Peer into any home aquarium and there’s a good chance some zebrafish will dart by, easy to identify thanks to their namesake stripes. But that beginner-friendly aquarium species has, since the early 1960s, also been a favorite fish to watch for some researchers.
Turns out that zebrafish (Danio rerio), originally found in freshwater in India, have a surprising amount in common with humans.
Read all about it in The Physiologist Magazine.
Enter the Alaska State Fair through the green gate and there’s no avoiding the instant assault on your senses. Even before the flashing lights of the rides and games fan out in front of you, the scents of sugar and barbecue smoke smack you headlong. Yet on this grim gray afternoon, it took the stunningly loud pop of the Mash-a-Mouse game’s oversized balloons to snap me out of what had become an overwhelming desire to take a nap.
Even a Monday at the fair can feel very Monday.
Gray day or not, I maintain that any adult in need of a one-day pre-winter vacation from reality should head out to Palmer on the second Monday of the fair season. Solo.
Five, maybe six years ago around Alaska, there was one main season for art fairs: winter.
Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, schools, cultural centers and houses of worship would turn into tinsel-bedecked markets. A stroll through their hallways, lobbies, lunchrooms and gyms revealed tables full of handmade jewelry and baby clothing interspersed with vendors selling locally made hot sauce and candied nuts.
Things have changed.
On the tail of the discovery of a whale fossil that is the largest animal on record, researchers in Egypt announced the unearthing of one of the smallest early whales known to science. The find is also the oldest fully aquatic whale found in Africa, according to a new study.
At an estimated body weight of 412.3 pounds (187 kilograms) and length of 8.2 feet (2.5 meters), the newly documented species is comparable in size to a modern-day bottlenose dolphin.
Challenging times are ahead for smaller, lighter-colored butterflies as Earth’s climate continues to warm, a new study has found.
Unlike their relatives with larger wings and darker colors, small butterflies with paler hues — particularly those belonging to the Lycaenidae family — have trouble regulating their body temperatures as the air temperature increases, according to the research.
“Alaskan Storyteller.” That’s the phrase Juneau-based Annie Bartholomew uses to describe herself on her website. Simple and to the point but way too modest.
Just one round of listening to Bartholomew’s first album makes that clear. “Sisters of White Chapel,” which tells the stories of the women who did sex work during the Klondike gold rush, was released earlier this month. The life stories woven into the album’s nine songs took Bartholomew several years to research and write.
What we can learn from creative city initiatives, from Sydney to Paris.
What makes a city great? Whether you’re living in Durban, South Africa, or Medellín, Colombia, perhaps no two people living in one place will have the same answer. But ask residents across different cultures and regions about challenges facing their own cities, and common issues will emerge, like the need for more affordable housing, better public transportation and access to resources and services.
Get-togethers before the COVID years had their challenges, but they were more of the I wonder if that person who hogs the conversation is going to be there this year variety. Since COVID-19 entered our lives, party hosts also have to consider how careful invitees are about keeping COVID at bay.
Looking back on the last month in business news, there’s been a recurring theme: Billionaires Behaving Badly. No need to name names. Let’s just say that anybody who regularly spends time chatting up the world on Twitter or invests in crypto was tossed into the upside-down in November.
It’s easy to shrug off a bit of numbness in your hand or losing your footing here and there. Unfortunately, as actor Christina Applegate learned in 2021, those usually not-so-worrisome symptoms can sometimes be a sign of something more serious. Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) during filming of the third—and what was already to be the final season—of the Netflix show Dead to Me.
Though MS was first defined by a neurologist in 1868, the medical community still doesn’t know what causes it. The disease impacts the central nervous system—the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. Think of it as the wiring that runs through bodies and drives movement, thought, mood and, basically, everything a person thinks or does throughout their day. Those hits on the nervous system can lead to symptoms both short-term and long-lasting. Each attack on the nervous system leaves behind lesions that, together, tell the story of MS in a person’s body. One isolated symptom doesn’t tell the story of MS. It takes multiple lesions to lead to a diagnosis.
Read the full story on Fortune Well.