traffic lights, open-heart surgery, and more � inventors whose ingenuity and perseverance against great odds made our world safer, better, and brighter."  

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Originally published on Live Science.

Cysts caused by hereditary polycystic kidney disease (PKD) distorted and enlarged the organ, which was donated to the University of Queensland's (UQ) Integrated Pathology Learning Centre by Fiona Murray, UQ representatives announced in a statement.

Murray, a resident of New Beith, Queensland, received a kidney and liver transplant in 2014; during her wait for donor organs to become available, the size of her liver made her look and feel like she "was pregnant for seven-odd years," Murray said in the statement. [27 Oddest Medical Case Reports]

A healthy liver typically measures about 6 inches (15 centimeters) wide and weighs between 2.6 and 3.3 lbs. (1.2 to 1.5 kg). An enlarged liver can hint at a range of diseases, including heart disease, some genetic diseases and certain types of cancers, according to the Mayo Clinic.

In Murray's case, her enlarged liver was covered in cysts — noncancerous sacs filled with fluid — caused by PKD, a diagnosis she received when she was 25 years old, according to the statement. PKD is a genetic disease that causes numerous growths on a person's kidneys and liver, and can eventually lead to kidney failure, the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center explained on its website.

Organ donation saved Murray's life, but the diseased condition of her unusually expanded liver made it impossible for her to act as an organ donor for medical purposes. So she opted to donate her liver to the university center for students to examine and learn from it, calling the decision a "no-brainer" in the UQ statement.

"That was my way of sharing and giving people knowledge," she said.

Her liver will have a lot of company in its new home — about 5,000 specimens are housed in the Integrated Pathology Learning Centre collection, representing medical research of human diseases dating to the early 20th century. The center's oldest specimen is a lung that belonged to a man who died of tuberculosis in 1935, according to the center's website.

Original article on Live Science.

Beetle-mania

In the Natural History Museum in London, approximately 10 million specimens make up their collection of Coleoptera — the taxonomic order that includes all beetle species.

About 2,000 to 3,000 new specimens are added each year, and the collection spans over three centuries, with 195,000 species represented. Many of the individual specimens in the collection date to the 19th century, and were used to describe and name their species.

This unidentified specimen was collected in Tanzania, in Udzungwa Mountains National Park.

Thanatophilus micans

Thanatophilus micans beetles are commonly known as carrion beetles. They were first described by the Danish zoologist Johann Christian Fabricius in 1794.

Crosita clementzae

Crosita clementzae, a species of leaf beetle, is native to the Altai Mountains in Mongolia. This specimen was found in the Takhin-Shara-Nuru mountain range, about five kilometers south of Tsargin. The species was described by Russian entomologist Georgij Georgiewitsch Jacobson, in 1899.

Anisorrhina laeviplaga

A species of scarab beetle, Anisorrhina laeviplaga was described in 1877 by the French entomologist Achille Marie Jacques Raffray. This specimen was collected in the Nguru Mountains.

Dermorhytis fortunei

This specimen of the beetle species Dermorhytis fortunei is a syntype — one of a set of individuals used by scientists to describe and name a new species. The species was described in 1861 by the British entomologist Joseph Sugar Baly.

Erotylidae

Beetles in the Erotylidae family are also known as pleasing fungus beetles, according to the insect-identifying website Bug Guide. The name derives from the Greek word "erotilos," which means "sweetheart" or "darling."

Erotylidae includes approximately 3,500 species in 260 genera, distributed around the world.

This specimen was collected in Morona-Santiago in Ecuador, at an elevation of 3,609 feet (1,100 meters).

Chrysolina coerulans bella

Collected in China, this syntype represents Chrysolina coerulans bella, a species originally called Chrysomela bella. It was described in 1890 by entomologist Martin Jacoby, who also collected this individual in 1909.

Cheirolasia burkei

Cheirolasia burkei belongs to a group known as flower beetles, in the scarab beetle family. The species was described by English entomologist John Obadiah Westwood, in 1843.

This specimen was collected in 2012 in Tanzania, in the Nguru Mountains, but it can also be found in Congo, Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana and Kenya, according to the Catalogue of Life: 2011 Annual Checklist.

Aprophata eximia

Discovered by the English entomologist Edward Newman in 1842, Aprophata eximia lives in the Philippines. This is a type specimen, which means that the species name and description were based upon this individual.

Cheirotonus parryi

Cheirotonus parryi is a type of scarab beetle found in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and India. Beetles in this genus are also called long-arm beetles, because of their oversized front limbs.

Docemina crassipes

Charles Darwin collected this syntype male specimen of Docemina crassipes in Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago at the southernmost tip of South America, during his voyage onboard the H.M.S. Beagle (1832 to 1836). The species was described in 1918 by the English entomologist George Charles Champion, in the journal Annals and Magazine of Natural History.

Eudicella

Eudicella, a genus in the scarab beetle family, is part of a group known as flower beetles. This specimen was collected in what used to be known as the Gold Coast region of West Africa.

Neospades cruciatus

This Australian beetle species was described by the Danish zoologist Johan Christian Fabricius in 1775, and was named Buprestis cruciata, but it is currently known as Neospades cruciatus in the Buprestidae family of metallic, wood-boring beetles.

This specimen is a holotype — a single specimen forming the basis for a species name Natural History Museum's historical Sir Joseph Banks entomological collection. This 300-year-old collection includes approximately 4,000 insects, among which are butterflies, flies, bugs, beetles and moths.

Unidentified Bolivian Cerambycidae

This unidentified species belongs to the beetle family Cerambycidae, also commonly known as longhorns, longicorns, capricorns, round-headed borers, timber beetles and sawyer beetles, according to the insect identification website Bug Guide.

It was collected in 2004 by British entomologist Max Barclay, curator and collections manager of Coleoptera and Hemiptera at the Natural History Museum in London. Barclay found the specimen in Bolivia, in Amboro National Park, at an elevation of around 3,281 feet (1,000 meters).

Neptunides polychrous marginipennis

Neptunides polychrous marginipennis is a flower beetle — a colorful flower-feeding group within the scarab beetle family — that is distributed across eastern Africa. This individual originated in Tanzania, in the Udzungwa Mountains, and the species was described in 1904 by Austrian entomologist Josef Moser.

Oxysternon conspicillatum

Beetles in the Oxysternon genus, which contains around 11 species, are typically green and very shiny. The neotropical species Oxysternon conspicillatum was described in 1804 by the German entomologist Friedrich Weber, and is found in Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia and Panama.

Pseudotorynorrhina fortunei

The beetle species Pseudotorynorrhina fortunei is a type of scarab beetle found in Vietnam. It is in the subfamily Cetoniinae, also known as fruit and flower chafers, according to the insect identifying website Bug Guide.

English entomologist Edward Saunders described the species in 1852.

Taeniotes orbignyi

Described in 1844 by the French entomologist Félix Édouard Guérin-Méneville, Taeniotes orbignyi belongs to a genus of longhorn beetles. This individual was collected in 2004 by British entomologist Max Barclay, curator and collections manager of Coleoptera and Hemiptera at the Natural History Museum in London. Barclay found the specimen in Bolivia's Amboro National Park, at an elevation of 3,281 feet (1,000 meters).

Pterodunga mirabilis

Colorful Pterodunga mirabilis was discovered in Queensland, Australia in 2000 by Italian entomologist Mauro Daccordi. It is a type of leaf beetle in the subfamily Chrysomelinae, which includes about 2,000 species distributed around the world.

Rhamphorrhina bertolonii

This Rhamphorrhina bertolonii specimen was collected in Tanzania's Nguru Mountains. The species was described in 1879 by the English entomologist William John Lucas.

Scaphidomorphus bosci

Scaphidomorphus bosci belongs to the beetle family Erotylidae, also known as pleasing fungus beetles. This specimen was collected in Bolivia, and the species was described in 1871 by the English entomologist Frederick William Hope.

Scarabaeidae

Beetles in the Scarabeidae family are known as scarab beetles, a group that includes approximately 30,000 species distributed around the world.

Scarab beetles have stout bodies, and many species also have powerful front legs that they use for digging. This unidentified species was collected in Colombia.

Thanatophilus lapponicus

Thanatophilus lapponicus is also known as the northern carrion beetle. This species was described in 1793 by the German naturalist and entomologist Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Herbst.

Join Live Science as we speak with Annette Libeskind Berkovits, author of "Confessions of an Accidental Zoo Curator."

Her memoir describes the three decades Berkovits spent developing and overseeing education programs for the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York at the iconic Bronx Zoo, one of the largest wildlife conservation parks in the United States.

In the book, Berkovits outlines her "zoo life," learning the ins and outs of an enormous institution housing thousands of captive wild animals, and educating the public about the Bronx Zoo's myriad inhabitants — both at the zoo, and in collaborations with other scientific institutions, educators and researchers around the world. [Read an excerpt from the book]

As the title implies, Berkovits didn't initially expect to find herself in a career as a zoo curator. But when she began working for the Bronx Zoo in 1972, she soon realized the place's potential to perform as an ambassador for wildlife conservation, and she set out to incorporate that message into a wide range of public programs, such as overnight safaris and science camps. Zoos bring the public face-to-face with animals that they would typically never encounter, and Berkovits explains in her book how the wonder inspired by the creatures glimpsed at a zoo could spark a lasting interest in nature and biodiversity.

Original article on Live Science.

Despite his criticism of intelligent design and creationism, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins told people at a science festival this past the weekend that he believes religious education is a key subject for schoolchildren.

Dawkins, who is open about his atheism, said that understanding religion can help students get a better grasp of the world's history and culture. He made the statement during a public conversation at the Cheltenham Science Festival in Gloucestershire, England, on Sunday (June 11), according to The Telegraph.

It's basically impossible to study English literature without some knowledge of Christianity, Dawkins noted. [Saint or Spiritual Slacker? Test Your Religious Knowledge]

Dawkins is the author of several books, including "The Selfish Gene" (Oxford University Press, 1976), in which he talks about how genes associated with self-interested survival drive evolution; the 2006 best-seller "The God Delusion"; and his forthcoming book, "Science in the Soul" (Random House, August 2017).

Dawkins touched on religious education after being asked whether schools should stop teaching the subject due of fears that it result in children accepting religious doctrine without questioning it.

But, after stating his support for the subject — at least for historical and cultural purposes — he warned that it was "deeply wicked" and "evil" to use religion to scare children by saying that they could end up in "hell fire," Dawkins said, according to The Telegraph.

He also said that scientists should stop using the phrase "theory of evolution," largely because the term "theory" could lead people to think that it was not scientifically proven, he said, according to The Telegraph.

"I would recommend not calling it a theory, I would call it a fact," he said at the festival. "The word 'theory' is clearly misunderstood. Evolution is a fact and there is absolutely no question or doubt about that. Look at the evidence — it is overwhelming."

He added that Darwin used the term in the 19th century, "fair enough, but it is a fact, it is established as strongly as any other fact in science … It’s much better to abandon the word 'theory' altogether. Don't ever use the word theory of evolution."

Original article on Live Science.

Where the bodies are buried

Built in 1855, the Mississippi State Insane Hospital housed an estimated 35,000 patients over a span of 80 years, until it was shuttered in 1935. Experts suspect that as many as 7,000 of the asylum's former patients are buried in unmarked graves under what is now the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC).

Exhuming coffins

In 2012, construction workers unearthed 66 coffins while preparing to build a new road on the UMMC campus.

Respectful removal

Anthropologists from Mississippi State University respectfully and ethically removed and documented skeletal remains found in 2012, following guidelines established by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson.

Highly compressed

The pine coffins that held the human remains found in 2012 measured about 6 feet (1.8 meters) in length, but were unusually narrow, probably because they were compressed over decades by the soil's weight.

Valuable insights

“Human remains represent archives and sources of information about human health and disease, and life experiences in the past that cannot be gotten from any other source of information,” Molly Zuckerman, an assistant professor in Mississippi State University’s Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures, said in a statement.

Bird's eye view

An aerial view of UMMC's 20-acre campus, where radar scans of the grounds detected as many as 7,000 buried bodies that were buried during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Asylum grounds

A map shows the layout of the buildings that were part of the Mississippi State Insane Hospital, which closed in 1935. According to hospital records, approximately 9,000 of the asylum's residents died during its 80-year history.

