by Ann Beach | Dec 31, 2025 | Medicine
A Christmas Carol, a novella of 30,000 words, was written by Charles Dickens in six weeks in 1843. It has never gone out of print. The book’s sustained success has contributed to how Christmas is celebrated and introduced the phrases “Merry Christmas” and “Bah!...
by Ann Beach | Nov 14, 2025 | Medicine
We’ve always heard that dogs have a much better sense of smell than us humans do. After all, there are convict-sniffing bloodhounds, bomb-sniffing dogs, drug-sniffing dogs, even cancer-sniffing dogs. Scientists have trained canines to sniff out lung, breast, ovarian,...
by Ann Beach | Nov 1, 2025 | Medicine
You’re getting one last Halloween post, because, of course, we haven’t talked about bats! Bats are the second largest order of mammals after rodents, and the only mammal capable of true flight. There are 1,500 species of bats, and they range in size from a 5-inch...
by Ann Beach | Oct 31, 2025 | Medicine
Happy Halloween. It’s one of my favorite holidays (skeletons, blood, walking dead- what’s not to like?). I’ve been thinking a lot about vampires, and how the vampire myth originated. As a refresher, vampires are creatures that prey on humans and drink their blood....
by Ann Beach | Oct 23, 2025 | Medicine
Did you enjoy learning about the Gila monster last week? I’m still in a Halloween mood. Let’s talk about spiders. First, I must confess I love spiders. They are such wonderful engineers. Did you know that, as they are spinning their web threads, they can modify the...
