That's the longest string of words that Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who scientists raised as a human and taught sign language in the 1970s, ever signed. He was the subject of Project Nim, an experiment conducted by cognitive scientists at Columbia University to investigate whether chimps can learn language.

After years of exposing Nim to all things human, the researchers concluded that although he did learn to express demands - the desire for an orange, for instance - and knew 125 words, he couldn't fully grasp language, at least as they defined it. Language requires not just vocabulary but also syntax, they argued. "Give orange me," for example, means something different than "give me orange." From a very young age, humans understand that; w ...

A new study that's challenging the popular idea that we should drink eight glasses of water a day for health purposes shows that a 'swallowing inhibition' is activated by the brain after excess liquid is consumed. This inhibition mechanism helps maintain tightly calibrated volumes of water in the body.

The lead scientist has pointed out that if we just do what our body demands us to, we'll probably get it right. In other words, it is the best practice to just drink according to thirst rather than an elaborate schedule.

Building on a previous study, the researchers asked participants to rate the amount of effort required to swallow water under two conditions; following exercise when they were thirsty and later after they were persuaded to drin ...

Have you ever felt awkward staring into a person's eyes while holding up a conversation? It turns out that there is a good scientific reason why some of us struggle with this. Research tells us that staring while trying to come up with the right words actually uses the same mental resources as sustaining eye contact.

Scientists from Kyoto University in Japan put this to the test in 2016 by having 26 volunteers play word association games while staring at computer-generated faces. When making eye contact, the participants found it harder to come up with links between words, suggesting that there is interference between these processes.

The volunteers were tested while looking at both animations of faces making eye contact and animations of fac ...

In our modern world, noise surrounds us constantly, whether it's the roar of traffic, the hum of machinery, or the cacophony of city life. While we've grown accustomed to these sounds, noise pollution can definitely take its toll on our long-term health.

In 2005, R. Chepesiuk wrote an article called the "Decibel Hell: The Effects of Living in a Noisy World", where he shed light on the lasting impact of noise exposure on our hearing. The article focused on the hearing of three participants: a 25-year-old carpenter, a 50-year-old with no on-the-job noise exposure, and a 50-year-old carpenter. It kicked off by examining how different frequencies of sound are perceived by these individuals. It was discovered that a sound frequency of approximat ...

Ancient baby's teeth have revealed that Neanderthals followed today's breastfeeding guidelines. Scientists analyzed a fossilized baby tooth from a Neanderthal child, and found the infant was breastfed exclusively for the first seven months of life and given supplementary foods and mother's milk for another seven months before being weaned.

This fascinating discovery sheds light on the remarkable similarities between Neanderthal parenting practices and contemporary breastfeeding guidelines. By examining the composition of the fossilized baby tooth, scientists have uncovered valuable insights into the dietary patterns of our ancient relatives.

The Neanderthal infant's exclusive breastfeeding for the first seven months of life mirrors the advice ...

Bayer Corporation and the Public Health Committee of the American Society for Microbiology sponsored a study of hand washing in public restrooms. Researchers from the survey group hid in stalls or pretended to comb their hair while they observed over 6,000 men and women in five large cities. Their observations revealed that many people prefer a "get up and go" strategy, failing to wash their hands after using the restroom facilities. In New York's Penn Station, for example, only 60% of restroom users washed after relieving themselves. Similar rates were found in other cities: 64% of restroom users washed at a Braves game in Atlanta, 69% washed in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, 71% used soap and water in a New Orleans casino, and a laudab ...

Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin necessary mainly for the formation of blood clots. Without this vitamin, bleeding would not stop. 

Vitamin K is given as an injection to newborns to prevent vitamin K deficiency bleeding, since the level of blood clotting factors of newborn babies are roughly 30–60% that of adult values. The reason for this discrepancy is due to poor transfer of the vitamin across the placenta, and thus low fetal plasma vitamin K.

Occurrence of vitamin K deficiency bleeding in the first week of the infant's life is estimated at 0.25–1.7%, with a prevalence of 2–10 cases per 100,000 births. Since the vitamin is found in human milk and supplemented in infant formula, the concentration of vitamin K naturally rises within th ...