High mortality

Between 1855 and 1877 alone, 1,376 patients were admitted to the Mississippi State Insane Hospital. One in five of those people died, from ailments including "softening of the brain," "nervous exhaustion" and "chronic diarrhea," according to hospital records.

Anonymous remains

Patients that died while under the care of the Mississippi State Insane Hospital were buried in unmarked graves, making it next to impossible for archaeologists to identify them today.

Hidden graveyard

Radar scans revealed the location of thousands of bodies buried in wooden coffins under UMMC's campus.

Original cemetery

The Mississippi State Insane Hospital's buildings, marked here in blue, were located hundreds of yards from the area where patients' bodies were buried, shown here in red.

School lunch programs in the U.S. will no longer be required to meet all of the nutrition standards set in the Obama era, the Trump administration announced this week.

The news means that school lunches won't necessarily see the cuts in sodium and boosts in whole grains that were outlined in the Obama administration's Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which aimed to improve child nutrition.

Specifically, rather than requiring that all grain products served in school lunches be whole grains, the government will allow schools to request exemptions to this requirement for the 2017-2018 school year, said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, who signed a proclamation outlining the changes on Monday (May 1). And instead of requiring schools to continue reducing sodium levels in school meals, the government will let schools keep sodium levels where they are now, at least through 2020. In addition, schools will be allowed to serve 1 percent flavored milk, instead of just nonfat flavored milk. [10 Ways to Promote Kids' Healthy Eating Habits]

Perdue said the changes were being made because existing nutrition requirements for school lunches were too stringent and had resulted in higher costs for school districts. In addition, Perdue said, some children weren't eating the healthier food.

 "If kids aren't eating the food and it's ending up in the trash, they aren't getting any nutrition — thus undermining the intent of the program," Perdue said in a statement.

However, some nutrition experts expressed concern about the new standards.

"While the health impact of reopening this rule is unknown at this point, it's clear [that] having American schoolchildren eat fewer whole grains is not heart-healthy," Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association, said in a statement. Relaxing the sodium requirements is also worrisome, she said. "If we don't move forward with the sodium standards, there could be serious health consequences for our kids," such as increased blood pressure, as well as higher risk of heart disease and stroke, Brown said.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer watchdog group, also called the new sodium policy concerning.

"Ninety percent of American kids eat too much sodium every day," Wootan said in a statement. "Schools have been moving in the right direction, so it makes no sense to freeze that progress in its tracks and allow dangerously high levels of salt in school lunch."

The new policy does not affect the requirement for fruits and vegetables in school lunches or standards for food served in vending machines set in the Obama-era act.

Original article on Live Science.

In this series of articles, Live Science focuses the spotlight on some of YouTube's most popular science channels. Their creators weave together graphics, footage, animation and sound design in videos that can be as whimsical as they are informative, employing a range of techniques and styles. Yet all of them share a general curiosity and enthusiasm for the unexpected and fascinating science stories that exist in the world around us.

If you've ever wanted to peek behind the scenes at the day-to-day activities in a genetics laboratory — there's a YouTube channel for that.

Vlogger and doctoral candidate Alex Dainis invites YouTube audiences into her lab at Stanford University, offering an insider's view of her journey as a graduate student training to work in the field of genetics.

Dainis — who told Live Science that she loves talking about science "to anyone who will listen" — uses her videos to share her affinity for cool science stories, to express her own considerable sense of wonder and excitement about all things related to genetics, to show how experiments are conducted in a lab, and to introduce scientists as real people, presenting "what we do and what our daily lives are like," she said. [The Most Interesting YouTube Science Channels]

Asking questions about the world

Storytelling and science both hold equal fascination for Dainis, who worked in film production before attending graduate school at Stanford. But as much as Dainis enjoyed the moviemaking process, "I missed talking about science," she said. YouTube provided an outlet where she could bring the two together, and in 2012 she began posting short explainer videos describing interesting science stories and "fun facts," she told Live Science.

Her "Bite-Sci-zed" video nuggets of science are short — each just a few minutes long — and delve into diverse topics such as the spectrum of egg colors, what naked mole rats can teach us about cancer, periodical cicadas and their exoskeletons, and the genetics of seedless watermelons.

However, once Dainis began her graduate studies, she decided to take her YouTube channel in a more personal — but still science-infused — direction, producing videos that would share her daily experiences in the genetics lab as a doctoral candidate.

In the video series "What Is This Thing?" Dainis acquaints her audience with the common tools of her trade — and a few uncommon ones. These laboratory items, which many non-scientist viewers are likely seeing for the first time, are an intrinsic part of genetics research, and Dainis' straightforward descriptions dispel some of the mystery surrounding how scientists sequence DNA and make the science more accessible.

She cheerfully introduces pipettes (syringe-like tools used to measure and move liquids), a hemocytometer (used for counting cells) and ethanol lamps — a heating alternative to gas-powered Bunsen burners; Dainis said in the video that using them "makes me feel like I'm doing science on an old-fashioned whaling ship."

Another recent video documented something a little out of the ordinary in the life of a graduate student — analyzing DNA with an astronaut, and exploring how NASA scientists can use genetic sequencing to monitor astronauts' health in space, and to search for extraterrestrial life. 

"Sometimes it's really exciting and sometimes it's monotonous — this is what science is, and I want to show a realistic picture of that," Dainis said.

And sometimes while making the videos, Dainis herself learns a thing or two. The chance discovery that nectarines were actually a type of mutant peach inspired Dainis to take a closer look at the genetics of the two fruits, resulting in "one of the coolest videos I did," Dainis told Live Science.

"Peaches and nectarines are actually the same fruit but with a single recessive allele difference," she said.

"I got to use some techniques in the lab that I use every day, and I got to show something very cool about a fruit that I had never considered before. That was so exciting. I was eating these fruits for years, and I had no idea they were the same thing!"

Her videos attract viewers representing a range of ages and professions, but the common threads running through all of them are fascination with science and curiosity about how it's done.

"I get comments from people all around the world; from middle-schoolers, from people thinking about careers in science, people who've been scientists for decades, and some people who're not in science but are interested in the process. They're in different stages of their careers, different walks of life — I think it's very exciting that this community of science nerds has bloomed around these videos," she said.

Got a favorite science channel on YouTube that you think we should feature? Tell us about it in the comments or on Twitter and Facebook!

Original article on Live Science.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was asked to give this year's commencement address at Harvard, he asked for advice from Bill Gates.

Zuckerberg said, "They know we didn't actually graduate, right?"

To which Gates replied, "Oh, that is the best part! They actually give you a degree!"

This recent exchange between two famous Harvard dropouts might lead you to think college doesn't matter. Numerous media stories and even famous billionaires are glamorizing dropouts or encouraging kids to skip college entirely.

While it's true there are successful college dropouts, statistically speaking, they are not the norm. As researchers in education and talent, we found that the vast majority of the country's success stories are college graduates, such as Sheryl Sandberg (Harvard), Jeff Bezos (Princeton) and Marissa Mayer (Stanford).

The myth of the mega-successful college dropout

In a recent study, we investigated how many of the wealthiest and most influential people graduated college. We studied 11,745 U.S. leaders, including CEOs, federal judges, politicians, multi-millionaires and billionaires, business leaders and the most globally powerful men and women.

We also examined how many people graduated from an "elite school." (Our definition included the eight Ivy League schools, plus many of the top national universities and liberal arts colleges consistently high in the U.S. News rankings for both undergraduate and graduate education.)

We found about 94 percent of these U.S. leaders attended college, and about 50 percent attended an elite school. Though almost everyone went to college, elite school attendance varied widely. For instance, only 20.6 percent of House members and 33.8 percent of 30-millionaires attended an elite school, but over 80 percent of Forbes' most powerful people did. For whatever reason, about twice as many senators – 41 percent – as House members went to elite schools.

For comparison, based on census and college data, we estimate that only about 2 to 5 percent of all U.S. undergraduates went to one of the elite schools in our study. The people from our study attended elite schools at rates well above typical expectations.

Do elite schools matter?

This year, elite schools saw an increase in applications and selectivity. Research suggests there is no difference in adult income between students who attended highly selective schools and students with similar SAT scores who attended less selective schools. At least for long-term earnings, where you go may not be critical, as long as you attend and graduate.

Yet, our data show that for students with talent and motivation to make it to the top of U.S. society, an elite college might just help you get there – whether it's the networks you acquire or the brand on your resume.

While looking at over 11,000 successful leaders, we rarely encountered people who came from extremely poor or disadvantaged backgrounds. Helping disadvantaged talented students enter elite schools could promote diversity among future leaders.

College matters

Admittedly, the educational path of the cream of the crop may not apply to most people. So, going to college may not be the right or even the best path for everyone. However, if you're a student thinking about not going to college or considering dropping out, remember that even Gates and Zuckerberg got into college. Even if you're not aiming for mega success, doing the work to get into and graduate from college today may open important doors.

Perhaps in the future, college may not be as important to employers. But for now, college dropouts who rule the world are rare exceptions – not the rule.

Jonathan Wai, Research Scientist, Duke University and Heiner Rindermann, Professor of Educational and Developmental Psychology, Chemnitz University of Technology

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Sexual activity across America has dropped in recent years.

In 2014, U.S. adults were having sex an average of 53 times per year, which is nine fewer times annually than the average between 1989 and 1994, according to a new study. And the researchers found that the sexual slowdown is happening across different ages, geographic regions, races, levels of education and genders.

The steepest sexual declines over time occurred among married people, people in their 50s, people with children ages 6 to 12, people with college degrees and people who hadn't seen a pornographic movie in the past year, the study authors found. [The 10 Most Surprising Sex Statistics]

The researchers looked at data from about 26,000 adults in the U.S. across all age groups, over a 25-year period, from 1989 to 2014.

The study ruled out lingering questions from prior studies about how the use of pornography or longer working hours might affect people's sexual activity: More work and more porn usually meant more sex, the authors found.

Instead, two factors emerged as the likeliest explanations for Americans' widespread sexual slump.

Partnered or not?

The number of people in the U.S. who are not in relationships has gone up. An estimated 64 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 were not living with a partner in 2014, up from 48 percent in 2005. And people without regular partners generally have less sex than those with a steady squeeze, study co-author Ryne Sherman, an associate psychology professor at Florida Atlantic University, told Live Science.

"Unpartnered people have sex less frequently — about half as often as partnered [people] — across the time period we looked at and across all age groups," Sherman said.

So when the percentage of unpartnered individuals in the general population increases, it's not surprising to see a drop in the amount of overall hanky-panky going on, he said.

However, the study also revealed that people in relationships were also having less sex than that group had in the past. In 2014, people with regular partners had sex about 55 times, on average, down from an average of 73 times in 1990, the scientists discovered. [The Science of Breakups: 7 Facts About Splitsville]

"Partnered people always had an advantage in sex frequency over unpartnered people, and that advantage is narrowing," Sherman said. "That was something we didn't anticipate, and we don't have great answers for why that's the case."

Slacking off at shacking up

Of all the generations represented in the study, millennials — people born between the 1980s and the early 2000s — were the least sexually active. In an earlier study, they were found to be having less sex than 20-somethings in previous generations, with about 15 percent of millennials ages 20 to 24 reporting that they had been abstinent since age 18.

Millennials may be less sexually active because many of them are living with their parents longer and taking more time to become financially independent, due to the economic downturn in the late 2000s, Sherman explained.

"That made it difficult for a lot of younger people to move out of the house, to get a job, to launch their own adulthood," he said.

However, that still doesn't explain why sexual behavior is down across all age groups and all adults. Future research efforts will attempt to puzzle out why this is happening —and what the consequences might be. Other studies have linked sex to psychological well-being, with people who have sex more frequently tending to report being happier, less depressed and less anxious. They are also less likely to suffer from psychological disorders, Sherman told Live Science.

"Of course, it's hard to determine where the causal arrow is pointing: Do I have more sex because I'm a happy person, or am I a happy person because I have more sex? It probably works both ways," Sherman said.

The findings were published online March 6 in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Original article on Live Science.

New, lifelike models of newborns that are as squishy as real babies and even include mimics of working organs could help surgeons and nurses train to perform life-saving procedures, researchers say.

