A Moment of Science

We humans may share around 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees and other simians, but we're still pretty different. After all, we have smart phones, and monkeys have--well--they don't have smart phones.

A "niche" is an organism's special "slot" in an ecosystem that allows it to co-exist with other species. It's defined by the resources it needs to survive and the impact it has on its environment.

Scientists recently found a way to drive a cockroach the way you might drive a car. They put electrodes in its brain, and by stimulating it in the right places they could move it around like a car.

Most alcoholics smoke at about three times the rate in the general population. But a study suggested that what you're dealing with isn't just behavioral--it also has to do with brain chemistry.

On today's Moment of Science we're going to perform a little experiment in order to learn a little bit about the motor cortex--a strip of tissue running from ear to ear across the surface of the brain that is responsible for controlling voluntary movement.

It isn't uncommon for people to hate stink bugs, but not all stink bugs are bad. Some are beneficial, like spined soldier bugs. They are predators that feed on over 90 agricultural pests, including Mexican bean beetles and cabbage loopers.

In 1969 two airliners, plus the pilot of an Air National Guard fighter plane, report being harassed by a team of UFOs.

Scientists at the University of Utah and at Arizona State studied the elephant genome and found that they have up to 40 extra copies of genes that code for a protein called p53, which has strong cancer-preventing properties.

Harvard neuroscientist Margaret Livingstone is pretty sure she's solved the puzzle of the Mona Lisa's changing smile. Presuming nothing, Livingstone reasoned that the famous portrait's flickering smile is caused by the way we see.

Psychologist Jean Piaget claimed that children overestimate the volume of vertical dimensions, but that as their brains mature, they develop the capacity to more accurately compare vertical and horizontal dimensions.

According to reasonable estimates of how many stars have planets, how many planets may be suitable for the evolution of organisms, and so on, our Milky Way Galaxy should be brimming over with life.

Probability would lead us to believe that extraterrestrial life does exist, so why have we not found any?

Fetuses have some bacteria while still in the womb, but during birth they're coated with microbes as they travel down the birth canal, including bacteria that help newborns digest their first meal.

Since we have two eyes, why is it that we don't see two of everything? We seem to see like the cyclops in Greek mythology, as if we had one eye on our forehead.

We all know that smoking cigarettes is bad. But what about smoking a pipe or cigars? Since you don't inhale, is it better for your health? Or at least less bad?

If you've ever had a bird feeder, you've probably noticed how much more colorful hummingbirds are compared to other birds. So how are hummingbirds so colorful, anyway? What makes their feathers so special?

If you've ever driven by a wind farm, you may have noticed that the turbines most likely have three blades. Not two, not five, but three.

Some beetles have beautiful, shiny carapaces that look like metal, or a jewel. That shininess is called iridescence. It's caused when tiny structures in the carapace interfere with certain wavelengths of light, so that different colors are seen from different angles.

Scientists have compared chimpanzee and bonobo brains and think their different behavior could be due to brain structure.

Sand dunes are everywhere. They form deserts on Earth, Venus, Mars, and Saturn's moon Titan. They even form underwater on seafloors and riverbeds.

Does money make us happy? The answer, according to psychologists, is both: up to a certain point money can buy happiness, so to speak.

Humans are often quite willing to help one another, but it's not an exclusively human trait. Thanks to new research, scientists have learned that African grey parrots do, too, in some circumstances.

There are around sixty-four species of flying fish, and they really do fly.

The world's oceans are like a sponge for heat, absorbing about 90 percent of the excess warming caused by carbon emissions from human activities. That would mean that measuring changes in the temperature of the oceans is an independent and critical measure of climate change.

Our era has a tentative name: the Anthropocene era. There’s debate over when it started, and whether we merit a new geological epoch at all, but some researchers argue that the future fossil record will clearly show both that a new epoch has begun and when it started.