LiveScience

Oct

2021

Why does water squirt out of your eye if you blow your nose really hard?

LiveScience, October 9 2021.

The human body is full of quirks. For example, some people can squirt water (or even smoke or milk) from their eyes.

But how can some people spurt unusual fluids from their eyes, and is it dangerous to their health?

It turns out that when someone squirts water out of their eye, they’re putting pressure on a sac in the bridge of the nose (where glasses usually sit) that holds fluid draining from the eyes. This sac is called the lacrimal sac and is a part of the tear duct system. Read More >

Jan

2011

Memory Boost for Aging Adults: Take a Walk

LiveScience, January 31 2011.

Forget the brain puzzles, mild exercise such as walking can boost brain volume and improve memory in older adults, researchers have found.

“With a limited investment of time and effort you can produce fairly dramatic improvements in memory and brain health,” senior researcher Arthur Kramer, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told LiveScience. “You can roll back the clock about two years.” Read More >

Jan

2011

13% of H.S. Biology Teachers Advocate Creationism in Class

LiveScience, January 27 2011.

The majority of high-school biology teachers don’t take a solid stance on evolution with their students, mostly to avoid conflicts, and fewer than 30 percent of teachers take an adamant pro-evolutionary stance on the topic, a new study finds. Also, 13 percent of these teachers advocate creationism in their classrooms.

“The survey left space for [the teachers] to share their experiences. That’s where we picked up a lot of a sense about how they play to the test and tell students they can figure it out for themselves,” Michael Berkman, co-author of the study with Penn State University colleague Eric Plutzer, told Livescience. “Our general sense is they lack the knowledge and confidence to go in there and teach evolution, which makes them risk-averse.” Read More >

Jan

2011

Hormone Holds Promise as Memory Enhancer

LiveScience, January 26 2011.

Could boosting your memory someday be as simple as popping a pill? Scientists found that rats injected with a hormone could remember better, even two weeks after the memory was formed.

The memory-boosting hormone was IGF2, which plays an important role in brain development. The researchers suggest that a better understanding of how this chemical works (IGF2 is short for insulin-like growth factor 2) might lead to drugs that enhance human brain power, particularly in individuals with Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Read More >

Jan

2011

Humans Now Look to Well-Known Worm for Virus Advice

LiveScience, January 25 2011.

The worms in microbiologist Marie-Anne Felix’s lab are feeling a little under the weather. It seems they’ve picked up a stomach virus. The virus is actually the first ever found to infect the nematode C. elegans, a carefully studied worm that scientists use for basic research.

Studying the sick worms will teach researchers how viruses interact with their hosts — which, in some cases such as HIV and influenza, are humans. Read More >

Jan

2011

Young Adults and Monogamy: ‘It’s Complicated’

LiveScience, January 20 2011.

To many young adult couples, the status of their relationship is a little vague. In a small study, about 40 percent of young couples had differing opinions about how exclusive their relationship was, and even among those who were on the same page, about 30 percent reported having cheated.

While monogamy is rare in the animal kingdom, for humans it has the practical value of being one of the easiest ways to protect against sexually transmitted diseases. Cheating and miscommunication in ostensibly exclusive relationships could trigger health issues, the study researchers say. Read More >

Jan

2011

River Blindness Parasite Relies on Bacteria to Fool Host

LiveScience, January 19 2011.

Even in the strange world of symbiosis, in which a pair of organisms can depend on each other to live, this one’s a whopper: Bacteria living inside a parasitic worm help create a cloak, shielding the worm from the immune system of its hosts (which, in this case, turn out to be us).

The worm in question is Onchocerca volvus, a parasitic nematode that causes river blindness. The worm is transmitted to humans by blackfly bites, and it has infected about 18 million people, most of them in Africa. It causes an itchy rash, nodules and, in some 270,000 cases, blindness. Read More >

Jan

2011

To Overcome Obesity, Trust Your Gut (Bacteria)

LiveScience, January 18 2011.

Bacteria living in our intestines may be a key to fighting obesity. Now, researchers have found one protein on the surface of white blood cells that plays an important role in controlling these bacteria.

It may sound disgusting and unsanitary, but the guts of mammals are teeming with bacteria. These gut-bugs help us digest food, provide us with nutrients and keep harmful bacteria away — actually playing an integral part in our health. Read More >

Jan

2011

New Metallic Glass Is Hard and Tough

LiveScience, January 18 2011.

A new member of the metallic glass family may rival Scotty’s transparent aluminum in “Star Trek” for its mix of amazing properties. This palladium and silver alloy developed by Caltech researchers is both stronger and tougher than any titanium alloys.

“Strength and toughness are actually very different, almost mutually exclusive,” lead researcher Marios Demetriou said in a statement. “Generally, materials that are tough are also weak; those that are strong are brittle.” Read More >

Jan

2011

Firmness of Touch May Evoke Gender Stereotyping

LiveScience, January 12 2011.

Holding a hard or soft ball can influence a person’s perception of how masculine or feminine others are. The finding adds to the growing insight about how connected our sense of touch is to social processing in our brains.

“What you are experiencing every day can influence your thoughts, like if you are sitting on a hard chair or a soft chair,” lead researcher Michael Slepian at Tufts University told LiveScience. Read More >