The baby mimics were created using 3D printing and were designed to better replicate the anatomical complexity and feel of real newborns. This is important because doctors usually hone their surgical skills on life-size manikins.

And the more realistic the model, the better.

Currently, the manikins that are available to doctors "tend to feel very mechanical, rather than biological," said Mark Thielen, a medical design engineer at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. [5 Amazing Technologies That Are Revolutionizing Biotech]

For example, instead of a replica of a rib cage inside a manikin, there's usually "a central spring with a plastic plate on top, covered by rubber skin," Thielen said.

To make manikins of newborns more realistic, Thielen and his colleagues turned to 3D printing. Their 3D-printed manikins open up "the possibility of teaching and investigating clinical procedures to an extremely high level of accuracy and understanding," Thielen told Live Science.

3D printers make items by depositing layers of material just as ordinary printers lay down ink, except 3D printers can also layer materials on top of each other to build 3D objects. These creations are typically made of varieties of plastic or resin.

"Without 3D printing, this work would have been impossible," Thielen said in a statement. "The sheer complexity of human anatomy is very hard to re-create realistically with any other production method, not to mention the cost and time differences."

Making the models

To build the most lifelike model possible, Thielen and his team worked from the inside out, starting with the organs. 

Data from MRI scans of newborns was used to develop the 3D models for the manikins' organs. The realistic organs were printed with the help of 3D Hubs, an online network that connects people to 3D printing services. The goal was not only for the organs to look and feel like their real counterparts, but for them to function like real organs, too. For example, the 3D-printed heart had highly detailed, working valves. In the future, Thielen and his team hope to design model organs that function as similarly to real organs as possible.

Furthermore, there are no springs and plastic plates in these manikins. Rather, the printed organs are housed in manikins with 3D-printed rib cages and spines. To mimic blood, fluid is injected into tubes in the manikins. [7 Cool Uses of 3D Printing in Medicine]

"The aim is to provide a high level of realistic tactile feedback when performing clinical interventions on them," Thielen said. In other words, when the surgeons move a part of the manikin or apply pressure to a certain area, it feels and moves like the real thing.

In addition, the manikins have a variety of sensors embedded within them to measure movements such as bending and sliding, as well as to gauge pressure in different areas and the flow of fluids. These sensors can make measurements such as the angle at which the head is tilted backward during a procedure, the amount of air squeezed into the lungs or the amount of blood pushed out of the left and right sides of the heart during chest compressions, Thielen said.

Thielen plans to feed data from the sensors into computer models of the human body to predict how operations performed on the manikins might affect a real patient when performed in real life.

Although the manikins are still in development, the initial tests looked promising, Thielen said. If the newborn-baby manikins are successful, future work could focus on the development of more realistic manikins of adults and adult-sized organs, he said.

"I believe that developing and advancing what we started here can aid medical research in a broader scope," Thielen said. "We could potentially create realistic patient models of other body parts to strengthen medical training for emergency procedures and pregnancies."

Original article on Live Science.

Join Live Science as we take a seat at the table with Bill Schutt, author of "Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History" (Algonquin Books, 2018). While cannibalism in animals — including people — has been recognized for centuries, it wasn't always well-studied, and was long-thought to be a type of behavior that only appeared under conditions of extreme stress or deprivation.

However, research over the past few decades has taken a bite out of cannibalism myths and misconceptions. Scientists are taking a closer look at cannibalism in the natural world and in human societies from the not-so-distant-past, and are finding that it's more widespread and established as a behavior than was once thought.

Schutt recently joined Live Science for a Facebook Live event to talk about covering this meaty topic in his new book, and he shared some tasty science tidbits: from insects that consume their mates, to sharks that eat their siblings in utero, to our fascination with the Donner Party and fictional cannibals like Hannibal Lector.

When you think of cannibals, you may picture the headline-grabbing psychopaths who, every so often, commit horrific crimes.

But elsewhere in the animal kingdom, cannibalism might involve a self-sacrificing mother or a hungry fetus snacking down on its siblings.

Now, Bill Schutt's "Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History" (Algonquin Books, 2017) shows just how prevalent, and just how diverse, cannibalism is among animals.

In one example, Schutt tells how the black lace-weaver spider (Amaurobius ferox) feeds her offspring her own eggs — and then her own body. In "an extreme act of parental care," she lowers herself onto her hungry little progeny, who then eat her alive and drain her of bodily fluids, Schutt writes. In another saga, Schutt describes how embryonic sand tiger sharks (Carcharias taurus) chow down on their siblings while still in the womb, making this shark the only known species to consume embryos in utero.

Schutt, a biology professor at Long Island University (LIU-Post) in New York and a research associate in residence at the American Museum of Natural History, recently spoke with Live Science about nature's colorful array of cannibals and what people's fascination with such cannibals may mean. (His answers have been edited for clarity and length.)

Live Science: How did you become interested in the topic of cannibalism?

Bill Schutt: I've always had a real interest in both natural history and the macabre, which is certainly why none of my friends or relatives were surprised that, once I became a zoologist, I chose to study bats. Likewise, nobody was shocked that my first nonfiction book, "Dark Banquet" [Crown, 2008], was all about blood-feeding creatures. [Photos: Best Wild Animal Selfies]

Basically, I enjoy investigating subjects that seem horrific or disgusting (or both), then writing about them through the eyes of a zoologist. The topic of cannibalism seemed like an interesting topic to work on after blood feeding. And when I found all sorts of misinformation and an unfortunate, but understandable emphasis on sensationalism and gore, cannibalism turned out to be a perfect subject for me. 

Live Science: What surprised you the most during your research on cannibalism?

Schutt: I was surprised at how common cannibalism is across the entire animal kingdom. There are literally thousands of species, from microbes to monkeys, that consume their own kind for all sorts of reasons that make perfect evolutionary sense. This isn't abnormal behavior. It's absolutely normal, and this also holds true in some of the most infamous cases of human cannibalism — the Donner Party, for example. [The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who traveled west by wagon in the 1840s, only to become stuck in the Sierra Nevada during the winter. They resorted to cannibalism to survive.]

Live Science: Your book aims to debunk some common myths about cannibalism. What were some of the most prevalent myths you encountered?

Schutt: That cannibalism in the animal kingdom is rare and [that] it only happens in instances where you're dealing with abnormal behaviors, such as captive conditions or a lack of food. That was the party line among scientists for a long time, until probably starting in the 1970s, when they discovered that all sorts of different animals cannibalize for many different reasons that had nothing to do with stress or a lack of food. That, to me, was really interesting.

Live Science: You mention in your book that cannibalism serves a variety of functions in animals. Could you elaborate on a few?

Schutt: Cannibalism is sometimes done as an act of parental care. There are spiders, for example, that lay eggs that have not been fertilized, called trophic eggs, just for their newly hatched spiderlings to eat. But when these run out, the mother calls her offspring to her by drumming on their web. As she hunkers down, they climb all over her body and then they eat her alive, leaving a husk-like corpse. 

Another function of cannibalism is that it helps animals survive in stressful environmental conditions. If there's suddenly a lack of alternative food options, many species will eat their young in order to survive to mate another day.

Live Science: What is the biggest difference between human and animal cannibalism?

Schutt: Western cultures, or those cultures that have been influenced by them (whether voluntarily or not), decided long ago that human cannibalism is probably the ultimate taboo. In societies where that concept wasn't determined to be a taboo or where Western rules weren't imposed on individuals, ideas about cannibalism turned out to be very different. For example, until relatively recently, there were indigenous groups in South America where people were as mortified at the concept of burying their dead as Western missionaries and anthropologists were about consuming their own departed loved ones.

In nature, there are no culture-generated rituals to either promote or fear. In many fish species, adults can be a million times larger than their own eggs. As a result, most fish exhibit about as much individual recognition of their offspring as humans do a handful of raisins. [Creative Creatures: 10 Animals That Use Tools] 

Live Science: You also investigated whether the human taboo against cannibalism was biological or social. What did you find?

Schutt: I definitely came away thinking that there are aspects of both. It's no secret that culture plays a huge part in determining whether something is permissible (and even sacred) or forbidden. But I also came away with an understanding that there may very well be strong selection pressure for humans not to eat other humans.

One selection pressure against cannibalism in humans comes from diseases called spongiform encephalopathies, such as kuru, which destroy the brain and are always fatal. As with other versions of this disease — which can infect mink, sheep and, perhaps most infamously, cows — the human form can be caused by consuming infected tissue, especially nervous system tissue.

So cannibalism may have dire consequences for humans. Some researchers have even hypothesized, using computer modeling, that cannibalism — and the spread of a kuru-like disease — may have sped up the ultimate demise of the Neanderthals. 

Live Science: Why do you think cannibalism continues to fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us?

Schutt: I think our deep fascination with the topic of cannibalism stems from the fact that, since the dawn of Western culture, we've been taught that it's arguably the worst thing that a person can do to another person. That in itself makes it both horrifying and interesting.

Add this ultimate taboo to the fact that most of us love a good scare, and you have an explanation for why Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter was voted the greatest screen villain of all time by the American Film Institute.

We're all fascinated with food as well, and with human cannibalism, I suppose many of us are dealing with the ultimate in scary food.

Really, the theme of this book is that you start off with these preconceived notions of what cannibalism is, and then when you explore it more, you find out that it is something completely different. That it makes all sorts of sense, in some ways, and that the examples that you find in the animal kingdom can be used to explain the circumstances behind some of the more infamous examples of human cannibalism. You can then look at those examples in a completely new light. That's one thing I'd like to get across.

"Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History" will be available on Feb. 14, 2017, and is available for pre-order now.

Originally published on Live Science.

The American population is getting older, but the percentage of U.S. seniors with dementia is actually declining, a new study found.

In the study, the researchers analyzed information from a nationally representative sample of about 21,000 U.S. adults ages 65 and older who were tested for dementia from 2000 to 2012. (About 10,500 people were tested in 2000, and 10,500 were tested in 2012; about 4,000 of the participants were tested in both of those years.)

In 2000, 11.6 percent of older adults had dementia, but that number dropped to 8.8 percent by 2012, the researchers found.

Although some previous U.S. studies had suggested the prevalence of dementia in the U.S. was declining in recent years, those studies were not representative of the entire U.S. population, the researchers in the new study said.

The new findings "add to a growing body of evidence that this decline in dementia risk is a real phenomenon, and that the expected future growth in the burden of dementia may not be as extensive as once thought," Dr. Kenneth Langa, the lead author of the study and a professor at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and School of Public Health, said in a statement.

Dementia is not a specific disease, but rather a group of symptoms, which can include problems with thinking and solving problems, as well as personality changes, according to the National Institutes of Health. [6 Big Mysteries of Alzheimer's Disease]

The risk of developing these symptoms has also been linked toother factors, like education, the new study suggested. Researchers found that the people in the study who had more years of education had a lower risk of dementia. Those with 16 years or more of education were about 70 percent less likely to have dementia, compared with those who had less than 12 years of education. During the study period, the average number of years of education among participants increased from 12 to 13 years.

More years of education may help protect against dementia in a number of ways, the researchers said. Spending more years in school may help the brain's "cognitive reserve," meaning the brain may be better able to compensate for abnormalities that occur in older age.

Having more years of education can also allow people to obtain more cognitively challenging jobs, which could also help protect the brain, the researchers said. And people who have more years of education may also be more likely to exercise and eat healthy, and less likely to smoke, which are all behaviors that are linked with better brain health.

Interestingly, the researchers noted that the drop in dementia prevalence occurred despite increases in the rates of certain conditions that can increase the risk of dementia: diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. The researchers said they suspect that better treatment of cardiovascular disease and diabetes may have also contributed to the decline in dementia.

Still, more research is needed to identify all the factors contributing to the decline in dementia prevalence, the investigators said.

The researchers noted that, despite the decline seen in the study, dementia will still be a very important health issue in years to come.

"It does nothing to lessen the impact that each case has on patients and caregivers. This is still going to be a top-priority issue for families, and for health policy, now and in the coming decades," Langa said.

Original article on Live Science.

