A Moment of Science

Researchers at the University of Montreal have created a programmable thermometer made from DNA. It's 20,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Once one ant finds food, it leaves a pheromone scent trail so others can find the way with their antennae. Ant antennae not only pick up information, they can also give information.

Sophisticated digital climate models help scientists measure the effects of carbon dioxide on the warming and cooling of the planet. Water scientists also find clues to how the earth's climate is changing by looking to the past.

The Earth needed a number of things to become habitable. First of all, it needed to be close to a star, but not too close. It also needed water, a rocky surface and atmosphere. Most important of all, however, it needed a magnetic field.

Imagine you're a moon jellyfish for a second. Now imagine suddenly finding yourself missing one of your arms. As a jellysih missing an arm, what would you say is at the top of your list of concerns?

We are closer than ever to finding inhabited worlds. When an alien planet passes in front of its star, an event that's called a transit, there is a small dip in the intensity of starlight that astronomers use to detect the planet.

Have you ever planted a garden because your neighbor's garden was growing well? This kind of imitative behavior was the inspiration behind a 2013 study where scientists looked at the nestbox choices of pied flycatchers after the birds observed the success of nesting great tits.

Most people say their earliest memory is from around the age of three, which led researchers to believe that children start forming long-term memories at around three and a half years old

Outside of Greek mythology, hydras actually exist in the real world, although you can't see them without a microscope, otherwise it just looks like a slide of dirty water.

Many women get a urinary tract infection at some point, and they are quite painful. The infection is caused by bacteria that enter the body through the urethra to colonize the bladder.

We're going to have a solar system with nine planets, and it has nothing to do with Pluto. Caltech researchers have evidence of another more normal-sized planet in our solar system.

Did you know that your brain has an alerting system? There is a structure in the brain that combines information from all of the senses, and detects important changes.

In the last few decades, scientists have begun to understand the importance of bacteria that live in and on our bodies. The accepted estimate has been around 10 times as many bacteria as human cells.

On today's Moment of Science, we're going to talk about dragons. This might seem like an inappropriate topic for a science program, but there are stories and myths about dragons from everywhere in the world.

The deep ocean is a confusing place to navigate. There are almost no visual landmarks, and water currents can carry an animal off course. Yet many species of sharks reliably find their way over long distances in the open ocean.

Sometimes when we're driving, we can become so enraged we can't really explain why. This is because our brains evolved to be extremely aware of threats and to react when a true threat emerges.

Men and women have some obvious biological differences. But what about the brain? Are there such things as "female brains" and "male brains."

Here's a simple demonstration you can do with cool implications. Find a large object that is brightly colored, like a green door. Stand with that door to your side, but don't look directly at it.

French scientists recently tested dogs to see if they could recognize the faces of other dogs on a computer screen. This might not sound that difficult, until you think about the wide variety of dog faces.

There are a few different types of camouflage in the natural world. There's disruptive coloration, like stripes or spots that break up your form against the background. There's also background matching, which blends in with the background.

We've been hearing a lot about the importance of gut bacteria to our health. Now it turns out that bacteria also have a say in how and when we eat.

Although the eye is complicated, biologists still have a good understanding of how it evolved. In modern animals, they have found eyes of all different degreees of complexity.

Insects need water. How they get their water depends a lot on their diets. Herbivorous insects get most of their water from their food because plants contain a lot of water.

Tardigrades are little animals that can survive dehydration, radiation, and survive in outer space without a space suit. As strange as all of the above sounds, they are apparently even stranger.

In 2015, a team of European biologists published evidence that Siberian jays can distinguish relatives they've never seen before.