Sweet Tooth or Sweet Gut

Room for dessert? I don’t have room to breathe! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Even after dinner, your brain still craves sugar. Why? Enter Marielle Minère and team at Max Planck Institute. They discovered a brain circuit connecting fullness with sugar cravings. These neurons

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Branch Out with Conditioner!

Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your golden hairrr….conditioning secrets! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. There’s a problem with hair conditioners. They’re not too friendly to the environment! Many conditioners contain ingredients made from chemicals and petroleum. Is there a better recipe? Enter Fengyang Wang and

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Big Brothers

Scared of Big Brother?  You should be! This is Sandra Tsing Loh, with the Loh Down on Science. Meet Ian Richard, from the University of Sheffield, UK. Richard reviewed church records from Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century Finland.  He found that children born after a brother were almost always smaller than their

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Honey Fix

Time heals all wounds—but how about honey? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Honey’s been slathered on wounds since King Tut.  But did it HEAL or just STICK? Andrew Jull, from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, dug further.  He pored over scientific publications, and

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Super Baby Monitor

A monitor for… the baby monitor?! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Raising kids is a science – one that we need more data on. Enter Zhenzhen Weng and team at Stanford. They created HARMONI, an A-I tool that watches videos to study how kids and

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Personal Head-space

Don’t come any closer! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. People with psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, tend to need more personal space. Why? Enter, Louis Vinke and team at Massachusetts General Hospital. They recruited healthy adults and participants diagnosed with schizophrenia. While participants watched

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Rookie to Cancer-Fighting Champ

Fight Night! In one corner, cancer. In the other…your immune system? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Traditional cancer treatments pack a punch – often with brutal side effects. How can we reduce those? Enter David Braun and team at Yale. They developed personalized vaccines

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Sleep or Hide?

Go ahead, sleep in.  It’s good for ya! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science Lee Hsiang Liow and colleagues of the University of Oslo identified over forty-five hundred mammal species exhibiting “sleep-or-hide” behavior.  Think tunneling, burrowing, or hibernating.  They then looked at the “Red List”

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Metabolic Bookkeeping

Your bank account balances on a strict budget…your body does too! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Did you know your fat follows a 24-hour cycle of energy use? But who oversees all this metabolic bookkeeping? Enter Aaron Douglas and team from Trinity College. They

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