In this series of articles, Live Science turns the spotlight onto some of YouTube's most popular science channels. Their creators weave together graphics, footage, animation and sound design in videos that can be as whimsical as they are informative, employing a range of techniques and styles. Yet all of them all share a general curiosity and enthusiasm for the unexpected and fascinating science stories that exist in the world around us.

YouTube's 'The Brain Scoop': Meet the 'Chief Curiosity Correspondent' for the Field Museum

From mounts of massive T. rex skeletons, to dioramas of animals in recreated habitats, to exhibits describing our evolutionary ancestry and our modern microbial partnerships, natural history museums present glimpses of Earth's distant past and explanations of its current ecosystems and inhabitants.

These museums open windows into remote parts of the world, offering close-up views of what we see every day — and of many things that we overlook. Museum exhibits reveal the delicate balance of life and describe the connections between all creatures, living and extinct.

However, for all the wonders displayed in museums, far more remains hidden from public view.

Vast collections of fossils, objects and preserved specimens are housed in storage and studied by teams of scientists, whose work is also largely invisible to the public. But on YouTube's "The Brain Scoop," host and co-creator Emily Graslie — the "Chief Curiosity Correspondent" at the Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH) in Chicago — uses video to take viewers behind the scenes at FMNH, bringing its secret treasures and scientific research and researchers to light.

And that covers a lot of ground — both inside the museum and in the field with its experts. Episodes include a sit-down with so-called "death rocks," a tour of the FMNH insect collection, an expedition to find one of the world's rarest plants, and a look at how scientists learn about Earth's environmental history from bird vomit.

From art intern to volunteer curator

Graslie first gravitated toward natural history collections while studying for a fine arts degree at the University of Montana. She interned at the university's Phillip L. Wright Zoological Museum during her senior year, conducting an independent study in scientific illustration. After graduating in 2011, she continued working at the museum as a volunteer.

"I started learning more about processes and specimens — cataloguing them, doing specimen prep in the lab," Graslie told Live Science. "The art internship started to blossom into a volunteer curatorial position."

Graslie also began blogging on Tumblr about her work at the museum. Collaborations with YouTube creator Hank Green led to the launch of "The Brain Scoop" in January 2013.

"The university wasn't involved — I was making the videos on my own time, for my own enjoyment and for the pleasure of sharing this stuff with other people," Graslie said. "So there wasn't a lot of direction. We didn't know what we wanted to be, but we had the freedom to experiment. That was hugely important for the growth of the channel, it allowed us to do a lot of creative things."

"The Brain Scoop" meets the Field Museum

When Graslie visited Chicago a few months after "The Brain Scoop" debuted, she was offered the opportunity for a new collaboration — bringing the show to the FMNH, beginning in July 2013.

"All of a sudden, we had access to the best resources — which were the collections and the experts who worked in the collections," Graslie explained.

"That was something we didn't have in Montana — we had freedom and a lot of creativity and a lot of dead animals, but no context for how those specimens were being used. Coming to the Field Museum lent a lot of credibility to the show."

Graslie works closely with FMNH scientists to identify science topics and define story arcs, and researchers quickly discovered that "The Brain Scoop" could bring their work to hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers. Some episodes are deep dives into one story, such as the identification of a bizarre fossil known as the "Tully Monster," while the series "Natural News" offers shorter weekly updates on the museum's ongoing scientific studies.

For Graslie, making "The Brain Scoop" also means learning something new and surprising with every episode, she told Live Science. One video in particular, about how scientists describe species, provided her with an unexpected wake-up call about the term "species" itself, which she discovered to be far less clearly defined than she had thought.

"Charles Darwin titled his book 'On the Origin of Species,' and within that book he didn't explicitly define what a species is! The more I started looking into this, the more I saw that there isn't one completely agreed-upon definition for a species," Graslie said.

"Entomologists will look at different criteria to name a species of beetle or fly than paleontologists will look at when trying to describe a new species of dinosaur. There are around 26 different accepted species concepts in taxonomy — it's one of the most contentious topics in the field of biology."

Investigating how researchers define and organize species also inspired Graslie to explore the question using a more whimsical approach — by asking a group of FMNH scientists to apply taxonomic interpretations to candy.

"I got 12 different kinds of candy and four scientists who work on different kinds of organisms, and had them organize the candy based on what they believed to be a logical species concept or criteria," Graslie explained. "I didn't tell them ahead of time what we'd be doing, but they all went along with it and had a lot of fun."

One scientist — Margaret Thayer, a curator emeritus of insects — even performed an impromptu dissection, whipping out a pocketknife and cutting into a candy sample, which she then tasted to confirm the composition of its "guts."

"I don't usually do use this test for specimens," Thayer told Graslie.

And with the breadth of the FMNH collection and researchers still to explore, Graslie doesn't expect to run out of inspiration — or video subjects — anytime soon.

"As a content creator, if you're in a museum and you find yourself getting bored, I don't know what to tell you," she told Live Science. "The rabbit hole gets deeper, the longer you look into it."

Got a favorite science channel on YouTube that you think we should feature? Tell us about it in the comments or on Twitter and Facebook!

Original article on Live Science.

In "Blueprint for a Battlestar: Serious Scientific Explanations Behind Sci-Fi's Greatest Inventions," NASA insider Rod Pyle explores remarkable and memorable technologies from the world of science fiction. Each concept is explained and dissected to reveal the real science behind it. Some are temptingly within our reach — such as cyborgs and artificial intelligence — others are further off, but fast approaching reality (think bio-ports or cloaking devices). Below is an excerpt of "Blueprint for a Battlestar: Serious Scientific Explanations Behind Sci-Fi's Greatest Inventions" (Sterling, 2016).

Death from Above: Building a Death Planet

Without doubt, the technological celebrity of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was the death Planet known as the Death Star. It was the threat that hovered above a world...the target of the heroic pilots in their X-Wing fighters and the home base that Darth Vader so tenaciously defended with his wicked Twin Ion Engine (TIE) Fighters.

Tactical Concerns

The death planet seemed so effective that it was even the subject of a public petition sent to the White House in 2012. The suggestion was that the US should build its own Death Star, presumably to maintain law and order on some planet other than Earth. The tongue-in-cheek document garnered more than 25,000 signatures, enough to warrant an equally silly response from the Obama administration. They said the cost of such a device was estimated at about $850 quadrillion (which is even larger than the US debt,) and that it would take 833,000 years to create enough metal to fabricate it. The response further elaborated that the US government did not support blowing up planets and had tactical concerns about a weapon which could be destroyed by a tiny, battered one-man fighter.

NASA may not be working on a death planet. But what would it take to actually build one? The first problem to overcome is sheer size: The death planet, as represented in the Star Wars films, is really big. Various sources have estimated its diameter at somewhere between 60–100 miles. At this size it would put most of the inhabitants of the asteroid belt to shame and, even though basically hollow, would have a small gravitational field and essentially be a mini-planet, if you will.

If something that size was placed in Low Earth Orbit—the region around our planet extending to an altitude of 60–1,200 miles—a goodly chunk of it would be hanging down into the atmosphere, dragging and heating up and rapidly reentering. It would most likely crash into the ocean.

Just getting the death planet into orbit in the first place wouldn't be easy. After spending nearly a million years to fabricate the metal, it would take an untold number of launches to get all that mass up there...enough to permanently poison the atmosphere.

There is one way around this particular problem, however. There is plenty of metallic ore in the asteroids that roam the solar system. Most of it is in the asteroid belt and the Kuiper Belt (outside of Pluto's orbit,) but there are also plenty of rogue wanderers. Grabbing a number of large ones and smelting their ores down would net many millions of tons of metal that is already up in space...no bulk launches necessary for building materials. Of course, powering the mining operation itself would require solar panels, possibly thousands of miles across.

If built on Earth getting the death planet into space would be daunting. The largest flying machine ever created was the Apollo program's Saturn V rocket, which weighed over five million pounds, when its fuel is included. It was about the size and mass of a World War II navy destroyer and, had it exploded, would have had the power of a small atomic bomb. All this explosive power was required simply to propel the tiny 12,000-lb capsule at its nose to the moon and back. Moving the death planet would require something hugely more powerful.

Supposing a death planet could actually be built and powered, it would still lack the very nasty weapon the original version had. It is never explicitly said exactly what kind of weapon the death planet used to destroy Alderaan, but some documentation refers to the weapon as a "Super Laser." Laser is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (LASER.) This is a fancy term for 'coherent' light, a form of light in which all the waves cooperate to move essentially in unison. This can create a powerful beam that carries a lot of energy a long way, if the laser is powerful enough. Lasers have been around for about 50 years and are well understood devices, currently in use in everything from DVD players to military weapons.

Today's most powerful lasers don't even use electricity to power them. Instead they employ gases that are forced explosively through a large tube at high velocities. In the correct configuration, a gas that changes temperature rapidly enough can emit light, in this case coherent light. But you need a lot of gas, moving very quickly, to do this. The upside is that a lot of very powerful, hot light can be created for a brief time. The largest such lasers known today are the MIRACL (Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser,) made by the US Navy, and a US-Israeli collaboration called the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL.) Lasers in this size and power range, the current upper limit, can shoot down artillery shells and small battlefield rockets up to five feet long and well under a foot in diameter. That’s a bit smaller than Alderaan.

That planet was around 7,700 miles in diameter, or about the same size as Earth (just shy of 8,000 miles.) To destroy it would take the equivalent of over a sextillion (or a billion trillion) artillery shells. The 'super laser' would need to be enormous. The Star Wars version also vaporizes the planet in just two to three seconds, far quicker than today’s battlefield lasers can destroy those artillery shells. So for a gas laser, you would need a small planet-full of gas (bigger than the death planet itself) to fire up the laser—or all the power that could be made by the combined generating stations of Earth in a few trillion years (for comparison, the entire universe is just over 12 billion years old.)

Elsewhere in the official Star Wars universe, it is mentioned that the weapon is actually powered by ‘hypermatter.’ Regardless of what powers it,
vaporizing matter gives off energy. How muchmatter would need to be flashed out of existence to create that much power? About the equivalent of the mass in Mount Everest is how much. We do have a lot of mass on Earth, enough to make many thousands of Mount Everests so as long as we're willing to dig enormous holes in our planet. The problem is to figure out a way to convert it into energy.

Bear in mind that, using this system of reference, one gram of matter contains as much energy as
 21.5 kilotons of TNT high explosive, or about the same explosive force of the plutonium atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki in the Second World War. So how many grams are in Mount Everest? The mountain contains about 365 cubic miles of mass, or about 6,399,000,000,000 metric tons. That's a huge amount of explosive energy to be released if we vaporized it, making it possibly more practical than a gas-powered death planet.

Copyright © 2016 by Rod Pyle. Used by permission of Sterling. All rights reserved.

In this series of articles, Live Science turns the spotlight onto some of YouTube's most popular science channels. While their creators employ a range of techniques and styles — weaving together graphics, footage, animation and sound design in videos that can be as whimsical as they are informative — they all share a general curiosity and enthusiasm for the unexpected and fascinating science stories that exist in the world around us.

YouTube's 'It's Okay To Be Smart': Science and so much more

Science is all around us — and inside us, too. You need look no further than your own body and how it operates from moment to moment to get a daily dose of science.

But science also governs the forces that propel you through the world, dictating where you can go and how far and how fast you can travel. It shapes the rules for the evolution, growth and interactions of all life on Earth, and explains the processes that keep Earth's engine chugging along, in the company of an untold number of planets in a universe holding an estimated 1 billion, trillion stars.

That's a lot to take in. But asking questions about all of it is a good thing, as YouTube host Joe Hanson will tell you on his channel "It's Okay To Be Smart," presented by PBS Digital Studios.

The channel addresses questions about physics, biology, Earth science and space — and even popular culture, such as the science of "Game of Thrones." Wonder no more about how many trees there are on Earth, what would happen if you fell victim to a shrink ray, or why ants don't experience traffic jams.

Hanson has been interested in science for a long time — "as long as I can remember," he told Live Science. As a doctoral student and later as a biologist, he frequently found himself having to explain his research and why it was important, which sparked an interest in science communication and in telling stories about science.

After staking out an online space for himself as a science blogger, Hanson was approached by PBS Digital Studios in 2012 with an offer to translate his voice into a show, to reach viewers who had largely abandoned television but were still hungry for entertaining science programming.

