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Walk into a roomful of people, and your first impression is just noise. Within seconds, you start to pick out words, phrases, and fragments of conversations. Soon you’ll be merrily chatting with friends, oblivious to the din around you. But most of us never stop to think about exactly how our brain manages to pick…
A small segment of the population is literally allergic to vibrations, an annoying condition that gives rise to hives and other symptoms. Researchers at the NIH have now isolated the genetic mutation responsible for the disorder, and it’s offering new insight into related conditions. This type of allergy is called a physical urticaria, and it…
Let’s face it, we’ve all been wondering why so many rich, successful, powerful people are cheating, lying, disgraces. Is it that only unethical people make it to the top? At least one study indicates that this is not the case—it’s that winning itself makes people behave unethically. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…
This is Sarah McDaniel, a 20-year-old Instagram celebrity. She’s on the cover of the newly nudity-free Playboy magazine, striking a very millennial pose. Notice anything odd about her eyes, though? McDaniel took the internet by storm a few months ago thanks in part to her particularly beautiful case of heterochromia irdum. This is why she…
Just as Flint residents began to realize the severity of their water crisis, public health officials became alarmed about an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, which ended up killing nine people in the city. Emails just made public show that Michigan leaders were made aware of the connection almost a year ago, but did nothing to…
The Republican Party of Iowa exposed the voter data of two million people in what appears to be a really dumb accident, according to the Wall Street Journal. These records can be purchased from the Iowa Secretary of State. Sales are restricted to customers using the records for political research. A security failure left records…
(Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images)
You probably go to church every Sunday. But Super Bowl Sunday is different. Your living room becomes your temple, and the only gods your worshiping are the ones decked out in plastic shoulder pads showing early onset of dementia. You spend all day cooking up snacks for people you don’t even know so that they…
Across the world, bees are succumbing to a deadly virus, and a new study places the blame squarely on humans. The good news is, there are some common-sense measures we can take right now to start protecting the honeybees we rely on to pollinate our crops. Deformed wing virus is a global epidemic that has…
Had breakfast? Eat lunch yet? Have plans for dinner? I say stop eating and cancel all plans and purge yourself from any food that you’ve eaten so you can bake this chocolate cake and eat the whole damn thing. It’s the only natural way to react after watching Chef Steps put together what they call…
In 1985, a premature baby was born in Maryland who needed surgery to tie off a dangerous blood vessel near his heart. The newborn, Jeffrey, died weeks after the procedure. His family learned afterwards that none of the procedures had been performed with analgesics; the only drug administered was a muscle relaxant. The press ran…
At least 63,000 current and former students at the University of Central Florida are getting bad news this week: Someone breached the school’s network to access their social security numbers and other sensitive personal data. Student-athletes, students who were also working for the university, and faculty are the main groups on campus affected. While UCF…
Now here’s a testament to build quality. If you’ve ever lamented about your electronics dying after just a few years, you’ll be impressed with Colin Pullinger & Sons’ Perpetual Mouse Trap which, 155 years after its design was originally patented, is still successfully catching mice. They say if you build a better mouse trap the…
Here’s a fun fact to chew on while planning your next vacation: the southwestern United States is brimming with tarantula diversity. Today in the journal ZooKeys, biologists describe 14 previously unknown species of tarantulas living in the American Southwest, including Aphonopelma johnnycashi. Country music legend Johnny Cash has a new spirit animal. Fourteen new species—that’s…
Villains from movies come in all shapes and colors and quirks and motivations but they all have one thing in common: their smile. They all smile that same maniacal howl where they’re in a joke that no one else is on. It’s proof that they see the world completely different from the rest of us.…
Today, a Facebook post revealed that each Facebook user is an average of only 3.57 connections away from all users on the site. That by itself is interesting, but instead, Facebook’s comparing it to the popular theory of six degrees of separation—presenting its user base and the general population as two groups that, hell, may…
By flushing out cells worn with age, researchers from the Mayo Clinic have extended the lifespans of mice by as much as 35 percent. It’s an encouraging finding that could eventually lead to similar therapies in humans. Aging is a complex biological process with no single causal factor. One particularly critical contributor of aging, however,…
New Jersey marijuana dispensaries say Facebook has unfairly banned their business pages. The fight highlights how inconsistent Facebook’s policy towards prescription drugs is. NJ.com reported on the shutdown: Officials from Breakwater Wellness and Treatment Center in Cranbury and Compassionate Sciences Alternative Treatment Center in Bellmawr said their home pages were shut down Tuesday. When they…
I know what my nightmares look like in real life now: this storm off of Maroochydore, Australia. I know what my version of hell would be: this storm off of Maroochydore, Australia. I know all this because this time lapse footage from Blue Dog Films is terrifying in the worst ways with lightning buzzing and…
You know that fun game you play every time you wander over to Download.com and try to download an app? The game where you have to find the right download button in a sea of buttons or risk infecting your computer with malware until the end of time? Well, it’s game over man. Yesterday Google…
