Your daily 90-second dose of real science for real people, with Sandra Tsing Loh!
Can mosquito species tell each other apart? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: Well, not really. That’s why yellow fever mosquitoes will try to mate with Asian tiger mosquitoes, and vice versa. Enter University of Florida entomologists. They wondered about yellow fever mosquito populations
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Who doesn’t love a spelling bee? Cute middle-schoolers lisping out words like Xanthosis and Logorrhea! But spelling is vital inside living organisms too! Why? See, cells need proteins to work properly. And these proteins are coded by molecules in
Scientists are bringing back a 30,000-year-old virus. What could possibly go wrong? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: Sure, call it a comeback! French researchers call it Mollivirus sibericum, and it’s long been frozen in Siberian soil. Thanks to climate change, that once chilly
It isn’t easy eating green! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Eastern coastal waters are home to pretty green sea slugs, called eastern emerald elysia. They look like leaves! What’s more, these marine animals eat algae, a plant. Then somehow they use the algae to
Do you have imported genes? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, talking about DNA, not denim. Researchers from the University of Cambridge say humans certainly have genetic imports. The reason? “Horizontal gene transfer.” That’s when genes jump from one species to another. Like from viruses
How many four-letter words do you know? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Let’s take “drat.” Rearrange the letters, and you can also make dart, and that’s about it. My point? There’s a limit to how many words you can make with those four letters.
Lost in space? You might be right at home! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Genetic testing – it’s all the rage! But what if your lineage was intergalactic? ! We used to think all of the matter in our Galaxy was formed in-house. But