"I was falling in love with science writing and having success in outreach," Hanson explained. "Video seemed like the natural next step." 

Good storytelling, Hanson said, is the key to getting people to recognize that science connects to many parts of their lives and many of their interests. And video allowed him to add visuals to his narratives, when "It's Okay To Be Smart" debuted in 2013.

"Video is a very rich medium for storytelling," he said. "I can deliver ideas in two different ways: with the words I'm saying and with the images I'm showing."

Keeping things light is part of the formula. Hanson described himself as "a pretty goofy guy" who wants to produce videos that are as much fun to watch as they are for him to make. In one video, in particular, Hanson took a nostalgically humorous approach to explaining the enormous amount of data generated by scientific research.

The episode was shot in the style of a 1980s low-budget television show, which provided Hanson with a much-appreciated opportunity to play "my inner 80's cable access dork," he said. But it also turned a potentially intimidating subject — big data — into something more approachable and entertaining.

"It totally pulled people out of what might have been a dry science tech message into a really fun, goofy adventure — and it still got the information across," Hanson said.

Connecting with viewers and building a community is an important part of creating a successful YouTube channel, and Hanson told Live Science that he balances "vigorous discussion" in his videos' comments — particularly around scientific topics that can inspire heated debate — while maintaining a welcoming environment where anyone can contribute and not feel threatened.

And with a new series of videos shot in the Peruvian Amazon, Hanson intends to provoke conversations about conservation, by shining a light on the incredible biodiversity in the region, emphasizing the delicate balance that preserves rainforest ecosystems.

In the first episode, Hanson explains why more species live near the equator than other parts of the globe; Hanson mentions that he saw more insects during a single hour in the rainforest than he had in his entire life beforehand.

These "Rainforest Edition" videos also contain an important message about the impacts that our actions can have on ecosystems halfway across the planet. Hopefully, this will encourage viewers to recognize that lifestyle choices can have far-reaching ecological consequences, inspiring them to take action to preserve threatened habitats, Hanson said.

"We were really trying to tighten that connection and get people to look at it and say, 'I want to do something about that,'" he told Live Science.

"We've already seen that response from the first video — that was our goal going down there, and it's really cool seeing that come to life."

Got a favorite science channel on YouTube that you think we should feature? Tell us about it in the comments or on Twitter and Facebook!

Original article on Live Science.

In this series of articles, some of YouTube's most popular science channels take a turn in the spotlight. Their creators employ a range of techniques and styles, weaving together graphics, footage, animation, sound design, and a general curiosity about the world around them, exploring and sharing the unexpected and fascinating details of their unique science stories.

Maddie Moate: Science for kids and families

Children are curious about the world around them — sometimes to the point of obsession — and why shouldn't they be? Growing up means discovering things for the first time, and there are plenty of opportunities in nature for kids to indulge their curiosity and learn unexpected secrets by taking a closer look at the plant and animal life that they see every day.

Even young children can dive deeply into everyday science with the help of simple experiments and guidelines created by scientists and educators, such as seeing their own DNA or identifying the different bird species that live in their backyards. [Easy Answers to the Top 5 Science Questions Kids Ask]

On YouTube, Maddie Moate uses video to explore the natural world and technology, bringing the excitement of science to young audiences and their families. From explaining what a scientist is to embarking on a jaunt around the world's oldest dinosaur theme park, Moate's topics engage viewers by combining education with a generous dose of entertainment.

Moate told Live Science that as a child she was passionate about science, particularly the natural sciences and natural history. She reconnected with her geekier side as an adult by producing apps, videos and websites, eventually finding an audience on YouTube by making comedy videos for the channel Lady Geek TV that skewered smartphone companies' sexist advertising campaigns.

That led to work for the BBC, hosting a channel about wildlife that highlighted their unusual bodies and behaviors. Moate recognized that children have an innate interest in wild animals, which makes them eager to learn more about them.

"It's lovely to have this willing audience," Moate said. "And also, working with children was something I always wanted to do."

The experience prompted Moate to make her own science videos for children. She currently produces several science-themed playlists for her channel, including investigations of local and elusive wildlife, looking at the food we eat and how it grows, and chronicles of her adventures in backyard beekeeping with her mother.

Recently, Moate was invited to curate science videos for a new YouTube initiative #TodayILearned, to engage children with fun and educational content. She selected videos and compiled a playlist titled "Get Curious!" available on the YouTube Kids app.

Moate chose videos that would represent all the different ways that children can absorb information: Through reading, exploring, asking questions, and visiting museums, she told Live Science.

"The idea is for videos to inspire kids to have fun learning, and hopefully be proud of it," Moate said.

YouTube videos can be particularly effective at reaching people and getting them interested in science because many of them add a personal touch to the storytelling, she added — such as her own beekeeping videos, which feature her family and her pets.

"On YouTube, science stories are often told from a personal perspective," Moate explained. "Audiences keep coming back because they're following a personality. That combination of following an individual and their telling science stories is really engaging."

Got a favorite science channel on YouTube that you think we should feature? Tell us about it in the comments or on Twitter and Facebook!

Original article on Live Science.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

As children head back to school, an increasing number of their homeschooled peers will be starting their academic year as well. Homeschooling in the United States is growing at a strong pace.

Recent statistics indicate that 1.5 million children were homeschooled in the United States in 2007. This is up significantly from 1.1 million children in 2003 and 850,000 children in 1999.

The homeschooling movement first emerged in earnest during the 1980s. Back then it was largely led by evangelical Christians. But as the movement has grown, it has also changed. Today’s homeschooling families may increasingly welcome cooperation with their local public school districts. In my own research, I have seen how diverse homeschoolers now are. This diversity challenges any simplistic understanding of what homeschooling is and what impact it will have on the public school system.

So how do we understand this evolution in American education?

Early trends

In fact, homeschooling was common up until the late 19th century. Most children received a substantial part of their education within the home. In the late 19th century, states started passing compulsory attendance laws. These laws compelled all children to attend public schools or a private alternative. In this way, education outside the home became the norm for children.

It was in the 1970s that American educator John Holt emerged as a proponent of homeschooling. He challenged the notion that the formal school system provided the best place for children to learn. Slowly, small groups of parents began to remove their children from the public schools.

By the 1980s, homeschooling families had emerged as an organized public movement. During that decade, more than 20 states legalized homeschooling. For the most part, evangelical Christians led these battles. Organizations such as the Home School Legal Defense Association, founded in 1983, provided the necessary legal and financial backing for these families.

At the time, homeschooling was seen to be in conflict with secular school systems. Religious parents came to define the public face of the homeschooling.

Reasons for homeschooling

Today, homeschooling is becoming part of the mainstream. It is legal in all 50 states. In addition, a growing number of states are making attempts to engage the homeschooled population for at least part of the day.

For example, 28 states do not prevent homeschooled students from participating in public school interscholastic sports. At least 15 more states are considering “Tim Tebow Laws” – named after the homeschooled athlete – that would allow homeschoolers access to school sports.

The overall homeschool movement is also much more diverse. For example, sociologists Philip Q. Yang and Nihan Kayaardi argue that the homeschool population does not significantly differ from the general U.S. population. Put another way, it is not really possible to assume anything about the religious beliefs, political affiliations or financial status of homeschooling families anymore.

Data from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) provide further corroboration. In 2008, the NCES found that only 36 percent of the homeschooling families in their survey chose “the desire for religious or moral instruction” as their primary reason for their decision to homeschool. At the same time, other reasons, such as a concern about the school environment, were just as important to many homeschool families.

A new generation of homeschooled children

So, what are the reasons behind this expansion of the homeschool movement?

My research shows that this has been fueled, at least in part, by changes in the public school system. For example, changes in technology have brought about the rise of online charter schools, which utilize remote online instruction to serve their students.

This means that more students are educated in their home at public expense. California, Ohio and Pennsylvania have led the way in this regard. In 2006, it was estimated that 11 percent of Pennsylvania’s charter schools had online instruction. What is noteworthy is that 60 percent of the students in these schools had previously been homeschooled.

In addition, homeschoolers in states such as Michigan have access to public school interscholastic sports. That’s not all. They can, in addition, opt to take certain public school offerings.

For example, homeschoolers can choose to attend school for part of the day, and take Advanced Placement courses in any range of subjects. Such courses are popular with many families because they allow students to earn college credit while still in high school.

Changing face of homeschoolers

Discussions about whether homeschooling is good for children can be emotionally charged. Some scholars are critical about the increasing number of homeschoolers, while some others view homeschooling in a different light.

They believe that homeschooling families are more responsive to a child’s individual needs and interests. They may be better at taking advantage of learning experiences that naturally arise in home and community life.

Indeed, in my own work as a teacher educator, I have come across parents who have chosen to homeschool their children for reasons that are not entirely religious. These include two public school teachers with whom I work. Reasons for parents could range from concern over food allergies, special needs, racism or just that their child might be interested in a career in athletics or the arts.

Given all these changes, it may be time for public educators and policymakers – both so desperate to increase parental participation – to reassess who and what represents the homeschooling movement of today.

Kyle Greenwit, Associate Professor, Michigan State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

A Texas teacher's note to parents about her newly implemented "no formal homework policy" in her second-grade class went viral last week, opening up the floodgates for parents, teachers and school administrators to weigh in on this controversial topic.

In the note, teacher Brandy Young told parents that her students' only homework would be work that they did not finish during the school day.

Instead of having kids spend time on homework, parents should "spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success," Young said. She recommended that parents "eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside and get your child to bed early," strategies that she suggests are more closely tied to a child's success in the classroom than doing homework.

Young's rationale for her new policy, as she explained in her note, was that "research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance." [10 Scientific Tips for Raising Happy Kids]

Live Science spoke with three educators who have conducted research on homework and student performance to fact-check this statement, and to find out what studies have shown about homework's positive and negative effects.

Keys to student success

It's accurate to suggest that studies have found no correlation between homework in elementary school and a student's academic performance, but there is one important exception worth mentioning, said Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education.

Research has shown that free reading, or allowing students to read whatever books they want, does improve their academic performance, Pope said. Some elementary school teachers assign free reading as homework, but kids and parents do not always perceive these assignments as true homework that must be completed, she explained. [Best Science-y Books for Kids]

In middle school, the evidence shows a slight correlation between doing homework and academic achievement, but further improvement fades after a middle-school student has spent 60 to 90 minutes a night doing homework, said Pope, who is also the co-founder of Challenge Success, an organization that works with schools and families to develop research-based strategies that engage kids and keep them healthy.

But it's tricky to draw conclusions from homework studies, because these studies use such varied ways of measuring a student's academic performance, Pope said. Some researchers use standardized test scores to measure achievement, while others use students' grade-point averages, she said.

Another variable that can complicate the results of homework studies is that it's hard to know who is actually doing the assignment when it's taken home, Pope said. For example, a student could get help from a parent, tutor, sibling or classmate to complete the work.

In high school, there is a strong correlation between students who do 2 hours of homework a night and higher levels of academic achievement, but again, this improvement fades when students exceed the 2-hour threshold, Pope told Live Science. [Top 5 Benefits of Play]

Pope said she considers the advice that the viral note offered to parents —to eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside and get a child to bed early — to be "spot on." She added that there is "really good research" to correlate these four variables with student success.

Studies suggest that to perform at their best in school, kids in second grade need sufficient sleep, playtime with their siblings and friends, and downtime, meaning time to transition from school to home. Kids also benefit from regular family time, which ideally takes place five times a week for at least 25 minutes and could take the form of a family meal, Pope said. Making time for reading is also important for a child's success in the classroom, she said.

Learning through practice

But not all educators share Pope's opinions of a no-homework policy for second graders.

The contention that "research is unable to prove that homework improves student performance" is an overstatement, said Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who has been researching homework and student performance for 30 years.

"Even in kids as young as age 7, research shows that homework in particular areas can help students learn, especially things children need to learn through practice," said Cooper, the author of "The Battle Over Homework" (Corwin, 2006).

Even when looking at levels as early as second grade, studies have found that kids who study a little bit at home may do better on spelling, vocabulary and math tests given in the classroom, Cooper told Live Science. However, he noted that the correlation between doing homework and higher academic achievement is not as strong in elementary students, who generally don't get much homework, as it is in middle-school and high-school students.

