Are bumble bees… BIGTIME PLAYAS?! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Play behavior is common in mammals and birds. But insects??? Hiruni Samadi Galpayage Dona and team investigated whether bumble bees play. They gave forty-five bees tiny wooden balls with no food and no incentive. Still,
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Can AI predict what goes on INSIDE our bodies? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science saying… GOOGLE IT. The tech giant’s AI division – DeepMind – has developed an algorithm to model our bodies’ internal molecules… It’s called AlphaFold, and it’s a Nobel Prize winner.
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But can AI perform… open heart surgery?! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science saying… not quite. But it could lend a helping hand! Sometimes blood flow is interrupted by a narrowing of the heart’s main valve. It’s called Aortic stenosis. The fix? A tiny replacement
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Plants versus bacteria. Who will win? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Bacteria are sneaky. Sure plants can use enzymes – like BGAL1 – to uncover them. But some bacteria can block those enzymes and stay hidden using a mystery molecule. Scientists knew that this
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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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They say love is a…mixtape of frog songs?! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down On Science. Ryan Calsbeek, from Dartmouth University, and colleagues recorded male frog choruses in the wild during mating season. Different recordings were overlaid—think fake froggie boy bands—to see which mating call combinations attracted
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Are MICROplastics making BIG impacts? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Microplastics are tiny plastic particles that have infiltrated our ecosystem from waste. And you know what’s even worse? They’re teaming up with bacteria! How? Enter Neila Gross and team at Boston University. They exposed
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Can lidocaine… mess up your brain?! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Lidocaine is a commonly used local anesthetic. BUT elderly patients who typically undergo more surgeries have long lasting memory issues after. Coincidence? Xiaohui Chen and colleagues from Fujian Medical University investigated! The team
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Sun, sand, and…sedimentary rock?! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Imagine going to the beach and… dude where’s my ocean?! That’s what Jianhui Li and an international team just discovered on Mars! We’ve long suspected parts of Mars were once underwater, but lacked evidence. Enter
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Sweet chrome dome, Ratman! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Your hair interacts a lot with the skin and blood vessels around its roots. Sometimes these interactions don’t go according to plan, leading to balding. Could the future of hair loss treatment be fixing blood
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