It's that time of year again when the weather starts to change, and we're more prone to getting sick. One such symptom that accompanies these seasonal illnesses is a sore throat. Sore throats not only feel like you've swallowed sandpaper, but they are also accompanied by coughing, congestion, and the production of mucus, sometimes with spots of blood.

Firstly, mucus plays a crucial role in our respiratory system. It's a slippery, gel-like substance produced by the mucous membranes lining various parts of our body, including the respiratory tract. This viscous fluid serves as a protective barrier against invaders such as pathogens and irritants. It also helps keep these surfaces moist, allowing for proper functioning and efficient air exchang ...

The major diseases of a century ago reflect how far we have come in our scientific and medical knowledge. Since then, the landscape of human health has evolved significantly, shaped by advancements in science, medicine, and technology. In this article, we will journey through time to understand the major diseases humans faced a hundred years ago.

Infectious Diseases

One hundred years ago, infectious diseases were among the leading causes of death. These diseases were caused by pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Tuberculosis (TB), caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, was a major global heal ...

One use for matrix math is in programming 3D engines for video games. A single point on the screen can be defined as a vector. The TV or computer screen is two-dimensional only, so to create the look of depth, objects must change size as they come closer to the viewer or go farther back into the scene. An image is made up of hundreds or thousands of vectors. By multiplying this set or matrix, you can change its size. You can also multiply the vector array by another array, which allows you to rotate the image. In rotation, parts of the image become ...

One of the methods used by behavioral geneticists is selective breeding. Selective breeding often involves selecting animals that are very different on one measure of behavior. For instance, if scientists take 20 rats and test how quickly they can solve a maze, chances are that they will get some variability in the speed with which the rats can solve the maze. Scientists would take the two fastest animals and the two slowest animals and breed them together. They would continue to do this over 20 generations, until they had a group of animals that solved the maze very rapidly and a group of animals that solved the maze very slowly. They are then able to examine potential differences in their brains and behaviors that contribute to maze solvi ...

One advantage of being a science major is knowing fancy scientific words for everyday things. Since my teenage years, I developed the habit of reading the ingredients list before purchasing any packaged food item. Recently while searching for a snack at the store, I stumbled upon the potato chips aisle (admittedly, salty, crunchy snacks have always been a weakness of mine). Given how expensive everything has gotten lately, the more affordable budget brands peaked my interest. After quickly glancing over the ingredients of one bag, I noticed that "silicon dioxide" was listed at the end; in fact, it was a common ingredient in that particular brand's entire line of products! Knowing that silicon dioxide is the main component of beach sand, my ...

Some people are born with a green thumb – they need only pick up a watering can to make their gardens teem with brilliant flowers and vegetables. To the rest of us, gardening comes less naturally. And for some people, it’s a complete and utter mystery. But growing productive, vivacious plants doesn’t have to be hard. Following these simple guidelines can turn even the most fumbling gardener into a veritable Farmer John.



Avoid over-watering

Watering is one of the most confusing and misunderstood gardening chores. Over-watering encourages shallow root systems, makes plants more susceptible to disease, and wastes water. Roots in waterlogged soil cannot breathe; as a result, plants wilt, turn yellow, rot, and die.

Follow a few simple rules of thum ...

Whether you're a chef, stay-at-home mom, or food euthanasiast, how food is handled and prepared is extremely important to preventing foodborne infections and food intoxications. As evident with how the coronavirus spread over to humans, millions of people suffer the symptoms of foodborne illnesses when an outbreak occurs. According to the CDC, millions of people are infected with foodborne illnesses every year. Most can be prevented by storing and cooking foods at their proper temperatures and preparing them under sanitary conditions. Here's a brief rundown on how to detect and avoid tainted food items.

These Foods...	Are Risky When:
Fresh poultry	stored raw in the refrigerator for longer than 1-2 days, (3-4 days for cooked poultry)  left unrefr

...

If you live in North America, you've probably never given the cost of water a second thought. In fact, you've probably taken its value for granted probably because it costs very little or because it's vastly abundant. 