Rather than a no-homework policy for second graders, Cooper said he would recommend that homework for kids at this age be kept short and simple. It should take no more than about 20 minutes a night for second graders to complete their homework, he said.

To estimate an appropriate amount of time for students to spend doing homework, educators may use "the 10-minute rule" which means multiplying a child's grade level by 10 minutes of homework a night, Cooper explained. That means first graders get 10 minutes of homework, second graders get 20 and so on.

Besides just the skills in math, reading or other subjects themselves, homework can have positive effects on children's time-management and study skills, Cooper said. It can also help keep parents informed of what children are learning at school, and help make Mom and Dad aware of their child's strengths and weaknesses, he said.

But too much homework in second grade or assignments that are too hard can have a negative impact on young learners, Cooper said. "The last thing you want is for a 7-year-old to be bored [or] frustrated, or think that he or she is not good in school," he added.

Some parents who are extremely concerned about ensuring that their children achieve to their maximal ability may put pressure on educators, and this has led some teachers to assign students too much homework, especially at the high-school level, Cooper said.

But the key is for students to get the right amount of homework — not too much of it and not too little — so that it can have positive effects on learning and school performance, Cooper said.

Homework and family life

But other educators are steadfast that the right amount of homework in elementary school may be little to none.

Research suggests that homework in elementary school does not have a positive effect on student achievement, and could even have a negative impact, said Etta Kralovec, an associate professor of teacher education at the University of Arizona South, and the author of "The End of Homework" (Beacon Press, 2001).

The findings are more complex in middle- and high-school students, with many studies finding a correlation between classroom grades and homework, Kralovec said. But these results could also raise additional questions, because tracking students — separating them into lower-level and advanced-level classes, for example — also begins at these grades, and kids in the higher-track classes are often assigned more homework.

It may not be that homework actually causes students to get better grades in high school or middle school, it could be that students who do more homework were better students to begin with, Kralovec said.

It's also hard to know how much actual time students truly spend on homework, because most research relies on self-reported data from students, parents or teachers, Kralovec said. The amount of time a student reports spending on homework can differ from a parent's report of it, and it can also differ from the amount of time a teacher estimates students will need in order to complete the assignment, Kralovec explained.

Despite the research, the amount of time students spend doing homework remains a highly contentious topic in education, Kralovec told Live Science. And when a teacher's short note to parents about a no-homework policy goes viral, it shows that this topic has hit a very important nerve in the American family experience, she said.

Family life today is really challenging compared with decades past — with more working mothers and some parents working two or three jobs to make ends meet — and homework can add yet another stressor to the mix, Kralovec said.

If parents feel that the amount of homework students receive is too much and may be encroaching on family time, one strategy they may try is to get organized with other parents, Kralovec suggested.

Each school district may set its own policies about the amount of homework given to students. When parents have banded together in their communities, they have often been successful at having public discussions with administrators and teachers, and even moving assignment levels back to healthier levels, she said.

Originally published on Live Science.

SEATTLE — College tuitions are becoming prohibitively expensive for many people, with Harvard University now costing almost $61,000 a year for tuition, room, board and fees. Given the high price tag, is it worth it to graduate from a highly selective school versus a less expensive, lower-tier one?

The answer is, yes, "selectivity matters a lot," at least for most majors, according to two researchers.

The duo compared the salaries of students who graduated from highly to not-so-selective colleges in the United States. In all, they found that 10 years after graduation, "graduates from the most selective colleges earn[ed] about $16,000 more annually compared to graduates from average selective colleges," they wrote in a new study, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. [9 Ways Going to College Affects Your Health]

Moreover, the researchers found that a gender gap exists, even among graduates of highly selective colleges, such as Harvard and Stanford. Women who attended top-tier colleges earned about 16 percent less than men who majored in the same discipline at the same or other highly selective colleges, the researchers said.

But selectivity still mattered. Women who graduated from top colleges earned more, on average, than women who attended less selective institutions, such as Indiana State University or Eastern Oregon University, the scientists found.

"Harvard"-level selectivity

The researchers, Dirk Witteveen, a doctoral candidate of sociology, and Paul Attewell, a professor of sociology and urban education — both at The Graduate Center at The City University of New York (CUNY) — investigated whether there was a link between college selectivity and future salary.

Selectivity is different from quality, the researchers noted. Whereas quality usually measures a student's SAT/ACT scores, expenditures per full-time student and the ratio of students to faculty members, selectivity is a narrower concept that emphasizes the academic composition of the student body. Selectivity is usually measured by average SAT scores, they said.

"Selectivity acts as a powerful signal of the intelligence and ambition of a college’s student body as a whole, rather than a measure specifying the quality of the education that a particular graduate has received," the researchers wrote in a draft of their study.

Past studies have found a small link, or even no link, between attending a selective college and earning a higher average salary. But it's difficult to account for certain factors that also could influence the results and to use a nationally representative sample, and the new study did do those things, the researchers said.

For instance, the scientists controlled for gender, age, race, parental income, parental education, SAT score, college GPA, college major and region of employment following college, among other factors. In addition, they included only college graduates who are now full-time employees.

Then, the researchers looked at nationally representative surveys from 3,840 full-time workers who graduated from college in 1993 and 4,670 full-time workers who graduated in 2008. The 1993 group gave results 10 years after graduation (when they were about 33 years old), and the 2008 group gave results four years after graduation (about 26 years old).

The gender findings were stark. The women in the 1993 group who graduated from the most selective colleges earned an average yearly income of $62,400 in 2003 — about as much as the men who graduated from the least selective schools, who made an average of $62,200. The gender gap was also visible four years after graduation for the 2008 group, with the top-tier women earning less (about $52,400) than the low-tier men (about $56,500). [7 Ways to Reduce Job Stress]

Less-selective schools

Students could still make impressive salaries at lower-tier schools, as long as they majored in the fields of health, business/management and the math-related disciplines, such as computer science and engineering, the researchers found.

Given that earnings in these fields are relatively similar among the highly selective and very selective colleges, "you might therefore want to choose a slightly lower competitive college if you think they have a good program in your favorite discipline," as a way to save money on tuition, Witteveen told Live Science in an email.

People who majored in education earned the lowest income, although they still made more if they attended a highly selective school versus a low-tier school, he said. Because people who major in different subjects can have vastly different salaries, the Department of Education's "College Scorecard" likely isn't very helpful, as it just gives the raw average of graduate salaries, instead of assessing them differently, Witteveen said.

The study was presented here Sunday (Aug. 21) at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting.

Original article on Live Science.

All across the U.S., college freshmen are gearing up for new classes, friends and freedoms, but there's also a darker side of these changes: At many colleges, first-year students are at an increased risk of sexual assault compared with sophomores, juniors and seniors, experts told Live Science.

This period of heightened risk, called the "red zone," is usually more pronounced during the first few months of school, and affects more women than men, according to surveys of college students.

"How much additional risk there is for students in those first few weeks varies from campus to campus," said Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology and organizational studies at the University of Michigan and author of "Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality" (Harvard University Press, 2013). [9 Ways Going to College Affects Your Health]

Red-zone research

The research is mixed on the existence of this red zone. An internal review of University of Michigan sexual assault reports found no increased "red zone" risk for freshmen. According to that review, released in 2015, about 11 percent of all students (men, women, graduate and undergraduate), and 20 percent of undergraduate women, reported nonconsensual sexual behavior over the past year. This behavior included unwanted touching, kissing or penetration.

Larger studies, however, have found a pronounced red-zone risk among college freshmen. According to a survey of 16,000 college students from 22 schools in the United States, "A much higher percentage of freshmen have been sexually victimized while they were freshmen than any other school year category," researchers wrote in a study published in 2015 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

Many of these assaults happened when people were at parties or hanging out, the study found. However, fraternities, famous for their parties, aren't the only ones to blame. There was still a "freshman effect" at a university with no Greek life and a tightly regulated alcohol policy, according to a study published in 2008 in the Journal of American College Health.

Moreover, the red zone surges during the start of the school year, during September, October and November, according to a 2007 report prepared for the National Institute of Justice. These unwanted sexual experiences tended to happen during the wee hours of the morning, from midnight to 6 a.m., on Friday and Saturday nights, the report found.

Red-zone recipe

So why might this red zone exist? Armstrong pointed to the age group and the environment. In many situations, college freshmen are just 17 or 18 years old, and have never had the freedom to go out and drink and party all night, she said.

When school starts, most freshmen have yet to make close friends who will watch out for them at parties, and they may not know general party safety measures, such as keeping their drink close so that it can't be drugged. Plus, they may feel pressure to drink excessively to fit in, she said. 

When those factors are combined with older students who know how to flatter, intoxicate and isolate inexperienced newbies, it's a recipe that can lead to unwanted sexual experiences, Armstrong said. Plus, not all universities will appropriately discipline perpetrators, so there's little deterrence in some instances, she said. [Understanding the 10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors]

One reason the red zone wanes as students gain more experience and become sophomores and juniors is that they're busier with classes or significant others, meaning they go to fewer parties, Armstrong said. Older students are often more careful at parties, watching out for each other and keeping their distance from drunk flatterers or fraternities with bad reputations, she said.  

"It's unfortunate that women are put in this position of having to do that," Armstrong said. "They shouldn't have to. It is something that is — unfortunately, or fortunately — learned over the course of college."

She advised incoming freshmen to enjoy college life but to concentrate more on doing fun activities with friends rather than going wild at parties.

"Try to figure out how to connect with people, so you can basically figure out who you can be yourself around," Armstrong said. "Your friends are real friends, not the people you're trying to impress by being superdrunk."

Original article on Live Science.

In this series of articles, some of YouTube's most popular science channels take a turn in the spotlight. Their creators employ a range of techniques and styles, weaving together graphics, footage, animation, sound design, and a general curiosity about the world around them, exploring and sharing the unexpected and fascinating details of their unique science stories.

YouTube's Physics Girl: "Physics videos for every atom and eve"

You might not spend much of your day thinking about physics, but its laws and properties govern every move you make — literally.

Physics defines how all matter — down to the atomic and sub-atomic levels — performs as it interacts with space and time, and how energy and force generate and restrict motion. The behavior of breaking ocean waves, a ray of sunlight, or Olympic gymnasts is all subject to physics' rules, which set limits for how fast and how high objects can travel, how far they can go before they lose momentum, and even determine what their movement looks like.

But although physics governs and shapes matter and movement, picturing how it operates can be tricky — and that's where Dianna Cowern, creator and host of YouTube's "Physics Girl" channel, steps in. Cowern takes a playful approach to physics in her videos, to demonstrate, visualize and enthusiastically explain how it intersects with and influences our lives every day. [Gallery: Dreamy Images Reveal Beauty in Physics]

Cowern first developed an interest in physics in high school, crediting her interest to two teachers who introduced her to "all the cool stuff," Scientific American reported in 2014. After earning a college degree in physics, Cowen produced a lighthearted video called "What to Do With a Physics Degree," and its popularity hinted that producing videos about physics could be both successful and rewarding, Cowern told Scientific American.

"So many questions!"

In a video demonstrating how to use a dinner plate to create a pair of peculiar traveling vortices in a swimming pool, Cowern exclaims, "There are so many questions!" This could easily be a tagline for her channel — Cowern investigates a range of physics topics: from rainbow formation, to the trajectory of a curveball, to so-called "antibubbles" — bubbles in which a thin layer of gas encloses liquid — which have to be seen to be believed.

For viewers who aren't afraid to get hands-on with physics, Cowern offers experiments that they can perform themselves. Care to try five weird ways to extinguish a candle? Are you curious about what happens when you drop a stack of balls? Or maybe you'd like to generate a cloud — with your mouth? "Physics Girl" can help make that happen.

And if you want to delve a little deeper into physics mysteries, "Physics Girl" episodes also tackle questions about more abstract concepts, like Einstein's theory of special relativity, and what determines the shape of the universe.

In every video, Cowern's enthusiasm for science crackles with as much energy as a giant Tesla coil — much like the one featured in a behind-the-scenes photo on Instagram of a production in progress, described as "something fun" with fellow YouTuber Joe Hanson, creator and host of the channel "It's OK to Be Smart."

