Human beings are diurnal creatures. That means we are normally active during daylight hours, when our senses function most effectively. At night, humans do rather poorly: we cant see objects well, our color vision is entirely lost, and we dont have t...
Its such a commonplace event that you probably never asked yourself why you sleep. But from a scientific point of view, this is far from a mundane matter in fact, for sleep researchers, its one of the biggest unanswered questions in the field. Stop a...
But the reason honey helps keep baked goods fresh has to do with the ability of sugar to attract and hold onto water molecules. All these sugars are hygroscopic, that is they attract and hold onto water, each sugar molecule holding several water mole...
Honey has been around for a very long time. Cave paintings in Spain from over ten thousand years ago show people harvesting honey. Today honey is mostly used for its distinctive flavor, but for baking it has another advantage as well: baked goods mad...
So because of its high sugar concentration, pure honey will never ferment or go bad. It may crystallize but by soaking the jar in hot water you can turn it back into a liquid. Adding water, however, lowers the concentration of sugar in the honey and...
Leave it on the shelf too long and honey begins to crystallize. Heating the honey returns it to its original condition, but if you add water, you could ruin the honey completely. Thats because honey, which is a preservative in its original state, fer...
If you grew up with a brother or sister, you probably know what sibling rivalry is like. For a spotted hyena though, sibling rivalry is a matter of life and death. Spotted hyena mothers usually have twins. They give birth in a private burrow where th...
Other anthropologists think its because meat-eating isnt the key at all, that the real key is cooked tubers, like yams. They say an increase in calories is whats important when it comes to the development of larger brains, and that cooked tubers woul...
Our development of larger brains had much to do with our evolution as a species. But the question is, what fueled the development of those larger brains? The most popular theory among anthropologists is that we switched to an omnivorous diet. Our anc...
But measuring movement is actually pretty tricky. Any small mistake in the measured acceleration results in position errors that grow with time. So even if youre standing still and just rocking in place, a navigation computer relying solely on the IM...
This is because the shorter the wavelengths of light, the better it scatters off of air and water particles. Blue Light So blue light, which has very short wavelengths, is much more likely to scatter than the longer wavelengths, like red light. This...
Have you ever been driving along a country road at night, and all of a sudden a car comes around the bend and shines their high beams right into your eyes? Ugh, theyre so bright! You also notice that their lights look a bit bluer than youre used to....
Scientists think it has to do with inflammation. Researchers are still trying to figure out exactly how this might work. But scientists know that gum disease involves a lot of swelling. And inflammation can have all sorts of harmful affects throughou...
Studies suggest that gum disease, especially, can affect the brain. Some studies have found that older people with gum disease are more likely to have memory loss and other cognitive problems like dementia. But isnt it possible that people with memor...
Likewise, light travels at its maximum speed through a vacuum-the interstellar highway-but it slows down when it enters air, water, or some other medium. Through air, light moves a hint slower: forty miles-per-second less than its maximum speed. Thro...
