A Moment of Science

Would You Eat Fruit That Smells Like Garbage?

The Great Unconformity

Imagining Yourself in Others

Stinky Cheese

U.S. Islands and Migratory Animals

Gut Microbes and Brain Rejuvenation

Is That Bug Really a Bug?

Handwriting and Learning to Read

 D:Today's Moment of Science is coming to you from our local grocery store.Y:What better place to learn about food science and do the weekly shopping at the same time?D:Here we are at the cereal aisle . . . oh good, they have my favorite. Y:Toasted Fiber Puffs?  [BEAT] Sounds delicious.D:You may scoff, Yael, but they're not bad.  And more importantly, Fiber Puffs are a great source of fiber.Y:I kind of guessed that.  But tell me something: what's so great about fiber?  D:Well, fiber is good in all sorts of ways.  First, it's important to understand that fiber isn't really a food or even a particular substance.  It's an indigestible carbohydrate found in most plants.Y:But if fiber is indigestible, how can it be nutritious?D:That's the thing.  Fiber isn't good for you because it provides nutrients.  But it does help clean out your digestive system.  When you eat stuff that has a lot of fiber it hangs around in your stomach for a while and then gets passed down into your intestines with other food.  Because fiber soaks up water it softens the stool, which makes it easier to eliminate.Y:So in other words, fiber is kind of like a personal liquid plumber.D:Precisely.  Plus, it takes up stomach space and makes you feel full without adding any calories.  So if you're on a diet, eating high-fiber foods like apples, grapes, seeds, whole wheat products, and beans is a good way to avoid feeling hungry.  Y:All right, you sold me on fiber.D:Want a box of Fiber Puffs?  Y:I think I'll just stick to apples.

The Mars Perseverance Rover has collected vital data for studying the red planet, including audio recordings. So how does sound travel on Mars?

Safe Sex for Moths

Fluorescent Green Wasp Nests

D:You might think that knowledge and memory go hand in hand. Y:Sure.D:Mostly you're correct. However, in some cases, knowledge can actually hurt one's ability to remember. Y:You mean a person's memory can be so filled up with knowledge that there isn't room for more?D:No. But our knowledge can make us too quick to dismiss details that we don't consider important. And so we don't remember them. Let me give you an example. See this photograph of a cat?Y:I see it.D:This cat has beta cells in its body.Y:Okay.D:Now thumb through these photographs of various animals and tell me which ones probably also have beta cells in their bodies.Y:I'm gonna say that all the cats have beta cells.D:Okay. Now how about this photograph of a dog? Did I show this dog to you already?Y:I don't remember.D:Aha!Y:Huh?D:You don't remember because you weren't paying close attention to the details. Once you recognized whether a creature was a cat or not a cat, you went on to the next picture. Your knowledge led you to ignore the details in each picture. You would have had trouble remembering whether any particular cat or dog had been presented.  Y:Okay, but who wouldn't recognize immediately whether an animal were a cat or not a cat? D:Young children. Because they don't immediately recognize a cat from a dog from a bear, they study each photograph closely to come to a careful decision as to whether it looks like the creature in the original photograph. Hence, on a surprise memory test like this one, young children actually perform better than do adults, despite the fact that adults typically have much better memories than young children.  Y:Very interesting.

In 2018, evidence for potential liquid water on Mars was announced. This would be a monumental discovery, but arguments since then have repeatedly cast doubt on these claims.

Y:Stop that Don...why'd you put that microphone right next to my ear?D:I was trying to record your otoacoustic emissions.Y:My oto..what emissions?D:Your otoacoustic emissions. Noises that your ears generate and emit.Y:You mean my ear gives off noises?D:That's exactly right. When you hear a tone or noise, the noise waves are transmitted to a part of your inner ear called the cochlea. These noises stimulate hair cells in the inner part of the cochlea that send electrical signals to your brain to be processed. Other hair cells in the cochlea are also stimulated, and these generate waves along the membrane of the cochlea that help to amplify and fine-tune the sounds you heard. These waves also get sent back out of your ear and can be heard if you amplify them.Y:Wow, that's pretty cool Don. So you're telling me that my ear can talk to you?D:In a way, it can. These noises tell about the functioning of your cochlea. Audiologists use these otoacoustic emissions to see if you have damage to certain portions of your cochlea that could keep you from hearing certain frequencies, or pitches of sound. Y:I always thought my ear was just a one-way street for noises to be interpreted in my brain. I never knew my ear could provide so much information about itself without my brain being involved at all.

When the world admired the boldness and tenacity of Pizza Rat, a rat that went viral after it was filmed dragging a giant slice of pizza down the stairs of a New York City subway station, we implicitly acknowledged that there’s something special about the animals that share our cities.  Scientists had guesses about what that something was—perhaps it had to do with their problem-solving abilities or their fearlessness of people—but they wanted to put it to the test.  A team captured fifty-three Barbados bullfinches from urban and rural sites throughout the island of Barbados. Then, they put the finches through a series of behavioral tests. They tested boldness by observing how long it took the birds to eat seeds after a human disturbance, and neophobia—the fear of new things—by placing unfamiliar objects next to the birds’ food and watching their reactions. The birds were also tested on their problem-solving abilities by having to figure out how to get food out of small drawers and a tunnel, and on skills called acquisition learning, which tests how quickly adaptive behaviors are learned, and reversal learning, which tests behavioral flexibility.  The scientists found that the urban bullfinches were bolder and faster at problem solving than their rural counterparts. However, the urban birds were more afraid of new things, and were no better at acquisition learning or reversal learning than the rural birds. Another difference was that urban birds had enhanced immunity compared to rural birds.  All those advantages are good news for birds living in urban environments, because we all know making it in a city isn’t easy. (270)      This Moment of Science comes from Indiana University.

D:Hey Yael, do you have...Y:Shh!  I'm watching my favorite medical drama, "Very Attractive Doctors."D:Sorry.  What's going on?Y:A terrible accident victim was just brought into the ER.  Oh no, she's flatlining!  Quick, grab those paddle things and shock her!D:Wrong move.Y:Whaddya mean?  See, Dr. Smith is trying to shock her back to life.  Flat line!  Clear!  Zap!D:That may be how it's done on TV, but not in real life.  See, those paddles, which are part of a machine called a defibrillator, don't work by shocking the heart back into action after its stopped beating.  The word fibrillate mean flutter.  It's used to describe what can happen when you have a heart attack.  When the electrical pulses that make your heart beat go haywire your heart starts to beat irregularly, or flutter.  Y:So what do the paddles do?D:They use just enough voltage to shock the heart back into a regular rhythm without burning the skin.  It's kind of like restarting a computer when it freezes up.  The defibrillator tries to do just what its name means--it de-fibrillates, meaning that it stops the irregular beating and resets the heart to beat regularly.  Y:And when the patient flatlines?D:Then her heart has stopped beating.  That's when its time for CPR and drugs, not the paddles.  A defibrillator can't shock a heart back into life after its stopped working.  It can only help stop a heart attack.Y:[CHAGRINED] So "Very Attractive Doctors" isn't one hundred percent medically accurate.D:No, but it is totally Hollywood.

Is there an evolutionary reason that people (and chimps) like to drink alcohol?

Research into the purpose of sleeping has revealed functions of the brain’s waste system.

Did you know that concentrated solar power has been around since the 1860’s?