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Michigan Warns: This Plant Can Blind You

 Michigan Warns: 
 This Plant Can 
 Blind You 
in case you missed it

Michigan Warns: This Plant Can Blind You

Steer clear of the giant hogweed

(Newser) - Today's reminder that Mother Nature has the upper hand: western Michigan officials are warning the public about the possible presence of a plant that looks a bit like Queen Anne's lace—and has the ability to blind you. The Calhoun County Public Health Department says it identified and...

What Runners Think About: How Much Running Sucks

Although, they think about their pace more than their pain

(Newser) - Non-runners may look at a runner off in the distance and feel a twinge of envy, because surely that person is in some kind of Zen-like zone, ruminating about life's mysteries. A first-of-its kind study that had runners record their thoughts on the go clears that up: Some samples...

5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Including one of note to anyone who's ever been involved in a breakup

(Newser) - Intriguing archaeological finds highlight the week's list of discoveries:
  • Ancient Mystery Monolith Found Off Sicily's Coast : Archaeologists have made quite the find off the coast of Sicily: a monolith that dates back about 10,000 years. It's broken in two now and on its side, but the
...

Ancient Mystery Monolith Found Off Sicily's Coast

It dates back 10K years, was submerged in flood

(Newser) - Archaeologists have made quite the find off the coast of Sicily: a monolith that dates back about 10,000 years. It's broken in two now and on its side, but the block would have stood nearly 40 feet tall in its heyday, before a massive flood submerged it (along...

How Fish Could Change to Escape Fishermen
 How Fish Could Change 
 to Escape Fishermen 
new study

How Fish Could Change to Escape Fishermen

It's the nature of the hunt that the best swimmers survive—and procreate

(Newser) - Similarly to how superbugs are evolving so that they can survive our best efforts to drug them out of existence, it's possible that fish could evolve to swim faster and thus escape our masterfully constructed nets. So report University of Glasgow researchers in the journal Proceedings of the Royal ...

This Massive Site Might Just Put Stonehenge to Shame

Archaeologists excavating henge 10 times larger than its neighbor

(Newser) - You think Stonehenge is impressive? Archaeologists in Britain are excavating a monument ten times larger than the iconic structure, though it appears to the naked eye to be little more than farmland. A henge is a circular earthwork, and the one in question is Marden Henge, which sits a few...

Meet World's New Horrifying Fish

New species of anglerfish discovered at nearly 5K feet in the Gulf of Mexico

(Newser) - It seems like every time humans venture to the ocean's depths, they return with a terrifying new type of fish; and the recently discovered Lasiognathus regan is certainly no exception. CNN describes the new species of anglerfish as looking like a "hunchbacked, rotting, old shoe with spikes, a...

Horses and Humans Share Lots of Looks

Researchers have observed 17 distinct facial expressions in horses

(Newser) - Scientists at the University of Sussex have taken a long, hard long at our equine pals and determined that horses have 17 distinct looks of their own. Some 15 hours of observing natural behavior in 86 horses, ranging in age from four weeks to 27 years and spanning several breeds,...

Bonobos Have This in Common With Human Babies

They too use identical noises that function in various contexts

(Newser) - Humans aren't the only species to speak baby talk, apparently. A new study published in the journal Peer J finds our closest living relatives communicate using high-pitched calls or "peeps" strangely similar to the sounds made by human babies before they can talk. Researcher Zanna Clay of the...

Age-Old Mystery About the Human Eye May Be Solved
Age-Old Mystery About the Human Eye May Be Solved
NEW STUDY

Age-Old Mystery About the Human Eye May Be Solved

We can see a single candle flame from 1.6 miles away, say astronomers

(Newser) - The power of human eyesight is often debated with a single question: How far can the human eye see a single candle flame? A quick Google search turns up guesses ranging from three to 30 miles, but no one has tried to find out for certain—partly because of the...