In places like Saudi Arabia, however, a liter of water costs five times as much as a liter of gasoline. This is because much of the water in Saudi Arabia is seawater that is purified in desalinization plants (Al Jubail desalination plant shown above). This price relative to fuel is quite different in the United States. For example, a liter of water (from a tap) is virtually free, while a liter of gasoline is around $0.75 (about $3.00 per gallon). 

As a result of this significant difference in cost, it plays a major effect on hu ...

Imagine blending modified palm oil, skim milk powder, cocoa, hazelnuts, and whole lot of sugar – that's how Nutella is technically made.

In fact, Nutella contains 10.4 percent of saturated fat and 58% of processed sugar by weight. A two-tablespoon (37-gram) serving of Nutella contains 200 calories, including 99 calories from 11 grams of fat (3.5 g of which are saturated) and 80 calories from 21 grams of sugar. The spread also contains 15 mg of sodium and 2 g of protein per serving.

You're probably thinking, what if I gather up these ingredients and do it myself, will I have homemade chocolate spread?

Not quite.

Nutella uses modified palm oil rather than regular vegetable oil because it remains solid at room temperature. This modified oil i ...

Anyone who used a PC in the 1990's most likely used one with the most popular operating system of its time, Windows 95. Although it reached EOL (end-of-life) status in 2003, Windows 95 doesn't appear to want to die. It has made appearances on smartphones, handheld devices, and tablets for quite some time now, and people don't seem to be getting enough of it. Thanks to a young programmer, we can now have Windows 95 running in almost any web browser using emscripten, an emulator that converts C++ code to JavaScript in real-time. It requires no downloads, plugins, or any special software.

The emulator takes a minute to load up, but once you’re inside it, it’s surprisingly snappy. It provides you with a full Windows 95 operating system and e ...

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but what’s influencing our eye? Scientists reveal that it’s not genetics but life experiences that lead us to find one face more attractive than another. This finding furthers the on-going debate of nature versus nurture.

Here's how the study went down: Researchers asked 547 pairs of identical twins and 214 pairs of same-gender fraternal twins to view 200 faces and rate them on a scale of one to seven, with one being the least attractive and seven the most attractive. A group of 660 non-twins then completed the same survey. If genes were more involved in facial preference, identical twins would have had similar ratings; if the influence of a familial environment carried more weight, fraternal twins w ...

When you turn on your TV, it is the definition of ironic to watch the news channels for information about planet mass destruction. Whilst when you step outside your door, it is quite alarming and obvious that our earth is suffering. When every person around you, from toddlers to elderly, own some for of technology, with no means of recycling old items. When students, each with their own copies of pages. When potable water has not yet reached the most needy of nations. When human greed is apparent with every innovative idea claiming to "revolutionize "a domain brought up to make  a quick buck. Drilling, mining, industrialization, politics, scavenging for resources, suffocating our environment... This may all seem negative, but coming from a ...

Time for a riddle!

There are 3 boxes. One of them has a car that you get to keep.

On each box there is a statement. You know that only one of these statements is true.

I know this is a science blog, but hear me out. I'm not sure what sort of stunt McDonald's is pulling here, but apparently they are removing the world famous Big Mac off their menu. Currently, the Big Mac has a whopping 550 calories and 29g of fat. It's probably the only reason I ever go to McDonald's, so I guess from now on it's going to be the Whopper instead.

...

Three 2,000-year-old Greek mosaics have been unearthed on the Syrian border. They're said to be among the most extraordinary mosaics to survive from the ancient world.

King Tut was riddled with physical impairments because his parents were probably brother and sister, a new genetic analysis and thousands of CT scans of his mummified body have suggested.

An enormous tomb has been unearthed in northern Greece, guarded by two beautifully preserved female figures. It’s been dated to the time of Alexander the Great.

This is a colourised photograph of Albert Einstein taken during a lecture in Vienna, Austria, in 1921. To create colourised images, digital artists take a black and white or sepia photograph and use historical references to work out which colours should go where. This photo was originally taken by Ferdinand Schmutzer and coloured by Dana Keller from History in Color.

We're all connected. The red hotspots on this map show where the most devices that can access the internet are located

The rather impressive flight deck of NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour, a now-retired orbiter.

