Sick Days

Cold got you down? STAY HOME! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. More and more, people are told to stay home if they are feeling sick. Don’t infect the whole office! But does it really make a difference? Ask an ant! The highly social nature

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Bumble-Drones

Flight of the bumblebee? More like flight of the bumble…drone! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Engineers are always looking to make things lighter, faster, and stronger. Origami-inspired structures are lightweight and cost-effective. That’s perfect for improving robot technology such as drones. However, they have

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Ant Jam

Getting on the highway at five o’clock? Pack a snack! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Traffic jams. Nobody likes them! Cars on the freeway, herds of cattle, even swarms of robots have to deal with traffic jams. What’s the secret to avoiding this misery?

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Toxic Baby Food

Ughhh, what did I eat?. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Caterpillars are cute, but not when they damage crops. Plants defend themselves by producing chemicals that attract wasps, a natural pest control. Wasps lay eggs in caterpillars, and hatchlings slowly eat the caterpillars from

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Frenemy Ants

Hey, ants – can’t we all just …get along? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Not all ants are after your picnic basket. Some species are humble fungus farmers. Others are parasitic freeloaders. These social creepers come over and eat the farmer ants’ crops with

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Hot Spiced Tarantula

Like your chili extra hot? Here’s another thrill you might enjoy—a tarantula bite! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. A study by David Julius of the University of California, San Francisco, looked at venom from a West Indian tarantula. It’s shown to activate the same

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Bumblebeer

Bees can sting, but can they make you…tipsy? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Brewing beer is an age-old tradition, and it’s all thanks to YEAST. There are nearly two thousand kinds of yeast on Earth. But only two types are used to brew beer:

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Mosquito Mating

Can mosquito species tell each other apart? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: Well, not really. That’s why yellow fever mosquitoes will try to mate with Asian tiger mosquitoes, and vice versa. Enter University of Florida entomologists. They wondered about yellow fever mosquito populations

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Super-Ants

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a… SUPER…ANT? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. To bugs, trees spell one thing: FOOD! Caterpillars and grasshoppers are connoisseurs of the leafy species. But is there a bright side to trees having

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