Women have always been left out of history, not because they didn't have anything to say, do, or contribute but mostly because they are being pushed into the traditional role of being a domestic shut-in.

But no more. The women's movement and all other efforts being made to ensure that women are able to contribute and be credited in their chosen fields have been gaining a lot of attention in recent times. Though there is still a long way to go.

At the very least, we could recognize the women who have made big contributions in the field of science in history. Other than Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace, other female scientists like Caroline Herschel, Lisa Meitner, and Hertha Ayrton deserve the commendation for their works.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Mike Wallace had been a well-known figure in the Arkansas Delta farming community. He owned large farming lands which, during harvest season, would be filled with rows of soybeans, cotton, and corn.

However, the yield on his soybean crop for 2016 had fallen below his expectations and he blamed the farmhand next door for illegally spraying dicamba. What ensued was tragic.

So when Wallace was hit again the next season, he decided he’d had enough. He called Jones and proposed that they meet to settle things in person. Wallace threatened to “whip [my] ass,” Jones later said.

Moments after Wallace sent his last text message, Jones arrived in his own pickup. As soon as he stepped out of the truck, Jones later told police, Wallace charged at him, arms flailing. He was on Jones within seconds, pinning him against the rear driver’s side door.

As they scuffled, Jones pulled a .32 caliber semiautomatic pistol from his back pocket and began to fire. The bullets hit Wallace in his right shoulder and arm, his chest, and abdomen. Jones continued firing until the clip was empty—seven shots in all.

One bullet entered Wallace’s back, above his left buttocks. Just 91 seconds after Wallace’s last text message, Jones was on the phone with police to report that he’d shot a man. Wallace lay in the dirt, bleeding to death.

That was the beginning of how this controversy about Monsanto's herbicide exploded.

(Image credit: David de las Heras)

As an enthusiast of languages, I find it fascinating to learn a new language but even more interesting is the process of decoding an old language and understanding how they communicated back in their time.

Broken and scorched black by fire, the dense, wedge-shaped marks etched into the ancient clay tablets are only just visible under the soft light at the British Museum. These tiny signs are the remains of the world’s oldest writing system: cuneiform.

Developed more than 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where modern-day Iraq now lies, cuneiform captured life in a complex and fascinating civilisation for some three millennia. From furious letters between warring royal siblings to rituals for soothing a fractious baby, the tablets offer a unique insight into a society at the dawn of history.

Read on to find out how experts are using AI in order to figure out what these symbols mean.

(Image credit: Jacob Dahl)

If you are looking to visit South America any time soon, there must be a few places in your itinerary that you would want to visit. Apart from famous tourist sites in Brazil or Peru, perhaps you should check out the other "Easter Island" of South America.

South America’s largest trove of religious monuments and megalithic sculptures isn’t on Easter Island, nor even in Peru or Chile, as most travellers might assume. It’s Tierradentro’s 162 underground tombs carved into solid volcanic bedrock, and the more than 500 monolithic stone statues and tumuli (ancient burial mounds) surrounding the nearby town of San Agustín, sprinkled throughout 2,000 sq km of the serried mountains and highland plateaus of the Upper Magdalena Valley in southern Colombia.

Christopher P. Baker shares his travels to these wonderful sites on The BBC.

(Image credit: Christopher P. Baker)

We have always had this irrational fear of the unknown, a fear of progress or innovation, that something wrong will happen because of the new technologies that we develop.

Some look back to bygone times when things were much simpler and fewer problems affected humans as well as the environment.

But progress has positive effects of making our lives easier and helping us understand more of our world which in turn, we can use to improve and maintain the resources that we already have.

Back in the Victorian era, people feared that technological advancements would adversely affect their health, particularly their eyesight.

In the 1800s, the rise of mass print was both blamed for an increase in eye problems and was responsible for dramatising the fallibility of vision too. As the amount of known eye problems increased, the Victorians predicted that without appropriate care and attention Britain’s population would become blind.

Now, that's a curious thought to ponder. Sure, the effects of modern technology goes both ways but being able to identify the negatives would surely help us find ways to minimize the impact.

Well, no matter what the issues may be, humans will continue to progress into further improvements in living conditions to make life more convenient. Perhaps, we can just keep in mind these concerns and try to live in a way that is sustainable and beneficial even to future generations.

(Image credit: Wellcome Library)

Ancient peoples weren't simply concerned about how to survive but evidences have shown that they had various ways of passing their time, including having fun with some board games.

A pattern of small holes cut into the floor of an ancient rock shelter in Azerbaijan shows that one of the world's most ancient board games was played there by nomadic herders around 4,000 years ago, according to an archaeologist who has investigated the find.

The game was called "58 Holes", which was also known by the name "Hounds and Jackals".

At that time, the game was widespread across the ancient Middle East, including Egypt, Mesopotamia and Anatolia, he said.

Though the rules of 58 Holes are unknown, many think it was played a bit like modern backgammon, with counters, such as seeds or stones, moved around the board until they reached a goal.

(Image credit: Walter Crist/Gobustan National Park)

Oddly enough, in 1921, a judge allowed a dog to testify about to whom he belongs. It might seem bizarre that a court of law would swear in a dog to the witness stand but this might have been a special case.

The case was a pet ownership battle. The plaintiff, Maj. Gen. Eli Helmick, said that the dog was Buddy, purchased in 1920 from Brockway Kennels in Baldwin, Kansas, which had advertised 75 “white, intelligent, shaggy, handsome trick Eskimos.” For almost two years, the family raised the pup, until one day in November 1921 it went missing.