Got a favorite science channel on YouTube that you think we should feature? Tell us about it in the comments or on Twitter and Facebook!

Original article on Live Science.

Hindsight is 20/20, right? That's the premise of a new book that poses the question:  What if we were wrong?

Chuck Klosterman's "But What If We're Wrong?" (Blue Rider Press, 2016) deals with the fact that the great march of history shows us that, well … we're always wrong. Aristotle had his run as the smartest man on the planet, but he got disproved by Galileo, who was trumped by Newton, until Einstein ruled the roost. And while there have been some hints of "proving Einstein wrong," nothing has really stuck. But even so, scientific "fact" is a fact only until it's proved wrong.

In his book, Klosterman tries to imagine the world today viewed from the vantage point of a distant future, and attempts to suss out what humans might have gotten wrong. Klosterman asks if our belief in democracy might lead to the failure of society, and speculates as to which writer who isn't even born yet is going to be as important as Hemingway, Melville or Kafka. [Read an excerpt from Klosterman's new book, "But What If We're Wrong?"]

Klosterman's strong suits are writing about rock music and contemporary culture. But, yes, there's science here, specifically the importance of embracing your potential wrongness, and how humanity might all be fictional creatures stuck in an advanced video game. But understand … this could all be wrong.

Live Science caught up with Klosterman to get the lowdown on his book and all of its "wrongness." Below is a Q&A with Klosterman that was edited for brevity.

Live Science: You say this is not a book about science; but about continuums. What do you mean by that?

Klosterman: The first part is easy to describe: It's not about science, because science is just one sliver of the book. But it's impossible not to write about science in this, because of the overall thesis/argument of the book.

What I mean about continuums is that I'm not really dealing with any specific problem, especially as it applies to science. It's not like I feel particularly qualified to take a specific problem in science and say, 'Well, here's something we're probably wrong about." I don't have those qualifications!

But I am interested in the possibility that we are going to be wrong in the same way that history has indicated that mankind always is. It seems as though the history of ideas is the history of being wrong. And to me, that is a kind of continuum. It's a continual path that shows we don't always know something, but we're always shifting to a path that makes us feel more comfortable in the moment, even if that shift is wrong, and a new shift is destined to happen again.

Live Science: What got you interested in the topic of "Holy crap, we're always wrong?"

Klosterman: Part of it is I was watching the Fox reboot of "Cosmos," the one that Neil deGrasse Tyson is the host of. As I watched it, I was always intrigued that whoever was referenced, usually some scientist from the past who had some breakthrough idea, usually turned out to be wrong, and usually within one generation of his life. And it occurred to me that this must still be happening now. We're inside the now, so we can't really see it, but this process must be happening all the time. We just can't recognize it until we get outside of the time frame. [Oops! The 5 Greatest Scientific Blunders]

I think it's important to accept that things that seem almost beyond question still need to be questioned.

Live Science: You spoke to Brian Greene and Neil deGrasse Tyson for this book. How did they respond to your book's premise?

Klosterman: You know, Tyson, I think, questioned my motives. I think that he was skeptical about what my real reasons for writing a book like this were. I don't know if it's because he's become used to being asked about things by people who are really trying to disprove the validity of science, or maybe it's just the way I was asking the questions.

But all I was trying to do was say, "I'm not trying to contradict what you believe, because in all likelihood, I believe it, too. I just want to know if you think there's the possibility that what we believe now could be fundamentally flawed." And he … did not. I think he really feels that since the Copernican Revolution, we have only been refining our understanding of science because of use of the scientific method and because science is now intertwined with mathematics instead of philosophy. He seemed to think this whole line of questioning was, I wouldn't go so far as to say "dangerous," but definitely superfluous.

Now with Greene, he was more like, "This is a crazy hypothetical! I love this!" And Tyson was still fine. He gave consistently smart answers. I probably quote him at length more than anyone else in the book.

[The Copernican Revolution defines the shift from the belief that Earth was at the center of the universe to the now-established view that the sun is this center and the planets in the solar system revolve around it.]

Live Science: But isn't "well now we're right" the exact arrogance that puts us back to pre-Copernicus?

Klosterman: Well … my first answer would be yes. I would believe that to be true. But I don't feel completely secure in that belief, either. There are many arguments, thousands, that support Tyson and the way in which he views the world. Those are all micro-arguments. And the only macro-argument against that would be, "Well, that's what everyone thinks until it changes."

And I think I almost have an obligation to accept Tyson's arguments because they do seem foundationally rational. But I feel the way we view science now and the way we will view it in 500 years are going to be radically different. But I don't have the argument for that other than, "That's what everyone thinks until it changes." That's the thing, and that's why a lot of this book deals with the dissonance between what we think and what we feel.

Live Science: You mention the "simulation argument" popularized by Nick Bostrom in which we all might be sentient gamepieces in a hyper-advanced game of "The Sims." Even Bostrom admits the high end of this probability is 20 percent. What's your number?

Klosterman: The idea of us living in a simulation makes a lot of sense to me. And you know what? There are a lot of things about life that are explainable to me if we were to accept that this is a simulated reality being played by some person in the future, and that everything we know about the universe and ourselves is just on some supercomputer. That makes a lot of sense to me. It feels right in a lot of ways. But I don't have a persuasive argument to convince anyone of that other than giving them the idea and saying, "Hey, think about this." [5 Reasons We May Live in a Multiverse]

I don't have any proof for it, and science is a world of proof. I'm not dealing as much with proof as I am this idea that if we have proof, how much is really a fabrication of our own desire? Does it feel like proof just because we want it to be true?

Live Science: In discussing the simulation argument, you bring up those 20-or-so numbers that seem to guide the universe: the gravitational constant, the mass of an electron, and so on. The whole argument does feel like a stoner college dorm conversation, but things like this could point to reality being "programmed." Do you think these 20 numbers give a seemingly crazy argument some credence?

Klosterman:I think there are many things about the simulation argument that are sort of comfortably reasonable. I don't know if the 20 numbers are, because the converse to the argument that this is all some kind of computer simulation is the idea of infinity. And in infinity, all things that could possibly happen will happen. If the universe is truly infinite, every possibility will come to play. But I don't know if we as simple people really have the ability to grasp infinity. We can explain it, and we can even explain it to a 5-year-old. But we can't truly comprehend the magnitude of the infinite. [The 9 Most Massive Numbers in Existence]

Live Science: Shifting gears to the more mundane, if you had to pick the one act that rock 'n' roll will be defined by in 200 years, who is your pick?

Klosterman: Well, in a rational world, the answer is the Beatles. Their performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" alone impacted the culture so strongly, and rippled so strongly forward. And the Beatles set the template for what a rock band is supposed to be like. Every band after the Beatles was subconsciously modeling themselves after the Beatles to some degree.

I kind of draw an analogy to the presidents, and how we're always re-ranking them. But no matter how many times we re-rank them, in another 200 years, the top presidents will still be Washington and Lincoln and Jefferson, because they defined what a president is. They are the idea, and you can't be better than the idea. The Beatles are the idea of what a rock band is.

Now will that happen? Will the Beatles be the answer? [laughs] Everything I know about the history of ideas tells me "probably not." But if things work out rationally … probably them.

Live Science: What have you learned in researching and writing this book?

Klosterman: Well, I address a whole bunch of different categories of thought. This book talks about literature, about rock, about science, about football, about politics, about TV. And what I found is an ultimately predictable thing: Someone who is an expert in television will have issues with the section on television, but assume that everything else makes sense. Or a rock critic will have serious issues with the rock section, but completely accept everything else. So I know in the science category, all scientists are going to see is the simplicity of my thinking, and the evidence that I'm in over my head.

But I'd ask people to keep in mind the idea that if you really understand something, it's even more important for you to consider the possibility of your wrongness. Even if it takes someone dumber than you to point that out.

"But What If We're Wrong?" is available now, published by Blue Rider Press, a division of Penguin Random House. You can order via Amazon, or your local bookstore.

—Similar articles of this ilk are archived on a crummy-looking blog. You can also follow @McLauchlin on Twitter.

In his new book, Chuck Klosterman asks questions that are profound in their simplicity: How certain are we about our understanding of gravity? How certain are we about our understanding of time? What will be the defining memory of rock music, five hundred years from today? How seriously should we view the content of our dreams? How seriously should we view the content of television? Are all sports destined for extinction? Is it possible that the greatest artist of our era is currently unknown (or—weirder still—widely known, but entirely disrespected)? Is it possible that we “overrate” democracy? And perhaps most disturbing, is it possible that we’ve reached the end of knowledge? Below is an excerpt from Klosterman's "But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past" (Blue Rider Press, 2016). [Read Live Science's Q&A with Chuck Klosterman]

[2] If I spoke to  one  hundred   scientists  about  the  topic of scientific wrongness,  I suspect I’d  get one hundred slightly different  answers, all of which would represent  different notches  on a continuum of confidence.  And if this were a book about science, that’s what I’d need to do. But this is not a book about science; this is a book about continuums. Instead, I interviewed two exceptionally famous scientists who exist (or at least appear to exist) on opposite ends of a specific psychological spectrum.  One of these was Tyson, the most conventionally famous astrophysicist alive. He hosted the Fox reboot of the science series Cosmos and created his own talk show on the National Geographic Channel. The other was string theorist Brian Greene at Columbia University (Greene is the person mentioned in this book’s introduction, speculating on the  possibility  that  "there  is a very, very good chance that our understanding of gravity will not be the same in five hundred  years").

Talking to only these two men, I must concede, is a little like writing about debatable ideas in pop music and interviewing only Taylor Swift and Beyoncé Knowles. Tyson and Greene are unlike the overwhelming majority of working scientists. They specialize in translating ultra-difficult concepts into a language that can be understood by mainstream consumers; both have written best- selling books for general audiences, and I assume they both experience a level of envy and skepticism among their professional peers. That’s what happens to any professional the moment he or she appears on TV. Still, their academic credentials cannot be questioned.  Moreover, they represent the competing poles of this argument almost perfectly. Which might have been a product of how they chose to hear the questions.

When I sat down in Greene's office and explained the premise of my book—in essence, when I explained that I was interested in considering the likelihood that our most entrenched assumptions about the universe might be wrong—he viewed the premise as playful. His unspoken reaction came across as "This is a fun, non-crazy hypothetical."  Tyson’s posture was different.  His unspoken attitude was closer to "This is a problematic, silly supposition."  But here again, other factors might have played a role: As a public intellectual, Tyson spends a great deal of his time rep- resenting the scientific community in the debate over climate change. In certain circles, he has become the face of science. It’s entirely possible Tyson assumed my questions were veiled attempts at debunking scientific thought, prompting him to take an inflexibly hard-line stance. (It's also possible this is just the stance he always takes with everyone.) Conversely, Greene’s openness might be a ref lection of his own academic experience: His career is punctuated by research trafficking on the far edges of human knowledge, which means he’s accustomed to people questioning the validity of ideas that propose a radical reconsideration of everything we think we know.

One of Greene’s high-profile signatures is his support for the concept of "the multiverse." Now, what follows will be an oversimplification—but here’s what that connotes:  Generally, we work from the assumption that there is one universe, and that our galaxy is a component of this one singular universe that emerged from the Big Bang. But the multiverse notion suggests there are infinite (or at least numerous) universes beyond our own, existing as alternative realities. Imagine an endless roll of bubble wrap; our universe (and everything in it) would be one tiny bubble, and all the other bubbles would be other universes that are equally vast. In his book The Hidden Reality, Greene maps out nine types of parallel universes within this hypothetical system. It’s a complicated way to think about space, not to mention an inherently impossible thing to prove; we can’t get (or see) outside our own universe any more than a man can get (or see) outside his own body. And while the basic concept of a limited multiverse might not seem particularly insane, the logical extensions of what a limitless multiverse would entail are almost impossible to fathom.

