Ride Sally ride, but if you’re going to Mars… bring protection. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Supernova explosions have left behind cosmic radiation in space that can cause DNA and ovarian damage. Scary! The Earth’s protective magnetic field shields humans going to the moon…but
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Imagine speaking without making a sound? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Communication is crucial in noisy military and industrial settings. Existing silent-speech devices often require implants, making them impractical. Enter Sunguk Hong and colleagues at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea.
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Are houseplants geometry whizzes? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. A beehive. A city map. Cell phone towers. These all share a geometry called a Voronoi diagram. This is where boundaries sit exactly halfway between points. Know where else it shows up? The Chinese Money
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Maybe…it is time to …. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Doctors recommend at least seven hours of sleep a night. What if you get less? Xiaoyu Li and team from Tsinghua University tracked eighty-five thousand adults for a week. They grouped the participants based
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Doctor, doctor! What should I do about this weird mark on my shoulder? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Ulcers are open sores that won’t heal. For diabetes patients, keeping an eye on ulcers is key to preventing any further health complications. Now ulcer patients
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Crop-tops, capris, and… cigarettes? Not cool! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. How can we stop teens from smoking? Social engineering, of course! Dr. Cheng Wang and team at UC Irvine examined anti-smoking interventions in two high schools. They compared two types of social networks
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Could robots give us a leg up? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Following a stroke, physical therapy is key for regaining mobility. But it’s tough, both on the patient and the physical therapist. Little help? Enter Emek Küçüktabak and team from Northwestern University. They
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Vote your conscience, or vote your… amygdala!? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Voting can give people a sense of purpose and strengthen community ties. But what about better health? Enter Femida Handy and Sara Konrath from University of Pennsylvania and Indiana University. They examined
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The laws of physics apply to everyone… Right? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Universal law states that if you push something, it pushes back equally hard. Scientists wondered if this rule holds in dusty plasma. Dusty plasma is a gas of charged particles mixed
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Aging rewrites immune systems, but is nature giving men and women entirely different scripts? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Maria Sopena-Rios from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center studied immune cells from nearly a thousand adults. The plot twist? Older women develop hyper-alert, inflammatory cells. This
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