Being a guide is one of the most noble things a dog can do (besides sniffing out bombs, drugs, endangered wildlife, infections in hospitals, and frankly just being the most loyal four-legged friend we could ever ask for), and it’s not for the faint of paw. A new study suggests puppies raised by tough-loving mothers tend to make better guide dogs than those who grew up coddled.
It may seem to you like time sleeping is time lost. To our brains, though, sleep is not only productive, but vital. Sleeping provides the chance for our brains to do some chemical house cleaning, which helps us feel rested, awake, and a lot less grumpy the next day.
Of all the aches and pains patients endure in a prolonged hospital stay, getting blood drawn is one of the biggest nuisances.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve called them “happiness hangovers.” Here's the science behind why we come down from happiness highs.
If you’re on the job market and happen to have an advanced STEM degree (or equivalent experience), and willing to take a drug test and stop alien life from reaching Earth, NASA’s got the job for you. Now through August 14, 2017, the US space agency is taking applications for the role of Planetary Protection Officer.
For years, scientists assumed all animals were prone to some cognitive decline as they age. Humans, though, were the only ones known to develop aging diseases that also come with a unique set of bodily changes. One of these is Alzheimer’s, a fatal form of dementia that starts with memory loss and progresses to a loss of lucidity and physical functions.
Eight years ago, Usain Bolt made history in less than 10 seconds at the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championship in Berlin, Germany.
The predominant thinking has been that most of us get too little sleep, and that we should all be worried about the loss of productivity, dips in mood, and buildup of waste proteins in our brains that are a result of staying up too late.
Photos can convey information faster—and sometimes with a bigger emotional punch—than words. But photos are easy to tweak, and in the age of fake news it’s more important than ever to be critical of images presented as fact. This includes feature photos on news stories just like this one (which in this case has been cropped, but is otherwise real).
Lately, the science has really been stacking up evidence against consuming sugars in excess.
It’s the most damning evidence against the American football establishment to date.
When HIV, attacks the human body, the virus leaves it defenseless in a way that is unlike the body’s response to any other microbial invader.
Some (including us) would argue it’s just about the best week in television.
Extra sugar may be bad for you in more ways than we thought. In addition to being calorie dense and increasing risk for heart disease, it also appears to change how your body breaks down food entirely.
The orthopedic surgery wing of a Connecticut hospital, 2021
In the world of nutrition, there’s one question that comes up over and over again: Are artificial sweeteners like Splenda, Equal, and Sweet n’ Low actually better for you than sugar?
A team of Harvard scientists led by Seth Shipman just announced (paywall) that using Crispr-Cas9 gene-editing technology, they’ve encoded images directly into living E. coli, a species of bacteria. Here’s how they did it:
As news traveled around the world that one of the largest icebergs ever observed had finally broken off from Antarctica, reporters were faced with a question of scale. Few among us can visualize just how large a 2,200 square-mile (5,698 square-kilometer) hunk of ice really is, so they had to come up with a reference their readers might recognize.
Since January of this year, a massive, 2,200 square-mile (5,698 square-km), trillion-ton iceberg has been on the brink of breaking away from the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica. On Wednesday (July 12) scientists at MIDAS, a collaborative research project from Swansea University and Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom, confirmed that it had finally happened—one of the largest icebergs on Larsen C has cut ties with its home continent, and is now on an aimless voyage into the Weddell Sea.
Is your pop-pop hard to shop for? We’ve got the ultimate gift for you.
Congratulations! You’ve just discovered a signal coming in hot from intelligent alien life! They are so excited to meet you, and want to establish connection with Earth as soon as possible.
When Andrew Dillon, a cell biologist at the University of California Berkeley, set out to study the effect of the sense of smell on weight in mice, he assumed that he’d find that mice without a sense of smell would enjoy food less, eat less, and therefore weigh less. Scientists have known that smell shapes the way we tastes things—usually for the better—so without it, mice eating even a scrumptious, high-fat diet would enjoy it less.
As annoying it is to forget something, it may be one of the qualities that makes you superior to robots.
Whether you’ve been celebrating in Canada (Canada Day, July 1), the US (Independence Day, July 4), France (Bastille Day, July 14), or anywhere else in the world, you can surely appreciate the fact that fireworks are a display of chemistry at its finest.
