Author: Michelle Korhonen

Out of an estimated 1,350 active volcanoes worldwide, about 45 have continuing eruptions, and about 80 erupt each year, spewing steam, ash, toxic gases, and lava. In 2023, erupting volcanoes included the Villarrica volcano in Chile, Mount Ulawun in Papua New Guinea, Merapi volcano in Indonesia, the Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland, Kilauea in Hawaii, Mount Etna in Sicily, Klyuchevskoy volcano in Russia, and more. Collected below are scenes from the wide variety of volcanic activity on Earth over the past year.

Apple Watches Can Detect Arrhythmias in Children – It’s not quite as simple as “fact” or “myth.” The truth lies somewhere in between, with a healthy dose of “it depends.”For children, the thump-thump of a healthy heart can sometimes take a detour, manifesting as irregular rhythms that can go unnoticed, with potentially serious consequences.A recent Stanford University study suggests that Apple Watches, with their built-in heart sensors and ECG apps, could play a role in detecting arrhythmias in children. The study found that in some cases, smartwatches even picked up arrhythmias that traditional monitoring methods missed.Traditionally, diagnosing arrhythmias in children…

Sharing an my current winter skincare routine, from luxurious moisturizers to exfoliating masks, using safer products. Hi friends! Happy Monday! How was the weekend? I hope you had a great one. We were in Phoenix with some friends, and did our annual stay at the Scottsdale Fairmont Princess. We also saw Ballet Arizona’s Nutcracker and it was LOVELY. I’ll definitely share some pics from the adventures in Friday Faves! I just added the winners to this year’s Favorite Things giveaway here. For today’s post, I’m sharing my winter skincare routine! The colder air outside (I live in Arizona after all!)…

Cómo Bogotá cuida de las cuidadoras familiares: desde clases de baile hasta formación laboral(Image credit: Ben de la Cruz/NPR)

The universality of sickness—hardly anyone can escape getting seriously ill at least once in their life—has endowed us with a rich tradition of writing about the state of being unwell, from Sophocles to Susan Sontag. Nevertheless, writers who document illness can fall into certain traps. One is to simplify their experience; another is to provide a happy ending, and, as a result, many stories lean on a predictable pattern: Doctors add up symptoms, produce a diagnosis, and cure a model patient’s disease.The best authors, however, go off script. They do not try to instruct their readers about illness in general,…

What causes thirst at night and does it mean dehydration? Ever woken up parched in the middle of the night, desperate for a gulp of water? You’re not alone. Many face this nocturnal thirst, feeling like a desert traveler stumbling upon an oasis after hours of sleep. While a simple glass might quench the immediate need, the question lingers: what exactly causes us to crave water in the wee hours and does it mean dehydration?Thirst at night can be caused by dehydration, especially if you haven’t been drinking enough fluids throughout the day. When your body doesn’t have enough water, it…

Sesame Workshop has new resources for kids affected by the opioid epidemic, featuring videos explaining addiction and treatment. (This first aired on All Things Considered on Dec. 4, 2023.)

One of the defining characteristics of the second half of 2023 has been the gloominess of American consumers. Even as the economy remained unexpectedly robust—growing at a 5.2 percent clip in the third quarter—and inflation cooled, consumer sentiment as measured by the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index dropped steadily from the summer through the fall, and its rating hit a low of 61.3 in November.But then something surprising happened. In the December survey, released last week, consumer sentiment spiked upward by 13 percent, rising to 69.4, making up pretty much all the ground it had lost since August. Even…

You might have read the recent news report that Amazon now delivers more packages than established companies including UPS and FedEx—the latest sign of the e-commerce company’s dominance. But if you read closely, you also saw that the U.S. Postal Service still handles more parcels (about 7 billion a year) than any of these companies, and in fact delivers hundreds of millions of packages for them.Americans’ reliance on package deliveries presents a massive opportunity for the USPS at a time when people are sending less and less paper mail. Until the e-commerce boom, parcels represented a small side business for…

A look at “Physical Activity Shields Breasts From Cancer Before Menopause” For women navigating the years before menopause, a new study funded by Breast Cancer Now offers encouraging news: regular physical activity during leisure time may be a potent weapon against breast cancer. This research, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, sheds light on a modifiable factor that could offer significant risk reduction for younger women.Diving into the DataThe study meticulously examined data from 19 global studies, encompassing over 547,000 women still in their premenopausal years. Over an average follow-up of 11.5 years, a sobering reality emerged: 10,231 women received…