Described as the first “truly feasible” contraption to reduce ocean plastic, this little wheel has been clearing rubbish out of Baltimore's harbour since May.

These origami figures were made by a former NASA physicist who combines maths and computing to develop incredible folded paper sculptures.

This sand castle has been etched on a single grain of sand.

Snail and slug earbuds. Looks like they are coming for your brains!

This is for all those so-called science lovers that hated it during high school, but now all of a sudden are fans of it.

This periodic table shows the relative abundance of elements on Earth.

This floor is completely flat.

Japanese farmer, Hiroichi Kimura, has perfected growing the heart-shaped watermelon.

These newly unearthed statues represent two mythological creatures - a snake, which is a symbol of the underworld, and Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog of hell in Greek mythology. Dated to the 2nd Century BC, these marble statues would have guarded the entrance to a deadly cave in the ancient city of Hierapolis in Turkey.

A glimpse into the mind of a Nobel Prize winner - this doodle was made by physicist T.D. Lee during talks with Chen Ning Yang, while both were visiting scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US in 1956. Their discussions led to radical questioning of one of physics' basic principles and resulted in the duo being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for discovering that the supposedly absolute law of parity conservation had been violated. ...

Could someone talk some sense into the five people that have bid on this item, please?

According to the description, this is one litre of bottled air from the area affected by the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

http://vimeo.com/74033442
You'll need to watch the whole thing, don't skip anywhere.

The MessagePad, released in 1993, was the first in a series of Newton devices to be developed and sold on the market. The 1.4 pound physical device was collaboratively manufactured by Apple and Sharp. The MessagePad packed a 20MHz ARM 610 RISC processor, 640 kilobytes of RAM, and a 336x240 monochrome LCD touch screen with stylus and handwriting recognition support. It was powered by four AAA batteries. It ran Newton OS version 1.05 and cost $699.99.

The Newton platform was axed from the Apple product line for two main reasons.

(1) The early Newton OS that shipped with the original MessagePad proved to be not so user friendly, especially when it came to the unpredictable handwriting recognition software. The press and other media outlets (inc ...

The anechoic chamber is located at Orfield Laboratory in Minneapolis, Minnesota and was designed for testing out hearing aid equipment. To make sure no outside noises are present, the chamber is hidden behind two vault doors and has sound-deadening wedges covering all of the flat surfaces. Rather than sound bouncing off the walls, ceiling, and floor like a traditional room, the sound is absorbed.

A reminder of how quickly we integrate technology into our lives.


St. Peter's Square in 2005 and yesterday.

This miniature ecosystem has been thriving in an almost completely isolated state for more than forty years. It has been watered just once in that time.

The original single spiderwort plant has grown and multiplied, putting out seedlings. As it has access to light, it continues to photosynthesize. The water builds up on the inside of the bottle and then rains back down on the plants in a miniature version of the water cycle.

As leaves die, they fall off and rot at the bottom producing the carbon dioxide and nutrients required for more plants to grow. ...

Bulletproof glass manufacturer 3M Security Glass placed this advertisement at a bus stop. There's apparently $3 million in cash inside there, behind their bulletproof glass. If you can break it, it's yours.


Here's how bulletproof glass works...

At first glance, bullet-resistant glass looks identical to an ordinary pane of glass, but that's where the similarities end. An ordinary piece of glass shatters when struck by a single bullet. Bullet resistant glass is designed to withstand one or several rounds of bullets depending on the thickness of the glass and the weapon being fired at it. So, what gives bullet-resistant glass the ability to stop bullets?

Different manufacturers make different variations of bullet-resistant glass, but it is basic ...

Solifuges are a variety of arachnids found in deserts. While they are called Camel Spiders, they belong to a different order from true spiders. It may appear terrifying. However, it seems the internet blows its fear factor out of proportion. After a few photos circulated around the internet, outlandish claims about their astounding physical abilities and voracious appetite for human flesh arose.



No. They cannot run at 30 mph. (They do run at 10 mph, which is still incredibly fast.) They cannot kill humans, although they have a painful, albeit non-venomous bite. They can only grow to about 6 inches. They do not subsist on a diet of camel stomachs. Solifuges are content with eating insects, small reptiles, birds and rodents. ...