A Moment of Science

Desert ants spend the first four weeks of their lives in their underground nest. They keep themselves busy by digging tunnels, building chambers, and doing general maintenance inside.

Today, 440 nuclear reactors are operating in 30 countries worldwide. The energy generated by these plants provides 10 percent of the world’s electricity. But after we use nuclear fuel, what happens to the waste, and how do we handle it?

Melting glaciers in West Antarctica might collapse due to the effects of human-caused global climate change, but there are also risks in Antarctica's eastern part.

Mangrove forests are beautiful all on their own, but they also provide flood protection. The roots of the trees hold in sediment, which prevents erosion, and erosion makes floods a lot worse.

Have you ever had the experience of being on a boat all day, and then later feeling like you were swaying or rocking even though you were no longer on the boat? This is known as "land sickness."

Scientists think that bumblebees can speed up flowering in plants. They go the idea when doing a different experiment and noticing bumblebees using their mouths to pinch the leaves of plants that hadn't flowered yet.

The extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period is Earth's greatest murder mystery. 66 million years ago, something killed about 75 percent of all animals, including the dinosaurs.

Historically, coyotes roamed a broad expanse, as far east as the Mississippi and as far west as the Pacific, north into Canada and south into Mexico, but since 1900 they’ve extended their range into every corner of the US

During WWII, doctors noticed severely injured soldiers didn't need pain medication. Biomedical researchers have known for some time that the brain has an endogenous opiate system that controls pain. Now, they've found evidence of a new pain relief circuit.

Scientists are carefully monitoring the west Antarctic ice sheet. It's melting, and has been responsible for about four percent of the global rise in sea levels to date.

An illness all by itself is unpleasant, but the isolation we experience while recovering is also bad for our health. There's research showing that social isolation is associated with increased inflammation in the body.

Reindeer herds may be saving thawing permafrost, which can release greenhouse gases stored in it and speed up climate change.

When you stub your toe or hit your head, sometimes a swear word will slip out. Some researchers argue that this is a kind of stress-reduced analgesia, or pain-reliever.

Every summer, scores of trained volunteers scan coastal beaches, looking for sea turtle nests. When found, the nests are marked and watched, preventing predators or curious humans from finding the eggs.

It's interesting that modern anthropologists can do more than just study fossil bones and teeth. Ancient remains sometimes contain surviving DNA, and this has let scientists study the genomes of both the Neanderthals and the Denisovans.

Have you ever wondered how bugs handle being upside down for so long? It's a puzzling question, especially since insects don't have a closed circulatory system like we humans do.

Over the next few decades, bread may become an important protein source for many consumers, and animal protein alone won’t be able to meet the demand. Right now, researchers are engineering a new kind of flour for bread making, a flour that is made from insects.

According to a study published by American researchers in 2020, unless we change current practices, by the end of this century there will be more than twice as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there was before the industrial revolution.

Scientists have noticed that global precipitation tends to drop after a volcanic eruption, but they haven't known all the factors that can influence this effect. Now, thanks to a new study, a group of researchers thinks the missing link is El Niño, the weather pattern we normally see every 2 to 7 years.

Beluga whales have complex social networks, where support structures and cooperation extend beyond the nuclear family. Beluga communities often have a mix of family members, extended relations, and non-kin.

A research team did a study on how major life events affect our wellbeing, using a sample of 14,000 Australians who had participated in a survey that examines households’ economic and personal well-being, labor market dynamics and family life

Maine Coons seem huge for domesticated cats. But Smilodon populator is the biggest species of one of the biggest cats of all time: the saber-toothed tiger.

Greenhouse gases trap the sun’s heat in a planet’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the most familiar example The release of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels is the main cause of global climate change.

Seductive details are attention catching details that make a lesson or presentation more interesting but aren't relevant to the content. Even though these kinds of things can make the presentation more interesting, they could inhibit learning.

According to a recent study, our national parks are being coated in plastic dust. Most of it is from around the world, but a lot of it originates in nearby cities, and get brought to the parks by passing storms.