It’s a Drag!

Flying is literally a drag. But does it have to be? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Airplanes feel drag. It comes from pushing against air molecules. And we need gigantic engines and tons of jet fuel to get around it. Is there a way

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Animal IQ

Dogs, and cats, and…bears? Who’s the smartest? Care to take a bet? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a neuroscientist from Vanderbilt University, hosted, if you will, a battle of wits. She believes that smarter creatures should have more neurons within their cerebral

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Holiday Snaps

What now? Family vacation photos . . . for science? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Time-lapse videos that span years or decades can tell us a lot about the world. They show cities growing, ecosystems drying, and even geologic changes. But who’s going to

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Night Owls

Who stays more alert the day after a late night? Early birds? Or night owls? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Occasionally, we all stay up late, then have to get up early. When we’re sleep deprived like this, who’s more alert the next day?

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Worm Dinner

Worms have a taste for coffee cups? Who knew? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Styrofoam and other plastics can take over hundreds of years to degrade. Yeesh! Is there a way to make them go away faster? Stanford researchers may have a solution –

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This Little Piggy

Which piggy went to market? Which piggy stayed home? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Turns out that if we don’t look at our toes, we have trouble telling them apart by feel. Or so say Oxford University researchers. In their study, subjects closed their

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Water Wise

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot, and then what? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. One of the many ways modern societies lose valuable drinking water is through toilets. So says environmental engineer Stanley Grant of the University of California, Irvine. He and

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Spider Reality Show

Spiders who love video games too much? Story at 11! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Jumping spiders are well-known for their good vision. But researchers have a hard time getting them to display natural behaviors in the lab. That’s why scientists at Australia’s Macquarie

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Giraffe Gab

I still don’t know what the fox says. Giraffes, though, are another story! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Cats meow. Dogs bark. A sound has never been ascribed to giraffes, though. Until now. Austrian researchers painstakingly recorded – and analyzed – almost one thousand

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The Perfect Gift

The holidays are coming – yikes! Can science help How to find that perfect gift? This Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Gift shopping can be so stressful! Most of us are just clueless Most of us are just clueless about what to get our friends. Soap

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