Summer School with Live Science: Turn milk into plastic

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  681 words  |  Trudie Dory

This Friday (July 9), we will explore the chemistry of milk plastic, (or casein plastic) in our new kids video series: Summer School with Live Science. In this week's installment, Live Science producer, Diana Whitcroft, will demonstrate how to make biodegradable plastic, called casein plastic, with milk and vinegar. She will make jewelry in this tutorial, but families are urged to make anything they’d like, be it ornaments, keepsakes, decorations . [Read More]

Teen Books Feature R-Rated Language

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  632 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

A significant portion of books geared toward teens contain curse words strong enough to earn a movie an R rating, new research finds. The study finds that 20 percent of bestselling teen books — usually those geared toward older teens — contain language that is generally taboo on television. About 88 percent of the top 40 books contained some sort of profane language as of summer 2008, researchers report Friday (May 18) in the journal Mass Communication and Society. [Read More]

This 'Doomsday' Plane Was Designed to Survive a Nuclear Attack. A Bird Just Took It Down.

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  458 words  |  Trudie Dory

A U.S. Navy "doomsday" aircraft, meant to survive a nuclear attack, recently met its match: a bird. The bird strike took out one of the plane's four engines, and the U.S. Navy declared it a "Class A mishap," meaning the event caused more than $2 million in damages, death or permanent disability, the Navy Times reported.  On Oct. 2, during a so-called touch-and-go maneuver — when an aircraft lands and then takes off again without coming to a full stop — the E-6B Mercury aircraft struck an as-yet unidentified bird, Tim Boulay, a spokesman for the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, told Military. [Read More]

Weird 'Egg Rock' Meteorite Found on Mars

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  306 words  |  Patria Henriques

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity stumbled upon a dark grey, golf-ball-size object last week that looks nothing like the typical red-orange rocks that are normally seen on Mars. To figure out exactly what this weird rock is and where it came from, Curiosity used its on-board rock-zapping laser to analyze the rock's chemical composition. This test revealed that it is an iron-nickel meteorite  that fell from the Martian sky. Curiosity's science team dubbed the newfound meteorite " [Read More]

Why the 2012 Sumatra Earthquake Was a Weird One

 Posted on December 15, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  890 words  |  Patria Henriques

Already a curiosity for its sheer size, the 8.6-magnitude earthquake that shook the seafloor west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on April 11 appears to have been even weirder than scientists thought. A new study reveals the quake zigzagged along four faults, three of which are set perpendicular to each other. From above, the layout looks like a city street grid. "We call it an earthquake in a maze," said Lingsen Meng, lead author of the study and a graduate student in seismology at Caltech. [Read More]

'Lost' Statue of Alexander the Great (Minus the Nose) Turns Up in Museum Warehouse

 Posted on December 14, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  329 words  |  Patria Henriques

Archaeologists have discovered a stunning, albeit noseless, bust of Alexander the Great, but not from an ongoing excavation located in Alexander's ancient, sprawling empire. Rather, the marble statue was found sitting, "lost in a dark corner of the warehouse" at the Archaeological Museum of Veroia, in Greece, according to a July 31 Facebook post by Angeliki Kottaridi, a director at the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports. [Top 10 Reasons Alexander the Great Was, Well . [Read More]

2,200-year-old Chinese text may be oldest surviving anatomical atlas

 Posted on December 14, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  778 words  |  Fernande Dalal

A series of 2,200-year-old Chinese texts, written on silk and found buried in ancient tombs, contain the oldest surviving anatomical atlas, scientists say.  The texts were discovered in the 1970s within tombs at the site of Mawangdui in south-central China. The tombs belonged to Marquis Dai, his wife Lady Dai and their son. The texts are challenging to understand, and they use the term "meridian" to refer to parts of the human body. [Read More]

5 Ways Love Affects the Brain

 Posted on December 14, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  392 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Love in the brain"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind," as Shakespeare's Helena said in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" — and perhaps neuroscientists would agree. Love might seem to move in mysterious ways, but scientists actually have a pretty good idea of what love does to the brain. Being in love floods the brain with chemicals and hormones that produce feelings of pleasure, obsession and attachment. Here's a look at five ways love affects the brain. [Read More]

Acne-Causing Foods to Avoid

 Posted on December 14, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  453 words  |  Patria Henriques

One condition seems to be rampant in our society today. It affects millions of Americans and the costs associated with treating it exceed $2 billion, according to the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD). The condition?  Acne. It seems to be a growing problem, and although it isn’t life-threatening, it can have a major effect on your quality of life. If acne is going to rear its ugly head, it usually does so during puberty. [Read More]

Ancient Roman pottery workshop discovered in Egypt

 Posted on December 14, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  531 words  |  Patria Henriques

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered an ancient pottery workshop — with the remains of rounded vessels, coins, figurines and even a 'ritual room' — dating to the beginning of the Roman period in Tabba Matouh, west Alexandria.  Ancient workers primarily used the site for crafting amphorae —  two-handed vessels with a neck narrower than the main body that were used for the storage and transportation of goods such as oil and grain, according to the University of Oxford's Classical Art Research Center(opens in new tab). [Read More]