50 Shades of Blue

Wearing one red sock and one blue sock today? That’s what you get for dressing in the dark! Sort of. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with The Loh Down on Science. Think of vision as a series of brain cells turning each other on. Not so much romantically, as literally.

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Bug Bait

When this couple wondered how to fend off bugs, a light bulb went on. Literally! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Meet husband-and-wife ecologists Michael and Teresa Justice. They made their home ground zero for an experiment on attracting insects. Every night they used a

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Left Field

Does anxiety send you into left field? Literally? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, and on emotional orientation! Psychologists in the UK report that a person’s emotions can steer where they walk. They say anxiety or inhibition can lead people leftwards. But overall positive vibes

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Big Hoax

How many people does it take to fake a moon landing? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: One to take a giant leap for mankind, and 399,000 to hold the fake scenery! It’s not a very good joke. But that number, 400,000, is totally

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Voles That Console

Feeling stressed? Hug a prairie vole! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. When you’re upset, friends come to comfort you. Why? Because of oxytocin, a.k.a. the love hormone. It’s linked to the warm fuzzy feelings you get from a hug. But studying oxytocin and fuzzy

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Chinny-chin-chin

What do Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, and Jay Leno have in common? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: They’re all twins! Just kidding. They all have prominent chins, of course. But even they can’t tell you why. The chin’s true function remains a mystery,

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Planespotting

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s – uh oh – bye-bye birdy! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Aircraft strikes kill thousands of birds per year and cause more than one billion dollars in damage. Ugh. Researchers at the National Wildlife Research Center wondered:

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Syrup Cure

Is the cure for ALS hiding in our pancakes? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: Maybe so! If you’re a worm that is. ALS – Lou Gehrig’s disease – is a motor neuron disease that causes irreversible damage to nerve cells. To study ALS,

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Sarcast-O-Meter

Bless your heart. Does our snark detector fade as we age? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Psychologists in Scotland wanted to know. Because as we get older, some brain tissue loses connectivity. It’s perfectly normal, but causes us to perceive things differently. For example,

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Whiskey Rings

To avoid those annoying coffee-rings on your table, try switching to whiskey! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: Slow down. This study comes to us via engineers Hyoungsoo Kim and Howard Stone at Princeton University. They were inspired by photographer Ernie Button’s portraits of

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