Category: Coping with COVID
How attractive are you to mosquitoes?
Virginia Tech researchers conduct proof-of-concept study on mosquito scent preferences. Using scented soaps, Virginia Tech researchers found that the smell of certain body soaps could make humans more or less attractive to mosquitoes. People have been using products to alter their scent for generations. From soaps to perfumes, people gravitate to floral and fruity smells. […]
May 23, 2023
Nutrition Science’s Most Preposterous Result
The Atlantic Studies show a mysterious health benefit to ice cream. Scientists don’t want to talk about it. Last summer, I got a tip about a curious scientific finding. “I’m sorry, it cracks me up every time I think about this,” my tipster said. Back in 2018, a Harvard doctoral student named Andres Ardisson Korat […]
May 9, 2023
Scientists Use GPT AI to Passively Read People’s Thoughts in Breakthrough
Vice Scientists have invented a language decoder that can translate a person’s thoughts into text using an artificial intelligence (AI) transformer similar to ChatGPT, reports a new study. The breakthrough marks the first time that continuous language has been non-invasively reconstructed from human brain activities, which are read through a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) […]
May 2, 2023
Ranking the Pain of Stinging Insects, From ‘Spicy’ to ‘Satanic’
AtlasObscura Remembering one passionate entomologist who poetically described and classified more than 70 species’ painful stings. Trekking along a mountain in Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica, entomologist Justin Schmidt came across a nest of the tropical wasp species Polybia simillima, better known as the fierce black polybia wasp. The agile, buzzing insect has a reputation for having a painful […]
Apr 25, 2023
Spring is in full swing in the Southern part of the US, and spring brings Bluebonnets to Texas every year. Apparently taking selfies in the Bluebonnets are a thing, and the Texas law enforcement community jumped in this year with a hashtag #BackTheBluebonnets. Enjoy this gallery of our brothers and sisters in blue frollicking in […]
Apr 18, 2023
Overlooked No More: Alice Ball, Chemist Who Created a Treatment for Leprosy
NYT After she died — and just a year after her discovery — another scientist took credit for her work. It would be more than half a century until her story resurfaced. On New Year’s Day in 1922, a scientific paper in an obscure medical journal described a drug that would help revolutionize the treatment […]
Apr 11, 2023
Wild Iguana Steals Little Girl’s Cake, Gives Her Rare Bacterial Infection
Gizmodo The toddler is thought to be the first known case of Mycobacterium marinum caught from an iguana bite. A 3-year-old girl’s holiday in Costa Rica was ruined by an iguana in more ways than one. The scaly reptile stole her cake, but not before biting her hand and transmitting a rare bacterial infection that endured for […]
Apr 4, 2023
When I’m not researching and curating content for UNMC, I’m a flower farmer! Farming was never in the plans, it just sort of happened, and my husband and I couldn’t be more thrilled. We have 65 acres of a former tobacco farm, and the soil is a depleted dust bowl from over 350 years of […]
Mar 22, 2023
The mystery of Alice in Wonderland syndrome
(BBC) A surprising number of people experience symptoms of this curious condition, which is named after Lewis Carroll’s heroine, who changed size after eating and drinking Nine-year-old Josh Firth was in the car with his parents when he noticed something strange happening to the buildings on either side – they seemed to be getting bigger. […]
Mar 14, 2023
