Cool Jobs: Soaking in sweat
In the sticky, muggy heat of summer, it seems like every movement can make you sweat. As beads of salty water appear on your forehead and your shirt starts to stick to your back, you might run to find the nearest air-conditioned room.
But when Yana Kamberov’s three-year-old twins begin to sweat, she just smiles.
“I like sweat,” she explains. Kamberov works at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. As an evolutionary biologist, she studies how animals evolved over time. And when she sees her kids sweat, she knows that they are activating a trait humans evolved to keep from overheating. “You’re built for this,” she says. “The reason you don’t overheat and die is because your sweat glands activate to cool you off.”