Months later, Florence Helmick visited Keeley Morse’s hat shop, where customers were greeted by a fluffy, friendly white dog that Florence insisted was her Buddy. She demanded Morse hand over the animal. When he refused to surrender the dog, which he called Prince, the Helmicks brought him to court.

Read more about the story by Christopher DeCou on Narratively.

(Image credit: Subin Yang)

When you get confined in the hospital due to a surgery or to recover from a serious illness or injury, you would expect to get better after your stay.

However, there may be some cases in which patients experience feeling worse than when they were checked in the hospital. This is post-hospital syndrome.

If part of a hospital stay is to recover from a procedure or illness, why is it so hard to get any rest?

There is more noise and light than is conducive for sleep. And nurses and others visit frequently to give medications, take vitals, draw blood or perform tests and checkups — in many cases waking patients to do so.

Some monitoring is necessary, of course. Medication must be given; some vital signs do need to be checked. And frequent monitoring is warranted for some patients — such as those in intensive care units. But others are best left mostly alone.

Well, maybe this is the reason why some people don't feel comfortable around hospitals.

(Image credit: Rahav Segev/The New York Times)

Surviving in cold weather is tough but having to face such extreme conditions as those in the South Pole would be very harrowing, a daunting task that Eric Larsen has taken on.

On November 23, the 47-year-old from Crested Butte, Colorado, set out from the Hercules Inlet on the edge of the continent and began to ski more or less in the same direction, solo, unsupported (no outside resupplies), and unassisted (no aid from sled dogs or a kite), for 700 miles.

This isn't his first time skiing in Antarctica, he has done it several times before. So what motivated him to do it again and to make it more challenging? Why is he at it again?

On a personal level, his expeditions are about being creative and unique, he says—a way to push our boundaries of knowledge.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

There are various kinds of autism in the spectrum but they all affect an individuals ability to socialize and communicate. At times, they may have trouble with learning things.

Researchers have found that there might be some type of bacteria in their intestines, or rather lack thereof, that might have a connection to autism.

Recent research has shown that altering animals’ intestinal bacteria can have dramatic effects on their nervous systems. Ameliorating autism by tinkering with the ecology of the gut might thus be a fruitful line of inquiry.

The bug in question is Lactobacillus reuteri. It is commonly found in healthy digestive systems and helps regulate acidity levels. And it is also easily obtainable for use as a probiotic from health-food shops.

Would this gut bacteria be the key to helping individuals with autism? Hopefully, it does.

(Image credit: Andrea Ucini)

Stuart Fowkes had it right when he said that humans are a really, really noisy bunch. Living in an urban area, you would hear all sorts of sounds from humans and things made by humans.

But in this new project by Cities and Memory, a global collaborative sound project created by Fowkes, they try to step away from humans and focus on areas where the natural world is undisturbed.

Sounding Nature is the biggest global collection of nature sounds, featuring nearly 500 sounds from 55 countries, from jungles to glaciers to underwater shrimp recordings.

The map has two parts: the field recording of the sound itself, and then the musical remix it inspired.

Check out the sound map on Cities and Memory. - via The Verge

(Image credit: Johannes Plenio/Unsplash)

Over time, languages evolve and change depending on the context in which they are being used. From Old English to Middle English, and from there to Modern and Contemporary English, many words have changed and taken new meanings and sounds.

Words do some truly inventive things when they change, and change they always do.

Some switch their sounds around, like when hros became hors, nowadays spelt with an extra e as horse.

Some lose their sense of having an internal composition, like when wāl-hros ‘whale-horse’ became walrus.

Erich Round lists some more words that have switched their sounds through time. Read about them on Morph.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

There are so much particles in space that we don't really know everything that is out there. Recently, a signal has been detected in the space above the North Pole and scientists are trying to figure it out what it could be.

Though it's not clear exactly what's causing it, new research supports the idea that the signal may be coming from tiny, ultrafast-spinning grains of cosmic dust.

The strange North Pole signal, detected by a massive, all-sky survey, originates in some of the dustier corners of our galaxy and is part of a galaxy-wide signal that has puzzled scientists for decades.

Because this mysterious emission can muddy signals coming from the faint afterglow from the Big Bang, understanding it better could ultimately help researchers get a better picture of the early universe.

Learn more about it on Live Science. - via Space.com

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/STScI)

A star's death results in its explosion, that's the gist of it. But how does it actually look like in detail, from its onset to its very final moments? A research team from the Australian National University has witnessed one such event happening.

The astronomers witnessed the star dying a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, as part of a project that aims to solve the mystery of how stars explode.

Dr. Brad Tucker, one of the lead researchers of the survey, said about 170 million years later on 4 February 2018 the array of high-powered telescopes detected the light emanating from the exploding star, otherwise known as a supernova called SN 2018oh.

Read more on Phys.org.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Whenever we discuss parenting practices, we often draw from personal experiences on how we were raised and how we turned out, then based on those recollections, since it was effective for us, then the same can be applied to next generations producing the same effect.

However, Justin Coulson, an Australian parenting expert argues the opposite:

The “I turned out just fine” argument is popular. It means that based on our personal experience we know what works and what doesn’t.

But the argument has fatal flaws.

Sure enough, one principle or practice in child-rearing may not apply to all cases. The same goes for every other thing in the world. There are other ways that may work for other people depending on the situation and context.

And since we're talking about children here, living, breathing human beings who can feel, think, perhaps not rationally most of the time, but still every experience they have has an impact on their lives.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)