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Shakes on a Plane: Can Turbulence Kill You?
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The Trouble With Sprouts
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Crazy From The Heat: The Crime-Temperature Connection
Image Credit: Julius Schorzman In just a few days I’ll be vacating my overpriced studio apartment in Austin’s tree-lined Hyde Park area and moving to the ‘hood (aka, the east, east side). In the...
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The Evil Genuis of Toxoplasma
Image Credit: Rosa Pomar.Just when you thought it was safe to clean the cat box, Toxoplasma gondii is back in the news. In the August 17th issue of the journal PLoS One, scientists reported the latest...
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Advice from mice, trade in your weekend benders for moderate daily tippling
Image Credit: Daniel Farrell.Is consuming alcohol good for you or bad for you? The research often seems contradictory. Drinking is linked to health benefits one day and ghastly diseases the next....
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Why Florida should stick to cats and dogs
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What’s Listeria?
Image Credit: Clay Irving.By now you’ve surely heard about the latest food-borne illness freak-out: cantaloupes contaminated by Listeria monocytogenes. Originating in Colorado’s Jensen Farms, the...
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Get Your Fats Straight
Image Credit: Dawn HuczekLast week, in an attempt to curb obesity rates and their related health complications, Denmark rolled out what quickly became dubbed the “fat tax” – a price hike targeting...
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Got a fever? Best to cool it on the pills.
Thermometer by Andres Rueda, pills by Tyler Sparks, collaging by yours truly.It’s time to wake up and smell the cough syrup, people; cold and flu season is here.* Soon everyone you know will be hacking...
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It came from outer space
Image Credit: Ed Sweeney.Guess who’s coming home for the holidays? Russia’s broken 15-ton Mars probe. Well, probably. You know how unreliable malfunctioning probes can be. Early reports claimed the...
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Terror from the Tap: How a deadly amoeba can sneak into your neti pot
Image Credit: Antonio Foncubierta.Last summer, when a friend told me about a brain-eating parasite that lurks in warm freshwater swimming areas and can kill you in just one week, I thought, “Hmm,...
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Making the Most of Your Midnight Toast
Image Credit: Alex Brown.It’s been a slow news week for science. The days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve can be a wasteland of year-in-review lists and other fluff concocted to facilitate holiday...
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Wall of Death: Why You Shouldn’t Put a Fountain in a Hospital
Image Credit: star5112The dastardly duo of water and bacteria have teamed up again to assault our species. Not content to sicken and/or kill us when we drink water or pour it up our noses, the pair...
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Eek-o-tourism: Belize’s diseases and other holiday hazards
My Central American vacation is rapidly approaching, and I’m giddy with anticipation and light-headed from attempting to complete the many long-put-off tasks on my pre-departure checklist. The other...
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How to be a better liar
Rice by babbagecabbage, Photoshoppery by yours truly.Listen up, liars. Society is onto you. Well, its machines are anyway. Computers can spot your fake online hotel reviews, and they know when you’re...
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America's grossest invasive species
As if 12-foot pythons and lizards capable of biting off limbs weren’t enough for Americans (especially Floridians) to worry about, now comes a nonnative species that is not only harmful to indigenous...
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Paint it White: How New York City is getting cooler
New York vista by Tim Pearce.It’s official: white roofs are cool. The declaration comes from the tastemakers at NASA, and, as always, New York City is at the vanguard of the new trend. In fact, the...
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Whales, trees wish you would shut up already
Image Credit: Thing Three.The noisiest place I ever lived was an apartment at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 15th Street in Manhattan. It was the nexus of several bustling neighborhoods and a hub of...
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Climbing the ranks: social status changes gene expression in monkeys
Red carpet by chadmagiera.Having low social status may suck for reasons beyond not getting invited to the swankiest parties; it could also be making you ill. A correlation between socioeconomic status...
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List-server: 5 reasons to go vegan for a year
Yep, I’m doing lists now. Why? Because it has come to my attention that humans find lists irresistible. Actually, I noticed this phenomenon some time ago whilst compulsively purchasing yet another...
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There's more than one way to make a blond
Image Credit: deanwissing.Typically, if you want a look that combines dark skin with light hair there are two options. Depending on your starting point, you can either brighten your hair with chemicals...
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Sore muscles? Don’t blame lactic acid.
Image Credit: mrflipWith Tim Burton’s film adaptation of Dark Shadows* currently in theaters, it seems fitting to begin this post with a classic trope from vampire comedy, “I just flew in from...
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Mycotoxicology smackdown: Death Cap Mushrooms vs. Milk Thistle
Images: Archenzo (L), and demott9 (R)In the fall of 2011 four cases of death cap mushroom poisoning were successfully treated at Georgetown University Hospital (GUH) using a controversial remedy – an...
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We're moving! (Important links below)
These are not my kitties, but aren't they cute? Image: mavaBig news! As of June 2012, Blogus scientificus has taken up residence at EarthSky, already home to my "Lifeform of the Week" posts (formerly...
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A Little Hot Tea Never Hurt Anyone
Or did it? (Btw, I’m hoping to build this into a series about the relative dangers of random shit I hear about out in the world, but I’m a busy person, so we’ll just have to see how it goes.)The...
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