That's Interesting
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An Analysis of Decision Under Risk
21st April, 2024This paper presents a critique of expected utility theory as a descriptive model of decision making under risk, and develops an alternative model, called prospect theory. Choices among risky prospects exhibit several pervasive effects that are inconsistent with the basic tenets of utility theory.
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Methuselah: Still the world’s oldest tree?
18th April, 2024In eastern California, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) known as Methuselah has long been considered Earth’s oldest living thing. According to tree-ring data, Methuselah is 4,853 years old — meaning it was well established by the time ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza. And while Methuselah’s precise location is kept under wraps to protect it from harm, there’s much we do know about this living relic.
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Why loneliness is bad for your health
14th April, 2024A lack of social interaction is linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia and more. Researchers are unpicking how the brain mediates these effects.
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Memories are made by breaking DNA — and fixing it
10th April, 2024When a long-term memory forms, some brain cells experience a rush of electrical activity so strong that it snaps their DNA. Then, an inflammatory response kicks in, repairing this damage and helping to cement the memory, a study in mice shows.
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Goethe’s Theory of Colors: The 1810 Treatise That Inspired Kandinsky & Early Abstract Painting
07th April, 2024Goethe’s book on color, Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Colors), written in 1810, disputed the Newtonian view of the subject and formulated a psychological and philosophical account of the way we actually experience color as a phenomenon.
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Download 9,200+ Free Films from the Prelinger Archives: Documentaries, Cartoons & More
02nd April, 2024Depending on how you reckon it, the “American century” has already ended, is now drawing to its close, or has some life left in it yet. But whatever its boundaries, that ambiguous period has been culturally defined by one medium above all: film, or more broadly speaking, motion pictures.
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An Animated Introduction to the Rosetta Stone, and How It Unlocked Our Understanding of Egyptian Hieroglyphs
28th March, 2024This animated video, created by Egyptologist Franziska Naether, explains “how scholars decoded the ancient message of the Rosetta Stone,” a painstaking process that took decades to complete. By the 1850s, philologists had unlocked the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs and, with them, the secrets of ancient Egyptian civilization.
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OpenVertebrate Presents a Massive Database of 13,000 3D Scans of Vertebrate Specimens
25th March, 2024From The Florida Museum of Natural History comes the openVertebrate project, a new initiative to “provide free, digital 3D vertebrate anatomy models and data to researchers, educators, students and the public.”
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Two Broods of More Than a Trillion Cicadas Will Emerge in the U.S. This Year
04th March, 2024More than a trillion cicadas will be coming to the U.S. in an event that has not happened since Thomas Jefferson was U.S. president in 1803. Two adjacent broods of the red-eyed flying cicadas will emerge from the ground in April, and residents in the Midwest and Southeast should brace themselves for a season of high-pitched buzzing. 2024 will mark the first time in more than 200 years that Brood XIX, which arrives every 13 years, and Brood XIII, which arrives every 17 years, will emerge at the same time. The next co-emergence of these broods won’t happen for another 221 years.
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The new car batteries that could power the electric vehicle revolution
23rd February, 2024Researchers are experimenting with different designs that could lower costs, extend vehicle ranges and offer other improvements.
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