Here's what I mean: Let’s say there are infinite universes that exist over the expanse of infinite time (and the key word here is "infinite").  Within infinity, everything that could happen will happen. Everything.  Which would mean that—somewhere, in an alternative universe—there is a planet exactly like Earth, which has existed for the exact same amount of time, and where every single event has happened exactly as it has on the Earth that we know as our own . . . except that on Christmas Eve of 1962, John F. Kennedy dropped a pen. And there is still another alternative universe with a planet exactly like Earth, surrounded by an exact replica of our moon, with all the same cities and all the same people, except that—in this reality—you read this sentence yesterday instead of today. And there is still another alternative universe where every- thing is the same, except you are slightly taller. And there is still another alternative universe beyond that one where everything is the same, except you don't exist. And there is still another alternative reality beyond that where a version of Earth exists, but it's ruled by robotic wolves with a hunger for liquid cobalt. And so on and so on and so on. In an infinite multiverse, everything we have the potential to imagine—as well as everything we can't imagine— would exist autonomously. It would require a total recalibration of every spiritual and secular belief that ever was. Which is why it's not surprising that many people don’t dig a transformative hypothesis that even its proponents concede is impossible to verify.

"There really are some highly decorated physicists who have gotten angry with me, and with people like me, who have spoken about the multiverse theory," Greene says. "They will tell me, 'You've done some real damage.  This is nuts.  Stop it.' And I’m a completely rational person. I don't speak in hyperbole to get attention. My true feeling is that these multiverse ideas could be right. Now, why do I feel that way? I look at the mathematics. The mathematics lead in this direction. I also consider the history of ideas. If you described quantum physics to Newton, he would have thought you were insane. Maybe if you give Newton a quantum textbook and five minutes, he sees it completely. But as an idea, it would seem insane. So I guess my thinking is this: I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely that the multiverse theory is correct.  I think it’s extraordinarily likely that my colleagues who say the multiverse concept is crazy are right. But I'm not willing to say the multiverse idea is wrong, because there is no basis for that statement.  I understand the discomfort with the idea, but I nevertheless allow it as a real possibility.  Because it is a real possibility."

Greene delivered a TED talk about the multiverse in 2012, a twenty-two-minute lecture translated into more than thirty languages and watched by 2.5 million people. It is, for all practical purposes, the best place to start if you want to learn what the multiverse would be like. Greene has his critics, but the concept is taken seriously by most people who understand it (including Tyson, who has said, “We have excellent theoretical and philosophical reasons to think we live in a multiverse”). He is the recognized expert on this subject. Yet he’s still incredulous about his own ideas, as illustrated by the following exchange:

Q: What is your level of confidence that—in three hundred years—someone will reexamine your TED talk and do a close reading of the information, and conclude you were almost entirely correct?

A: Tiny. Less than one percent.  And you know, if I was really being careful, I wouldn’t have even given that percentage a specific number, because a number requires data. But take that as my loose response. And the reason my loose response is one percent just comes from looking at the history of ideas and recognizing that every age thinks they were making real headway toward the ultimate answer, and every next generation comes along and says, “You were really insightful,  but now that we know X, Y, and Z, here is what we actually think.” So, humility drives me to anticipate that we will look like people from the age of Aristotle who believed stones fell to earth because stones wanted to be on the ground.

Still, as Greene continues to explain the nature  of his skepticism, a concentration of optimism slowly seeps back in.

In the recesses of my mind, where I would not want to be out in public—even though I realize you’re recording this, and this is a public conversation—I do hold out hope that in one hundred or five hundred years, people will look back on our current work and say, “Wow.” But I love to be conservative in my estimates. Still, I sometimes think I’m being too conservative, and that makes me excited. Because look at quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics,  you can do a calculation  and predict  esoteric  properties  of electrons.  And you can do the calculation—and people have done these calculations, heroically, over the span of decades—and compare [those calculations] to actual experiments, and the numbers agree. They agree up to the tenth digit beyond the decimal point. That is unprecedented—that we can have a theory that agrees with observation to that degree.  That makes you feel like “This is different.”  It makes you feel like you’re closing in on truth.

So here is the hinge point where skepticism starts to reverse itself. Are we the first society to conclude that this time  we're finally right about how the universe works? No—and every previous society who thought they were correct ended up hopelessly mistaken.  That, however, doesn’t mean that the goal is innately hopeless.  Yes, we are not the first society to conclude that our version of reality is objectively true. But we could be the first society to express that belief and is never contradicted, because we might be the first society to really get there. We might be the last society, because—now—we translate absolutely everything into math. And math is an obdurate bitch.

[3] The "history of ideas," as Greene notes, is a pattern of error, with each new generation reframing and correcting the mistakes of the one that came before. But “not in physics, and not since 1600," insists Tyson. In the ancient world, science was fundamentally connected to philosophy.  Since the age of Newton, it's become fundamentally connected to math.  And in any situation where the math zeroes out, the possibility of over- turning the idea becomes borderline impossible. We don’t know— and we can’t know—if the laws of physics are the same everywhere in the universe, because we can’t access most of the universe. But there are compelling reasons to believe this is indeed the case, and those reasons can’t be marginalized as egocentric constructions that will wax and wane with the attitudes of man. Tyson uses an example from 1846, during a period when the laws of Newton had seemed to reach their breaking point.  For reasons no one could comprehend, Newtonian principles were failing to describe the orbit of Uranus.  The natural conclusion was that the laws of physics must work only within the inner solar system (and since Uranus represented the known edge of that system, it must be operating under a different set of rules).

"But then," Tyson explains, "someone said: 'Maybe Newton’s laws still work. Maybe there’s an unseen force of gravity operating on this planet that we have not accounted for in our equations.' So let’s assume Newton’s law is correct and ask, 'If there is a hidden force of gravity, where would that force be coming from? Maybe it’s coming from a planet we have yet to discover.' This is a very difficult math problem, because it's one thing to say, 'Here's a planetary mass and here’s the value of its gravity.' Now we’re saying we have the value of gravity, so let’s infer the existence of a mass. In math, this is called an inversion problem,  which is way harder  than  starting  with the object and calculating  its gravitational field. But great mathematicians engaged in this, and they said, ‘We predict, based on Newton’s laws that work on the inner solar system, that if Newton’s laws are just as accurate on Uranus as they are anywhere else, there ought to be a planet right here—go look for it.’ And the very night they put a telescope in that part of the sky, they discovered the planet Neptune.”

The reason this anecdote is so significant is the sequence. It’s easy to discover a new planet and then work up the math proving that it’s there; it’s quite another to mathematically insist a massive undiscovered planet should be precisely where it ends up being. This is a different level of correctness. It's not interpretative, be- cause numbers have no agenda, no sense of history, and no sense of humor. The Pythagorean theorem doesn’t need the existence of Mr. Pythagoras in order to work exactly as it does.

I have a friend who’s a data scientist, currently working on the economics of mobile gaming environments. He knows a great deal about probability theory,  so I asked him  if our  contemporaryunderstanding of probability is still evolving and if the way people understood probability three hundred  years ago has any relation- ship to how we will gauge probability  three  hundred  years from today. His response: “What we think about probability in 2016 is what we thought in 1716, for sure . . . probably in 1616, for the most part . . . and probably what [Renaissance mathematician and degenerate gambler Gerolamo] Cardano thought in 1564. I know this sounds arrogant, but what we’ve believed about probability since 1785 is still what we’ll believe about probability in 2516."

If we base any line of reasoning around consistent numeric values, there is no way to be wrong, unless we are (somehow) wrong about the very nature of the numbers themselves. And that possibility is a non-math conversation.  I mean, can 6 literally turn out to be 9? Jimi Hendrix imagined such a scenario, but only because he was an electric philosopher (as opposed to a pocket calculator).

"In physics, when we say we know something, it’s very simple," Tyson reiterates.  "Can we predict the outcome?  If we can predict the outcome, we're good to go, and we’re on to the next problem. There are philosophers who care about the understanding of why that was the outcome.  Isaac Newton  [essentially] said, ‘I have an equation that says why the moon is in orbit. I have no f------ idea how the Earth talks to the moon. It’s empty space—there's no hand reaching out.' He was uncomfortable about this idea of action at a distance. And he was criticized for having such ideas, because it was preposterous that one physical object could talk to another physical object. Now, you can certainly have that conversation [about why it happens].  But an equation properly predicts what it does. That other conversation is for people having a beer. It’s a beer conversation. So go ahead—have that conversation.  ‘What is the nature of the interaction between the moon and the Earth?’ Well, my equations get it right every time. So you can say that gremlins do it—it doesn’t matter to my equation . . . Philosophers like arguing about [semantics]. In physics, we’re way more practical than philosophers. Way more practical. If something works, we’re on to the next problem. We're not arguing why. Philosophers argue why. It doesn’t mean we don’t like to argue. We’re just not derailed by why, pro- vided the equation gives you an accurate account of reality.”

In terms of speculating on the likelihood of our collective wrongness, Tyson’s distinction is huge. If you remove the deepest question—the question of why—the  risk  of  major  error  falls through the  floor.  And this is because the problem of why is a problem that's impossible to detach from the foibles of human nature. Take, for example, the childhood question of why the sky is blue. This was another problem tackled by Aristotle. In his systematic essay “On Colors,” Aristotle came up with an explanation for why the sky is blue: He argued that all air is very slightly blue, but that this blueness isn’t perceptible to the human eye unless there are many, many layers of air placed on top of each other (similar, according  to his logic, to the  way a teaspoon  of water looks clear but a deep well of water looks black). Based on nothing beyond his own powers of deduction, it was a genius conclusion. It explains why the sky is blue. But the assumption was totally wrong. The sky is blue because of the way sunlight is refracted.  And unlike Aristotle, the person who realized this truth didn’t care why it was true, which allowed him to be right forever. There will never be a new explanation for why the sky is blue.

Unless, of course, we end up with a new explanation for everything.

Copyright © 2016 by Chuck Klosterman. Used by permission of Blue Rider Press. All rights reserved.

People with higher levels of education may be more likely to develop certain types of brain tumors, a new study from Sweden suggests.

Researchers found that women who completed at least three years of university courses were 23 percent more likely to develop a type of cancerous brain tumor called glioma, compared with women who only completed up to nine years of mandatory education and did not go to a university. And men who completed at least three years of university courses were 19 percent more likely to develop the same type of tumor, compared with men who did not go to a university.

Though the reasons behind the link are not clear, "one possible explanation is that highly educated people may be more aware of symptoms and seek medical care earlier," and therefore are more likely to be diagnosed, said Amal Khanolkar, a research associate at the Institute of Child Health at the University College Londonand a co-author of the study. [Top 10 Cancer-Fighting Foods]

In the study, the researchers looked at data on more than 4.3 million people in Sweden who were a part of the Swedish Total Population Register. The researchers tracked the people for 17 years, beginning in 1993, to see if they developed brain tumors during that time. They also collected information about the people's education levels, income, marital status and occupation.

During the 17-year study, 5,735 men and 7,101 women developed brain tumors, according to the findings, published today (June 20) in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

In addition to the differences between brain tumor development and education level, the researchers also found an association between brain tumor development and income. Men who had higher incomes were 14 percent more likely to develop glioma during the study period, compared with men with lower incomes, according to the study. However, the relationship between the risk of this type of brain tumor and income level was not found in women, the researchers said.

Moreover, the study found that men who worked in managerial and professional roles were 20 percent more likely to develop glioma, compared with those who worked manual jobs. These men were also 50 percent more likely to develop acoustic neuroma, a type of noncancerous brain tumor that grows on the nerve that is used for hearing and balance.

The researchers also found that women who completed at least three years of university courses were also 16 percent more likely to develop a type of mostly noncancerous brain tumor called meningioma, compared with women who did not go on to higher education.

The new findings are in line with previous research, which has also found a link between an increased risk of certain brain tumors and higher socio-economic status, the researchers said.

However, the new study only shows a link between certain types of brain tumor and certain factors; it does not show that these factors directly cause brain tumors, the researchers said. While other lifestyle factors might have also played a role, the researchers did not have access to such information, they said.

The idea that education levels and brain tumors are linked is not entirely new.

"It has been an 'urban legend' among neurosurgeons that smarter people are more likely to get brain tumors," said Dr. Raj K. Narayan, the chair of neurosurgery at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, who was not involved in the new study. "However, I am somewhat surprised to find that this may actually be true." The mechanism behind this link is still unknown, but it might be that having more brain cells or greater brain activity somehow increases a person's risk of brain tumors, he told Live Science.

Originally published on Live Science.