Water on the Red Planet
The Potential for Life and Exploration on Mars This summer, a group of scientists found groundbreaking evidence of recently flowing liquid water on Mars. Since this was confirmed by NASA, the resulting...
Brain Disease Found in 96% of Former NFL Players
Researchers have found widespread brain disease in dead NFL players. New figures from the Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center in Boston — the country’s largest brain bank focused on studying...
Thync
Starbucks’ Technological Alternative For the majority of Americans who are sleep-deprived on a regular basis, a cup of coffee is not only a prerequisite for braving chilly Monday mornings, but also a...
‘Braking’ into a Greener Subway Future
There are certain things you get used to if you have to ride the subway every single day. People diving at closing doors to avoid waiting two minutes for the next train, mysterious sticky patches on the floor,...
Silent Actors in the Immune System
A recent study published in the Journal for Infectious Disease found a potential explanation for the decline in immune response found in the elderly population. The culprit: telomeres. To clarify, telomeres...
Why Alcohol and Medications Don’t Mix
How exactly does alcohol interact with other drugs in the body? It might be tempting to think of each alcohol-drug interaction as a chemical reaction between ethanol and the drug molecules in question. As it...
The Smell of Space
In an online question and answer session last summer, astronaut Mike Hopkins, who spent six months on the International Space Station, said that “Space has a smell … Once the pressure is equalized and the...
Is Everyone Really a Little Bit Racist?
And what can we do about it? James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, recently caused a stir when, during a speech at Georgetown University, he quoted one of the main songs in the hit...
Putting the “Pee” in Power
If you think that urination is just an inevitable biological function, think again. Though you likely don’t give pee any more attention than a flush down the toilet, recent research suggests that urine can...
Slippery Surfaces Promise to Make Hospitals’ Infection Rates Fall to the Ground
A team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering developed a new material with the potential to prevent some of the 721,800 infections estimated to develop annually in U.S....