RoboBee

Look! It’s a bird… it’s a plane… it’s RoboBee! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Drones help us explore areas we can’t get to on foot. But the bulkier the drone, the more difficult and dangerous to fly. So smaller IS better! But microdrones can’t

Continue reading

Pretty Lemur

Was the leafy green diet invented by. . . lemurs? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Tasty fruit grows on Madagascar, where lemurs roam. Yet, their diets are far less fruity than other primate diets – they prefer their leafy greens. This LEAVES scientists baffled.

Continue reading

Psychedelic Zombie

Clawing its way out of an earthen tomb…it’s the living dead, ready to feed! This is Sandra Tsing-Loh, with the Loh Down on Science. Imagine opening the door to find a horde of brain-hungry UNDEAD on your lawn! Yikes! Thankfully, zombies aren’t real. Right? Wrong! They ARE real! And they

Continue reading

Glowing Sharks

Lions and tigers and glowing sharks, oh my? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: We’re gonna need a bigger boat! Lots of ocean-dwelling animals glow. Biofluorescence allows a marine animal–say, a shark–to take in light and convert it to a different color. What color?

Continue reading

Dirty Drinking

What do trees, coastlines, and pineapples have in common? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Answer? They’re all FRACTALS, shapes that repeat as you zoom in. Their aesthetically-pleasing geometry inspires artists, writers, and even scientists! Sagar Khare’s team from Rutgers University felt drawn to fractals…

Continue reading

Laser Sailing

Space…the final frontier! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Breakthrough Starshot is a globally funded engineering research project. Their mission? To send thin, sheetlike “starChips” into space and take closeup pictures of alien stars. A whole fleet of these objects is designed to sail through

Continue reading

Better Bug Guts

Hah! Gotcha, pesky mosquito! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down On Science. Mosquitoes! They suck. Not only do they bite, but they can spread dangerous diseases like malaria. Some insecticides that USED to kill mosquitos aren’t effective anymore! What can we do to stop them? Flaminia Catteruccia

Continue reading

Extreme Endurance

Baby, we were born to run! But just how far? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Could YOU run a marathon every day – for twenty weeks? A dozen athletes did just that! They competed in the Race Across the USA. Is there no limit

Continue reading

Tell-tale Tattoo

Want a tattoo your parents would approve of? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. For diabetics, tracking blood sugar is important – but annoying. Finger-pricking is painful. Patches that monitor blood sugar are expensive and can come unstuck. Is there a better way? Enter Ali

Continue reading

On the Rocks

Beware the rock-eating monsters of Terror Island! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Sounds like an old Vincent Price B-movie plot, but be warned… these creatures are REAL! So found an international team of researchers led by Reuben Shipway from Northeastern University. They identified a

Continue reading