Archaeologists Find the Gate to Goliath's Hometown

The city entrance is one of the largest ever found in Israel

(Newser) - An archaeological dig now in its 20th year has uncovered the entrance gate to Gath, the ancient Biblical city of the Philistines and onetime home of the giant Goliath. Before the king of Damascus destroyed it in 830 BCE, Gath was the largest city in the land for hundreds of...

DC Is Sinking, Literally
 DC Is Sinking, Literally 
in case you missed it

DC Is Sinking, Literally

Slow-moving process will make rising sea levels even worse, say geologists

(Newser) - It sounds like a metaphor but is geological reality: Washington, DC, is sinking. In fact, researchers led by a team at the University of Vermont predict that the ground will drop another six inches by the end of the century, reports UPI . The cause isn't man-made: It's the...

Archaeologists Find Historic Synagogue Ruined by Nazis
 Archaeologists Find 
 Historic Synagogue 
 Ruined by Nazis 
in case you missed it

Archaeologists Find Historic Synagogue Ruined by Nazis

Remnants found beneath a school in Lithuania

(Newser) - The Great Synagogue of Vilna dated all the way back to the 1600s and was what the Jerusalem Post calls one of "the most historic and treasured landmarks of European Jewry." But that synagogue, in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, was all but destroyed by the Nazis during...

Ancient Cat Paw Prints Found on Roman Roof Tile

They did what they wanted 2K years ago, too

(Newser) - It's now a safe bet that people have been swearing at cats for 2,000 years. Officials at the Gloucester City Museum in England have found an ancient roof tile with the telltale paw prints of a feline being somewhere it wasn't supposed to be, reports the Telegraph...

What You Earn Is Tied to How You Drink

 What You Earn Is 
 Tied to How You Drink 
in case you missed it

What You Earn Is Tied to How You Drink

The wealthy and most educated are most likely to drink alcohol

(Newser) - Overall, roughly two in three Americans drink alcohol—which has been true historically since 1939. But dig a little deeper and drinking habits vary widely among some Americans, particularly between those who are wealthy (eight in 10 drink) and those who are not (only five in 10 do), reports Gallup...

Napoleon's Nemesis: 5 Most Incredible Discoveries

Including a new mandate on how much water to drink

(Newser) - A "bombshell" about Jamestown and a slowly sinking DC make the list:
  • How a Neurosurgeon Brought Down Napoleon : As Napoleon Bonaparte's forces moved toward Moscow in the autumn of 1812, Russian General Mikhail Kutuzov burned his own city, fled east, and left Moscow open to invaders. But what
...

Study: 'Golden Wolf' Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight

We just thought it was the African golden jackal

(Newser) - Africa, home to the Ethiopian wolf and the gray wolf, can now lay claim to the African golden wolf—the first new species of canid (which also encompasses jackals, foxes, and coyotes) to be discovered in 150 years, reports National Geographic . The new species has long been misunderstood to be...

NASA Baffled by Red Arcs on Saturn Moon

New images reveal unusual marks on Tethys

(Newser) - Scientists are baffled after sighting several large, reddish arcs across the surface of one of Saturn's moons. The markings on Tethys are a few miles wide and several hundred miles long, per NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory . The images were taken by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, and while photos it...

Study: Climbing a Tree Is Good for Your Brain

And the researchers looked at 55-year-olds, not 5-year-olds...

(Newser) - If you're quick to dismiss climbing a tree as child's play, a study out of the University of North Florida might go far in changing your mind. The study focused on "proprioceptively dynamic activities," that is, ones that involved proprioception and a second factor (like locomotion...

Study Tries to Figure Out If Hamsters Can Be Happy

Using sugar and quinine

(Newser) - A new study in the oft-overlooked field of hamster research tries to get at that nagging question: Can hamsters be happy? Two researchers with Liverpool John Moores University found that hamsters, like other animals, may exhibit judgment bias, according to Phys.org , which boils that down to the idea that...

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