Author: Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University

The dominant nostril naturally switches multiple times a day. Daniel Hoz/ Shutterstock One of the most bothersome things about being sick or having seasonal allergies is that it makes your nose stuffy and blocked. This makes breathing in through your nostrils frustrating – if not altogether impossible. But even when you aren’t sick, perhaps you’ve […]

F15E fighter jet. CSWFoto / Shutterstock.com Three US F-15E fighter jets were shot down over Kuwait in the early hours of Monday (March 2) in an apparent friendly fire incident during Operation Epic Fury, the joint US-Israel campaign against Iran. All six crew members ejected safely and are in a stable condition – but “safely” […]

Some parents keep their baby’s umbilical cord as a sentimental keepsake after birth pu_kibun/Shutterstock Celebrity outfits and endorsements often dominate social media, but Elton John recently drew attention for a very different reason. The musician has been spotted wearing jewellery made from his own kneecaps. After a double knee replacement in 2024, he asked his […]

The sports featured at the Winter Olympics defy gravity and physics. Many competitors move at breakneck speeds down steep, snowy inclines or careen across icy surfaces in a bid to set world records and earn their place on the podium. But as exciting as these events are for spectators, they also place competitors at serious […]

Nicoleta Ionescu/Shutterstock.com For most people, cold weather is an inconvenience, requiring an extra layer of clothing or the thermostat to be turned up. For others, exposure to cold can trigger an allergic reaction severe enough to cause them to collapse. Cold urticaria is a rare but potentially dangerous condition in which contact with cold temperatures […]

Toa55/Shutterstock.com You’re relaxing on the sofa when suddenly your eyelid starts twitching. Or perhaps it’s a muscle in your arm, your leg, or your foot that begins to spasm – sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes for hours or even days. It’s an unsettling sensation that affects about 70% of people at some point in […]

Miridda/Shutterstock For some women, pregnancy is a time of profound loss. Not all pregnancies progress as expected. One serious complication is ectopic pregnancy, a condition in which a fertilised egg implants somewhere other than the uterus. The uterus is the only organ designed to stretch, supply blood and safely support a developing pregnancy. When implantation […]

The festive movie season is upon us, and one of my perennial favourites is Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. I will die on this hill: it is better than the original. But rewatching it as an adult raises an awkward question. How on earth did the Wet Bandits survive the first film at […]

create jobs 51/Shutterstock If you watched Kim Kardashian’s latest health update and felt a jolt at the phrase “holes on the brain”, you were not alone. It is a term that sounds catastrophic. Yet on the type of scan she had, a hole does not mean missing tissue. It signals a region working at a […]