Is Mona Lisa smiling or frowning…and why does she have tentacles?! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Octopi and squids can alter pigments in their skin to change how they look. What if we could too? Enter Haoqing Yang and team at Pennsylvania State University.
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Seen at 2:17 p.m. Replied at… never. If text messaging is instant, why are so many people left on “read?” This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Jing Li and team at Sun Yat-sen University in China wanted to understand why people don’t always respond. They
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What’s to eat at… Pleistocene Park? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. RNA is DNA’s mailman. It delivers genetic info around the cell. BUT… it’s very fragile! This makes reading ancient RNA very difficult. Until now! Enter Emilio Mármol-Sánchez and team at Sweden’s Centre for Palaeogenetics.
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Most organs are a one-hit wonder. Once they’re gone, they’re gone, right??? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Take the thymus. It trains infection-fighting T cells, but as we age, it shrinks, weakening our immune system. Could the thymus make a comeback? Enter Anna Czarkwiani
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Are we FISHING for trouble in clear waters? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Agricultural runoff can turn a lake into a pesticide cocktail. Is it SCALING down fish’s lifespans? Enter Kai Huang and team at the University of Wuhan. They looked at unusually small
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Are you missing cues… if you can’t see all the… hues??? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Bladder cancer is often spotted when urine changes color. But what if you can’t see red? Ruh roh! Enter Mustafa Fattah [MOOS-tah-fah FAH-tah] and team at Harvard. They
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(Sigh) Microscopic Paul Rudd only exists in the Marvel universe… unless? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Imagine shrinking robots down to the size of a speck of dust. That would revolutionize processing… manufacturing… pretty much everything! Well, shrink rays we have not, but the
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The digital world is warmer than you think. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Every click online generates heat across thousands of internet servers. Data centers use enormous energy to cool off. Why not put some of that heat to use? Enter Johannes Oltmanns and
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Humans are great at making chemicals that never leave. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. PFAS are “forever pollutants” and they’re EVERYWHERE. Removing them is slow, expensive, and often ineffective. But, what if nature has a solution? At Texas A&M University, Susie Dai and team looked
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Where do fish evolve the fastest: warm seas or icy waters? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. If you guessed the tropics, you might want to CHILL. Enter Mike Burns and team at UC Davis. They compared over three thousand fish species’ body shapes –
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