Category: Feature Stories

Earth is getting warmer. July 2023 beat all heat records. Experts now provide an overview of how our planet is faring. It’s not just summer. According to data from the EU’s Copernicus Earth Observation Program, July 2023 is officially the hottest month since records began in 1940. The report states last month’s average global temperature was 16.95 degrees, 0.33 degrees higher than the previous record month – July 2019. According to Copernicus, this year’s July value was also 0.72 degrees higher than the 30-year global average between 1991 and 2020.…

Read More

A new animation from NASA shows once again how small we actually are – when we compare ourselves to supermassive black holes. These celestial bodies are found at the centers of most large galaxies, including our own Milky Way. They contain between 100,000 and 70 billion times more mass than our Sun. Black holes merge with each other“Direct measurements, many using the Hubble Space Telescope, confirm more than 100 supermassive black holes,” says Jeremy Schnittman, a theorist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “How can they get so big? When…

Read More

Taurine prolongs life and promotes health, researchers say. Mice, like humans, are healthier when they have more of it in their blood. Taurine levels decline with age in several animal species, including humans. Experiments on middle-aged animals have shown that raising taurine levels to youthful levels prolongs life by more than 10 percent and improves physical and mental health. The researchers say that taurine could be an “elixir of life,” – but boosting taurine levels in humans has not yet been tested. The Columbia University team in New York advises…

Read More

If you’re one of those annoyed iPhone users who can’t leave home without a power bank, then you should read on. There is a secret setting on the smartphone responsible for the battery getting weaker and weaker. A single click is often all it takes to extend your phone’s battery life. Better late than never! This iPhone setting drains your battery so quickly.Does it sometimes seem to you as if a tiny vampire is sitting in the case of your smartphone and sucking your battery quietly and secretly empty? Or…

Read More

Covid-19-related deaths have caused the loss of 336.8 million life-years, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). That estimate reveals the true extent of the pandemic, according to the U.N. health agency’s statistical yearbook, released Friday in Geneva. WHO attributes about 14.9 million deaths to the coronavirus in 2020 and 2021 alone. On average, this shortened lives by about 22 years each time the organization calculates. According to WHO statistics, the pandemic also negatively impacted the global fight against infectious diseases because vaccination and health services were temporarily unavailable. As…

Read More

A cup of hot coffee or tea – that’s how many people start their day. But drinking warm water first thing in the morning would be much healthier. Find out why here. If you want to do something good for your body and pay attention to your diet, it pays to drink warm water in the morning. In China, it is even customary to resort to hot drinks throughout the day, as they are considered particularly healthy. Even a glass or cup of boiling water, which is allowed to cool…

Read More

Visitors to restaurants sometimes wish they could just eat a snack. However, this wish is often seldom fulfilled due to correspondingly incomplete menus. This is because main dishes are rarely offered in different portion sizes. Those interested can only choose between appetizers and snacks or children’s or senior citizens’ plates. In addition, satiated visitors are still too rarely encouraged to take home leftovers for later consumption. Yet these are such easy-to-implement measures against food waste. In the context of out-of-home catering, 1.9 million tons of food end up unused in…

Read More

In August, two particularly spectacular full moons can be observed from Austria. Once on August 1 around half past 9 in the evening and again on August 31 in the morning hours shortly after half past 4. The unique thing about the two natural spectacles is: They are so-called supermoons. The moon shines brighter and appears more significant than usual since it comes remarkably close to the Earth. At the beginning of the month, it is only 357,530 kilometres away from our planet; on the night of August 30, it…

Read More

As soon as you eat food, it ends up in your stomach after passing through your mouth and down your esophagus. But what happens after that?Has your stomach ever felt quite “full,” or – on the contrary – has it been “growling” with hunger? Also, sometimes you think your appetite returns quickly after a meal. What is the reason for this, do you know? Is there food that stays longer in the stomach, and what is this organ responsible for anyway? Everything we eat and drink enters our stomach through…

Read More