Heat and the motion of the engine break down the long chains into shorter chains and those chains are broken down even more. Old oil is better than no oil and will at least keep the engine from seizing up. But as the molecule chains get shorter, the...
While this second brain is not nearly as complex as the brain in your head, it does have its own motor and sensory neurons, and it uses many of the same brain chemicals and neurotransmitters. It even grows from the same part of the embryo that your o...
How often do you change the air in your tires? How about your brake and radiator fluids? You may need to fill them up or change them once in a while, but you dont have to change them the way you have to change your oil. You should change the water in...
Do you remember who won the world series in nineteen sixty- eight, but forget where you left your keys? Are you great at remembering all the details of a story, but lousy when it comes to remembering peoples names? What our brains choose to remember,...
It sounds like a really bad horror movie, doesnt it? While this creature has an ordinary brain inside its skull, it also has a second brainmuch smaller, but still fully functioning squishing around inside its belly. While the skull-brain thinks, and...
When people lose a hand, the part of the brain dedicated to that area receives no input at all. It becomes inactive. But the areas around it are still getting signals all the time. Some of those signals seem to leak over into the unused area. Just by...
Similarly, if you mix two animals that have close genetic makeups, the offspring wont be as healthy as the offspring of two genetically dissimilar parents. Thats because many diseases are caused by mutant genes. If you inherit a mutant gene from your...
Its a distressing fact that human activities are causing the wide-scale extinction of other species on earth. Something you may not know, however, is that the fewer animals there are in a given species, the more at risk that species is and not just b...
Recipes for fudge tell you to heat a sugar syrup to two hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Taffy recipes give similar instructions, but with a temperature of two hundred and sixty-five degrees. And to make hard candy, you heat the mixture to thre...
A surprising phenomenon sometimes occurs to people who have lost a hand. Soon after the hand is lost, they report that they can feel it again this time when something touches the side of their face. A neurologist can lightly touch different areas on...
Lactones carry chemical messages inside a body, and nepetalactone carries its message straight to the pleasure center of a cats brain, where it can randomly excite the cats neural circuits associated with sex, playing, hunting, and feeding. Although...
Ive heard that so called smart baby videos claiming to enhance language and number skills are pretty much worthless when it comes to actually making babies smarter. But if thats true, why do so many people buy them? Am I missing something? Good quest...
It induces euphoria, and excites the sexual regions of the brain. It is quite possibly hallucinogenic. It leads to strange, unpredictable, and unproductive behavior in those who use it. Whats more, it grows wild, much as a weed. Is this the latest me...
Using MRI scans, the researchers found that drinking beet juice did indeed increase blood flow to the brain. Not only that, but it sent more blood rushing to the white matter of the frontal lobes, which are areas typically associated with dementia. T...
Last time we discussed a classic physics question. Drop two objects of different mass, say a bowling ball and a golf ball, from a high building. Which Hits The Ground First? The answer?They hit at the same time. The more massive object has more stuff...
