COVID-19 has set off many unprecedented events that will most likely change the world forever. Fortunately, they haven’t all been bad: the virus led to the remarkable development of vaccines at a pace and scale the likes of which have never before been seen in history. Both the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the Moderna vaccine use a relatively new technology that has been approved for the …
Call it remote learning, online learning, distance learning or homeschooling, there are millions of parents across the country whose children no longer head off to school but rather wake up within the walls of their virtual classroom. While there have always been those parents who choose homeschooling for their children’s education, the COVID-19 pandemic has chosen that option for many who never dreamed they’d (and …
If you’re anything like us, you collect words the same way that other people collect coins or Pokémon cards. You think about words while you’re dreaming, and you’re constantly on the hunt for new words during the day. You underline new vocabulary in books, you keep a note in your smartphone of new words you heard on a podcast, and your friends are afraid to …
Weekends are when many Americans gather in their respective houses of worship and repeat the same word: amen. But, what does the word mean? And, why do people say it? The origins of amen Amen is commonly used after a prayer, creed, or other formal statement. It is spoken to express solemn ratification or agreement. It is used adverbially to mean “certainly,” “it is so,” …
Both! Bimonthly can refer to something happening “every two months” or “twice a month.” Yep, bimonthly has, fittingly enough, two meanings. What does bi– mean? The prefix bi- means “two,” from the Latin bis, “twice.” The suffix -ly, which usually forms adverbs, is used in bimonthly to mean “every.” It’s used in the same way in several other units of time, including hourly, daily, monthly, and yearly. What does bimonthly …
You’ve likely heard of them before. Their most distinctive feature is a severe and progressive decline in memory, reasoning, and other primary cognitive abilities. Their diagnoses get easily mistaken for one another, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. Are dementia and Alzheimer’s the same thing? The short answer is no, they are not. Although tightly intertwined, they are remarkably different. How so? Well, this may come as …
Surely, you’ve heard of placebo before. Wait, no … not that Placebo … not the late ’90s British band. We mean the dummy drug that, despite not having any pharmacological property, can still make you feel better—pretty much like the rock band, right? Well, you might not know that placebo has an evil twin. Its name is nocebo, and it’s the bad guy. At first …
If you celebrate Christmas, it’s likely that at some point this season you’ll find yourself puckering up under a mistletoe branch. What is this tradition of kissing under a plant all about? And does the name have anything to do with human toes? What is mistletoe? Mistletoe is a plant that grows parasitically on trees. Mistletoe can cause Witches’-broom, a symptom of a disease that …
