We take it for granted that our hair dryers won't send us to the emergency room and our toothbrushes won't make us go numb. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about sex toys.
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Feed SubscriptionFuture Cars Could Count Miles per Heartbeat
Automakers are looking to integrate wireless medical monitoring technologies into their in-car networks so drivers can keep tabs on their health while on the go. Katherine Harmon reports. Getting stuck in traffic might be enough to raise anyone's blood pressure
Read More »Arm’s Trace: Astronomers Spot a Newfound Piece of the Milky Way Galaxy
Fantastically detailed, visually arresting photographs of Andromeda, a spiral galaxy that lies 2.5 million light-years from Earth, have been available for years.
Read More »Massive Ocean Eddies Stir Up Life around Deep-Sea Vents
Giant swirling masses of seawater known as mesoscale eddies roam the world's oceans. Whipped up by surface winds and girded by the Coriolis effect (produced by Earth's rotation), eddies may grow to several hundred kilometers in diameter and are known to transport heat, chemicals and biology throughout the oceans' shallower depths. A new study published April 29 in Science suggests that eddies may have a deeper reach than previously thought, helping to shape some of the most remote ecosystems on Earth--deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
Read More »Can Tornado Prediction Be Improved?
The tornado that leveled much of Joplin, Mo., Sunday evening gave little warning. Although a watch had been in effect for a broader region for much of the day, some locals had as few as 20 minutes' notice that a tornado that would ultimately span as much as three-quarters of a mile was about to touch down on top of them
Read More »Secret To Stopping Spam: Follow the Money
Spam comprises upwards of 80 percent of incoming e-mail , despite monumental efforts by help desks and security software companies to defeat it. The reason spam volumes continue to grow is that such efforts are often misplaced and fail to hit spammers where it hurts. Instead of trying to shut down the hydra-like tangle of Web servers that route spam to our inboxes, a much more focused attack should be made to disable payment for the goods (Viagra pills, Bosley hair loss treatment, Space Bag storage, etc.) that spam is used to advertise, according to a team of researchers presenting their findings Tuesday at IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in Oakland, Calif.
Read More »Devils’ Advocates: Catching a Slice of Tasmanian Devil Life [Slide Show]
Tasmanian devils are losing a hellish battle: A contagious cancer--called devil facial tumor disease--is spreading across their island home, their last bastion of safety from human encroachment. Populations of this carnivorous marsupial have declined in parts of Tasmania by as much as 95 percent, and the species is now officially endangered
Read More »Physics and the Immortality of the Soul
The topic of "life after death" raises disreputable connotations of past-life regression and haunted houses, but there are a large number of people in the world who believe in some form of persistence of the individual soul after life ends. Clearly this is an important question, one of the most important ones we can possibly think of in terms of relevance to human life. If science has something to say about, we should all be interested in hearing
Read More »WiggleZ Project Confirms Dark Energy’s Effects
A little over a decade ago astronomers discovered something astonishing. They were looking at exploding stars in the distant universe, and they noticed that not only is the universe expanding from its big bang origin, but its expansion is actually speeding up
Read More »Single Laser Optical Approach Transmits 700 DVDs of Data Per Second
Whether it's for streaming Netflix or sharing files, we're gobbling up more and more data--and we want it faster. But even shooting data with lasers over fiber-optic cables has its limits.
Read More »The Data Are In Regarding Satoshi Kanazawa
A Hard Look at Last Week's "Objective Attractiveness" Analysis in Psychology Today If what I say is wrong (because it is illogical or lacks credible scientific evidence), then it is my problem.
Read More »The South Pacific Islands Survey–Our First Student Questions!
Ashley Park and Amber Watson, both juniors at Spanish Fort High School in Alabama, sent me an email after reading, "We discover what’s floating in the South Pacific." They wanted to know how trash travels in the ocean and if recycling is really the answer. Since I’m not a plastic pollution expert, I turned to Marcus Eriksen, the co-founder of 5 Gyres, a non-profit studying garbage in the ocean, to provide some answers.
Read More »Coming Clean about Nuclear Power
Ever since Japan’s battered Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex began emitting radiation in March, calls to abandon nuclear power have risen in the U.S. and Germany, among other countries.
Read More »Too Hard For Science?–Journey to the Core of the Earth
A grapefruit-sized probe could help solve mysteries right beneath our feet
Read More »Find Magnetic North with a Homemade Compass
Key concepts Magnetism [More]
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