No, we are not talking about the luxury sports car. The tuatara is a reptile that’s even cooler. Found only on 37 small offshore islands in New Zealand, this rare creature is often mistaken for a lizard. Don’t let their good looks fool you though, the tuatara is the last surviving member of the ancient order Sphenodontia, which thrived back when the dinosaurs ruled the Earth. In other words, it’s […]
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 68% of households in the United States have a pet. Pets are thought to help people by decreasing stress and improving cardiovascular health. The NIH and Mar’s Corporation WALTHAM Centre for Pet Nutrition have teamed up to support research examining such questions, but the results have been mixed. According to Dr. Layla Esposito, who leads the NIH Human-Animal Interaction Research Program, people […]
Once dismissed as a feature only babies possess, brown adipose tissue (BAT), is widely recognized as the body’s metabolism-boosting, heat-generating fat. This Time Machine episode takes a look back at early research and new discoveries about this metabolism-boosting fat. According to a 2007 paper published in the American Journal of Physiology – Endocrinology and Metabolism, it was the ability for BAT to take up glucose that enabled its discovery in […]
Life Lines by Dr. Dolittle 