Nerdly News Curated from Interesting Sites
Have you experienced an unusual number of mosquito bites this summer?
Have they landed mostly below the knee and especially around your ankles?
And did the six-legged perpetrator fly off unnoticed, like a mosquito ninja, after feasting on your blood?
If the answer to all these questions is yes,…
You know its important to eat right, exercise and keep your cholesterol under control to reduce your risk of a heart attack of stroke. If thats not enough of an incentive, new research suggests that taking care of your cardiovascular system will pay off for your brain as well.
A study of more…
A NASA spacecraft rocketed toward the sun Sunday on an unprecedented quest to get closer to our star than anything ever sent before.
The Parker Solar Probe will fly straight through the wispy edges of the corona, or outer solar atmosphere, that was visible during August’s total solar eclipse. It…
This weekend, in the dark hours before dawn, NASA plans to send a spacecraft to touch the sun.
The Parker Solar Probe, which could blast off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as early as 12:33 a.m. Pacific on Saturday, will dip down to within 4 million miles of the solar surface or nearly…
The longest lunar eclipse of the 21st century is coming up, and you dont want to miss it.
On Friday, the moon will be fully engulfed in the heart of Earths shadow for 1 hour, 42 minutes and 57 seconds.
It doesnt get much better than that. The longest possible duration of a lunar eclipse is one…
What with all the swiping, scrolling, snap-chatting, surfing and streaming that consume the adolescent mind, an American parent might well watch his or her teen and wonder whether any sustained thought is even possible.
New research supports that worry, suggesting that teens who spend more time…
Tucked along a stretch of famous surf breaks and crowded beaches, down a winding road dotted with multimillion-dollar homes, a wrought-iron gate guards this little communitys not-so-secret secret.
Locals call it Privates Beach, though technically its a county park. A gate ambassador or security…
An extra shot of testosterone, it seems, makes a man act like an animal.
You know the type: one of those male birds who unfurls some of his most spectacular feathers when the ladies are around, or the buck who uses his crown of antlers to advertise his virility. In short, an animal prone to making…
The koala is an unusual creature. Native to Australia and a bit bigger than a raccoon, it spends most of its time in eucalyptus trees, gorging on leaves that are toxic to nearly every other animal on the planet.
The koala sleeps about 22 hours a day and spends the remainder of its time eating and…
Imagine youre a bumblebee queen in England. Its February and youve just woken up from your winter hibernation. Youre hungry, pregnant, and ready to find the most promising spot to start a new colony.
So, where do you choose to build your nest? Should it be near rural farmland, in a suburban…
It began as a routine call for Long Beach firefighters: A fire alarm had gone off before dawn Monday at an 11-story housing complex for seniors.
As crews made their way to Covenant Manor, more details started to come in. There had been an explosion and a fire. People smelled gasoline. When firefighters…
There arent many people whove had to impress a gorilla for a job interview, but Mary Lee Jensvold is one of them.
The interviewer in question was Koko, the western lowland gorilla who made a name for herself by learning American Sign Language and demonstrating for the world that animals have…
Koko the gorilla doted on her pet kitten as if it were her own child. To the amazement of her human handlers, she seemed able to capture the joys and annoyances of maternal love in strings of simple words.
Soft, Koko said in sign language while cradling the kitten, which she named All Ball because…
It may have taken thousands of generations of hunting, gathering, farming and cooking to get here. But in the end, the genius of humankind has combined fats and carbohydrates to produce such crowning culinary glories as the doughnut, fettuccine Alfredo, nachos and chocolate cake with buttercream…
Paul Boyer, a UCLA biochemist who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the “three-cylinder engine” that powers all life as we know it, has died at his home in Los Angeles. He was 99 years old when he passed away on June 2, and would have celebrated his 100th birthday on July 31.
Compared to brains in the rest of the animal kingdom, the size of the human brain is way out of whack.
Our brains are roughly six times larger than what you would expect for a placental mammal of our stature, scientists say.
And no other animal has a brain as large as ours relative to body size.
…
In the 1966 science fiction classic Fantastic Voyage, a submarine crew is miniaturized so it can squeeze inside a human body and travel to a hot spot where medical assistance is needed.
A team from MIT has adapted this idea for real life, replacing the shrunken squad with specially engineered…
It took years of activist campaigns to turn the plastic bag into a villain, and hard-fought legislation to reduce its presence in oceans and waterways. Now, environmentalists and lawmakers are deploying similar tactics against a new generation of plastic pollutants.
There are drinking straws, which…
Triclosan, an antimicrobial agent found in toys, toothpaste, cosmetics and more than 2,000 other consumer products, has been found to wreak havoc on the guts of mice whose blood concentrations of the compound are roughly equivalent to a typical level for humans.
One group of mice who were fed a…
This video demonstrates scientists’ best guess about how Pluto wound up with methane dunes despite having such a thin atmosphere.