A 2015 article in The Guardian claimed that modafinil (marketed as Provigil) is the world’s safest smart drug while a systematic review published in European Neuropsychopharmacology found that modafinil does in fact enhance cognition, and it is safe in the short-term, with few side-effects and no addictive properties. This drug – available on the NHS as…
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The idea of eating insects can seem a bit unappealing if you’ve been brought up with a Western diet. We do eat them as a novelty or inadvertently as food colouring. However, insect-eating (known as entomophagy) is common in many cultures across the world. Humans have been eating insects from prehistoric times to the present…
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It can be hard to know exactly what a sustainable diet looks like. For instance, a study from the University of Oxford, published in Climatic Change, found that the vegan diet produces the least greenhouse gas emissions. Comparisons were made between meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians, and vegans. In this way, a plant-based diet would be considered…
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The evolution of the human brain has always been shrouded in mystery. This is because the organ tripled in size over the course of nearly seven million years, a pace of evolution that is unheard of in the natural world. Most of this growth occurred in the past two million years, during which time the…
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I have long been fascinated by the artistic drive to create imaginary languages. Countless numbers of them exist. And some of them have made their way into public consciousness since they have been integrated into the fictional worlds and universes portrayed in popular books and television shows. These fictional languages include Elvish in the works…
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