12 days of Christmas

Enlarge / These might look like your standard leather-bound texts, but they are actually bound in human skin—a practice known as "anthropodermic bibliopegy." All five are housed in the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.Mütter Museum/College of Physicians of Philadelphia) There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year,…

There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we're once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2020, each day from December 25 through January 5. Today: Pirates! Specifically, an interview with…

Enlarge / The 19th century grave of "JB55" in Griswold, Connecticut, showing the remains arranged in a manner to prevent the "vampire" from rising and "feeding" off the community. The man is likely local laborer John Barber.Connecticut Office of State Archaeology Back in 1990, children playing near a gravel pit in Griswold, Connecticut, stumbled across…

Enlarge / The final approximation of the Incan girl dubbed "Juanita" wearing clothing similar to what she was wearing when she died. Dagmara Socha There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we're once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting…

Enlarge / A call for radical empathy: In her 2021 book, Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction, Maia Szalavitz argues for adopting the controversial practice of harm reduction when treating addiction.iStock / Getty Image There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way.…

Lesley Cherns et al. Researchers created a highly detailed 3D model of a 365-million-year-old ammonite fossil from the Jurassic period by combining advanced imaging techniques, revealing internal muscles that have never been previously observed, according to a paper published last month in the journal Geology. Another paper published last month in the journal Papers in…

Courtesy of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It has been more than 50 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy shocked the nation, but the case still generates considerable public interest—particularly fragments from the bullets that killed the president, which have been preserved in a temperature and humidity-controlled vault at the…

Enlarge / Peoples' tendency to assume others think the same way they do could be influenced by social network structures.piermichelemalucchi/Getty Images Social perception bias is best defined as the all-too-human tendency to assume that everyone else holds the same opinions and values as we do. That bias might, for instance, lead us to over- or…

Enlarge / Martinique-born psychiatrist Franz Fanon explored the bioethics of studying and treating trauma in his 1961 book, The Wretched of the Earth. An academic paper written in comic form examines one case study in particular from a modern perspective.tupungato/Getty Images Is it possible to ethically treat someone with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) developed as…

Enlarge / The Tomb of Caecilia Metella is a mausoleum located just outside Rome at the three mile marker of the Via Appia. Among the many popular tourist sites in Rome is an impressive 2000-year-old mausoleum along the Via Appia known as the Tomb of Caecilia Metella, a noblewoman who lived in the first century…