Unprecedented climate change
The speed and scale of man-made global warming is unlike anything our planet has experienced in at least 2,000 years, new research has found. The last two millennia have seen dramatic peaks and troughs in temperatures, including the Medieval Climate Anomaly, an unusually warm period, and the Little Ice Age (1300s to 1800s). But an analysis of 700 proxy records of temperature change—telltale geological signs in tree rings, ice cores, and sediment— from around the world showed that none of these events affected more than half the globe at any one time. The current warming, in contrast, has seen temperatures rise to record levels pretty much everywhere except Antarctica. Separate research concluded that many of the climate fluctuations from 1300 to 1800 were caused by volcanic eruptions, which threw vast quantities of ash into the atmosphere that reflected sunlight and cooled surface temperatures. Mark Maslin, a climatologist at University College London, tells Reuters.com that the research should “finally stop climate change deniers claiming that the recent observed coherent global warming is part of a natural climate cycle.”
suggests. Human body temperatures vary throughout the day in line with our internal body clocks. About an hour and a half before we usually nod off, our bodies cool down by around 0.5 to 1 degree Fahrenheit. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin suspected that exposure to warm water could stimulate the body’s natural thermoregulatory system—enhancing that crucial cooling process. To explore this idea, they examined 17 previous studies that looked at the effects of water-based passive heating—baths, foot baths, and showers—on sleep. That meta-analysis showed that having a bath or shower of between 104 and 109 degrees Fahrenheit one to two hours before bedtime was linked with noticeable improvements in sleep quality and overall sleep time. Those bathers also took an average of 10 minutes less to drop off. Study author Shahab Haghayegh emphasized that there is a Goldilocks-style sweet spot, reports CNN .com. A cold bath or shower encourages the body to warm up, making it harder to sleep; having a warm bath too close to bedtime, meanwhile, has no soporific effect.
discovered outside our solar system: One is a “Super Earth,” a little larger than our own planet; the others are “sub-Neptunes” that are about twice as big. One of the subNeptunes sits in its star’s so-called habitable zone—where temperatures are just right to allow liquid water to exist on the world’s surface. But further investigation revealed that the planet has a dense atmosphere, trapping extreme levels of heat. Still, scientists think the star system might contain other worlds better suited to life. “Chances are good that we will find more planets further out in the habitable zone,” says Maximilian Guenther, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.