Quirks & Quarkswith Bob McDonald
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Nov 16: Watching wildfire with radar, the return of race science and more…
Laundry and microplastic, submarines for your bloodstream and oxygen for airplanes
Bob McDonald's blog
Get some sleep, and get your brain washed
One new study showed a way the brain, during deep sleep, could be cleansing itself of toxic waste. Sadly, our busy lifestyles and addiction to devices is making deep sleep more rare.
New high-powered radar gives scientists a 3D view of wildfires in real time
The radar allows scientists to track activity inside fires to better predict and fight them
The return of race science — the quest to fortify racism with bad biology
A new book offers a timely exploration of the re-emergence of 'scientific' attempts to explain perceived racial differences
Your laundry and plastic pollution — which fabrics shed the most microplastics
Hint: You may not love your polar fleece jacket as much after you read this
Tiny submarines could make a 'fantastic voyage' into our bodies
Microscale vessels, powered by acoustic waves and oscillating bubbles, may one day carry medicine to precise locations inside the human body
How do high-flying airplanes get enough oxygen for their engines
Airplane engines are designed to efficiently extract oxygen out of thin air in order to keep them running at high altitudes.
Nov 9: Lionfish are super digesters, Voyager 2 goes interstellar, carbon capture and more …
AI reads scientific literature, fear, trauma and inheritance and animal heart attacks
Bob McDonald's blog
'We sent a spaceship to the stars!'
NASA's Voyager 2 passed into interstellar space 41 years after its launch.
The lionfish is an Olympic athlete of digestion — and that's an ecological disaster
An invasive fish outcompetes rivals by beating them at eating.
After a 42-year journey, Voyager 2 goes interstellar
NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has joined its twin Voyager 1 and crossed out of the heliosphere and into interstellar space
'We have to do everything': Why capturing carbon shows real promise
Capturing CO2 to store or make useful products could be a win for the planet and businesses, scientists say in a new review.
AI is reviewing scientists' old work and discovering things they missed
Scientists hope this AI system that turns words into math can help speed up the discovery process
Fear and trauma are useful for animals — can we learn from them how to live without it?
PTSD may be partly rooted in our evolutionary past as animals constantly threatened by predators
Do animals ever have heart attacks or is it just humans?
It is very rare for animals like dogs and cats, to experience heart attacks as we know them, but they do get various heart diseases
Nov 2, 2019: Roadway pollution, fungus promotes pancreatic cancer, the bang in the Big Bang and more…
Infant eels magnetic migration and the pathway to Mars
Bob McDonald's blog
Moon and Mars are tough places to drill
NASA's InSight mole has unexpectedly popped out of its hole
Pollution sniffing investigators find air near roads is high in contaminants
A report found a 'soup' of pollutants from traffic on major Canadian roads.
A common fungus may drive tumour growth in pancreatic cancer
Scientists hope this discovery could better help them monitor and treat this deadly cancer
The universe was full of cold goop, then came the Big Bang
New simulations worked through the period of cosmic 'reheating' that made the universe we know today.
Infant eels use the moon and an internal compass to finish their transocean migration
European eels cross the Atlantic Ocean twice in their lifetime, once after birth, and once to breed
Pathway to Mars
How we'll get to Mars — what's the biggest challenge, money or technology?
A new Quirks series looks at what we'll have to do to put humans on the red planet
Oct 26, 2019: World's loudest bird, a six-fingered lemur, a microbrewery in your gut and more…
Earthworms and the climate underground, a patient researcher and a question of indigestion
Females flinch from the mating call of the world's loudest bird
In a case of sexual selection gone wild, the white bellbird of the Amazon has the loudest bird call ever recorded
A lemur from Madagascar has been hiding a sixth finger on its hand
Naturalists have studied the aye-aye for two centuries — and missed its extra finger
