A Moment of Science

One infamous feature of COVID-19 is the phenomenon of “long COVID.” Researchers hadn’t previously looked for long persisting forms of colds or the flu.

Ants must have a variety of survival strategies. How do ground-nesting ants cope with rain?

Set aside the question about the chicken and the egg, what about the woodpecker and tree fungus?

It makes sense that if you live in a neighborhood where you can walk to places to do errands and such, that would be good for your health.

Everyone has a center of gravity. Every object has one, too. It’s the point in our body where all weight is evenly balanced.

Pigpen's condition might seem a bit farfetched, but scientists are finding that we might all be more like Pigpen than we imagine. Only, instead of dust, we carry our own cloud of bacteria.

Our lifelong food preferences are largely shaped by the foods we're exposed to early on in childhood.

Pareidolia is a term from psychology that refers to the tendency in people to perceive a meaningful pattern in a vague stimulus.

"Auto" means "self" and kinetic means "motion." When you see a tiny point of light moving, it's often because you are moving yourself--or, rather, your eye is.

What's brown, has eight legs and flies?

Ever notice when you're having a bad day it always seems to get that much worse?

If you see an object blowing down the street, you will infer that it is light. That will be your conclusion even if you can’t determine what the object is.

When you cry for emotional reasons, your eyes act differently. So what happens next?

Aging is a complex process involving accumulating damage to the cellular mechanisms of life. Anti-aging researchers want to understand and combat this process to give us healthier and longer lives.

A species of howler monkey isn't dying its fur, but they are changing color.

Cows and humans aren't the only ones who produce milk. There are also some insects and spiders that produce a milk-like substance to feed their young.

When water leaked into containers of dormant queen bumblebees, the scientists assumed they’d need to hold a state funeral. But amazingly, the regal insects lived, despite drowning!

Scientists are saying that as the climate warms and temperatures rise, we might lose more crops to insects.

Did you know that ancient bricks are magnetic?

These days, pandas have bamboo for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But that wasn't always the case.

Although we all get angry at times, for some people anger turns to aggression, while for others it doesn’t. The reasons for this have to do with how we regulate our emotions.

Human mothers secrete milk to feed their babies. So do other mammals. Biologists now know that many other kinds of animal mothers also secrete milk-like nutritious substances to feed their offspring.

Fruit flies might not have manners when they invade your home, but they do have culture.

Making their way through polluted water, fish become disoriented, as sights, smells, and sounds crowd the waters. Chemical and noise pollution, and reduced water clarity, interfere with the senses, as well as the fishes’ natural instincts.

These days, you can hear about self-driving cars when you turn on the news, or you can browse store shelves for high-tech gadgets. But in the mid-nineteenth century, there was one go-to place for the public to view scientific achievement: the Great Exhibition.