Posts by Madeleine Muzdakis

Madeleine Muzdakis

Madeleine Muzdakis is a Contributing Writer at My Modern Met and a historian of early modern Britain & the Atlantic world. She holds a BA in History and Mathematics from Brown University and an MA in European & Russian Studies from Yale University. Madeleine has worked in archives and museums for years with a particular focus on photography and arts education. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys hiking, film photography, and studying law while cuddling with her cat Georgia.
Science
March 9, 2023

Largest Ever Family Tree Has 27 Million Ancestors Revealing the Origins of Humanity

Perhaps you've used sites like Ancestry to construct your own family tree, peering back into the past to discover how your relations came to be. All family trees tell a story. In the pre-internet days, this work involved hunting through microfiche and archival records of birth, death, and immigration. Now, a fascinating global story has emerged in Science: the largest family tree ever created.

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Archeology
March 6, 2023

Museum Discovers That Its “Fake” Sword Is Actually an Authentic 3,000-Year-Old Weapon

Hoaxes abound in archeology. Anytime an artifact appears, observations on its appearance, provenance, discovery, materials, style, and other factors help scholars determine its authenticity. Sometimes a fake object successfully masquerades as real for many years before the truth is uncovered. But in one instance, the opposite happened. For almost 100 years, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago considered a metal sword in their collection to be just another fake.

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Science
February 22, 2023

“De-Extinction” Biotech Company Is Working To Bring the Woolly Mammoth Back To Life

If you were to walk around the Arctic tundra a few decades from now, the landscape might look straight out of the Ice Age. The region's most famous prehistoric fauna—the woolly mammoth—might be back from extinction and flourishing in its frigid element. A company called Colossal plans to bring the species back using modern DNA technology, a process they call “de-extinction.

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Technology
February 12, 2023

Supercomputer Can Predict ICU Patient Dangers To Give Healthcare Workers a Warning

A patient in the intensive care unit (ICU) can deteriorate quickly. Doctors may have little to no warning before machines ping, panic sets in, and a patient faces irreparable damage or death from a brain bleed. Many times these crises have been impossible to predict. Data researchers have now combined efforts with the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Australia to create a supercomputer which can run an algorithm that predicts—in real-time—impending dangers to patients.

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My Modern Met

Celebrating creativity and promoting a positive culture by spotlighting the best sides of humanity—from the lighthearted and fun to the thought-provoking and enlightening.