When it comes time to whip up your favorite meal, one of the first items you'll grab is probably some form of vegetable oil or animal fat — like a jug of canola oil or a tub of butter. But have you ever stopped to think about what option is the healthiest way to kickstart a recipe? The choices may seem overwhelming, and now, many consumers are embroiled in a hot debate over growing suspicion of seed oils. Critics of seed oils have claimed that the ingredients are toxic to the human body, infl ...read more
There’s a lot to remember from your time as a baby — your first smile, your first steps, your first words. But chances are, you’ve forgotten all of it, a phenomenon called infantile amnesia.For a long time, infantile amnesia was thought to be tied to an inability to make memories in infancy. But a new study supports the idea that babies do, indeed, encode memories in the first years of their lives, by linking measures of brain activity to measures of memory recall in infants for the first ...read more
Space, to the naked eye, appears still, tranquil. But to scientists viewing it through increasingly powerful telescopes, it looks turbulent, with violent streams of gas buffeting dusty materials that form fascinating shapes, then disperse.Now an international team of astronomers has employed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to get a better view of this action. ALMA’s amazingly high resolution has sharpened the view of the tempestuous churn in Milky Way’s central zone. ...read more
If you’ve walked past the penguin exhibit at the zoo, then you’ve likely caught a whiff of their unpleasant-smelling poo. The smell has perhaps made you want to cover your nose and, despite a penguin’s cuteness, want to walk away. Humans aren’t the only ones repelled by penguin poo, however. To krill, tiny shrimp-like creatures, the smell of penguin poo triggers evasive maneuvers, probably because they know that penguins are on their way to eat them. After putting it to the test, a rese ...read more
Medieval alchemists sought to literally turn non-valuable substances into gold. Now some scientists have discovered a figurative equivalent method to transform sewage sludge into food for animals and fuel for automobiles, according to research published in Nature Water.Sewage sludge — the thick, organic, and, yes, smelly wastewater treatment byproduct— represents a massive and costly problem. The world’s cities produce over 100 million tons of the stinky substance. It often clogs treatment ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine