Critter Cleanup

Shall we talk dirty . . . about animal hair? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Meet Guillermo Amador and David Hu, of Georgia Tech. They studied twenty-seven different mammals and insects to see how each maintains a suave appearance. First, the duo calculated the

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It’s a Hit!

Want to make a hit song? Here’s the secret. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: Pick up the mic and step to the back. At least that’s what University of Southern California research suggests. Their team analyzed over one-thousand songs that made it to

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Color Me Happy

Hey, adults of a certain age. Do you like to color? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science saying, coloring books! They’re not just for kids anymore. Coloring books aren’t just for kids anymore. Adults claim they help reduce stress and improve well-being. But how effective

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Howling Mad

Hey, guys: You can be large or you can be loud. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, and a trade-off that makes monkeys howl. Howler monkeys, that is. They’re native to Central and South American forests. And they’re known for their loud calls, which carry

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Travelin’ Cows

Where did the mysterious, pre-Roman Etruscan people come from? Ask the cows! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Thanks to a wealth of Etruscan artifacts, archaeologists know this: The civilization flourished in the first millennium BC in what is now Tuscany. But nobody ever figured

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Email Love

“I love you” will never be the same again. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. About to leave a voicemail for your sweetie? Log on to your laptop instead! That’s what Alan Dennis and Taylor Wells suggest. In their study, they asked college students to

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Perfection Perception

It’s hard to be a millennial—when you’re a millennial? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Overachievers. O-C-D. Helicopter parents. Buzz words, sure, but are these tied to real phenomena? Enter researchers from the U-K, Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill. They compiled over one-hundred-and-fifty studies from

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Anger Management

What! Can we now find tattoos on nice people? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Tattoos used to be associated with rebellious behavior: Sailors on leave, ex-cons, biker gangs looking for trouble. But now it seems every third sorority girl has a unicorn on her

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N’Sync

So you think you can dance . . . your way out of pain? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Meet Bronwyn Tarr from the University of Oxford. She invited two-hundred-and-sixty teenagers to a sciencey dance party. Half of them learned really energetic full-body dance

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Sugar Buzz

Oh hey, deadly superbug. You want some. . . candy? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. You’ve probably heard about SUPER BUGS. The bacteria that become resistant to antibiotics. But RESISTANCE isn’t the only problem. Some bacteria are drug TOLERANT. What’s the difference? Antibiotic RESISTANCE

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