What is Air? 空气 D: Strictly speaking, air is mostly nitrogenabout seventy-eight percent, and about twenty-one percent oxygen, which leaves about one percent of other stuff, like water vapor and carbon dioxide. Y: So air is mostly empty space? D:...
Drought For those of us lucky enough to always have enough food and water, it may be hard to imagine living through a drought . A drought occurs when for a variety of reasons, usually including a lack of rainfall and warm temperatures. Soil moisture...
Emotions and the Common Cold 好心情是一剂良药 Yal: Youve probably heard it said that ones attitude affects ones health. Don: Yeah! Yeah! If you maintain a positive attitude or mood, then youre less likely to get sick than if youre angry or de...
Are You Looking at Me? 你在看我吗? You know how eye contact is a pretty important component of interacting with people,right? So scientists recently tested this by measuring peoples brain activity as they responded to pictures of angry people...
Ant Attack! Imagine this. Youre coming home to your gated community after a long day of work. As you stop to show the guard your ID, a mugger jumps out from behind a bush and grab s you by the mouth. Okay, that last part sounded a little weird, but t...
Whats a Fly Doing in Antarctica ? 南极有苍蝇? Sometimes the biggest finds are the smallest finds. Researchers examining a segment of siltstone taken from ground along the Beardmore glacier in Antarctica found something unexpected. They found a...
Music and Verbal Memory 音乐和非文字记忆 Even if you havent touched a piano in years, if you suffered through music lessons as a kid you may have benefited from those lessons in ways you wouldnt expect. When you train on a musical instrument...
Variety in Diet D: Oh! Good to have buffet , I love buffet s . I like to get a taste of lot of different things. I like to nibble a little of this, and a little of that. Who wants to eat a mass of potatoes when you can also have chicken, corn and gra...
Hand Gestures 手势 You know, radio is a great thing. Here I am! Flying high above the earth, but my voice is coming across just as if I were sitting in front of you. Communicating by voice alone has its drawback s , though. For example, I cant use...
The Real Bigfoot 真的有大脚怪吗? Everybody has heard of Bigfoot, the gigantic ape-like creature that supposedly haunts the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Plenty of enthusiasts believe Bigfoot is real, though there isnt any evidence that w...
Tapping Caterpillar s By Don Glass Y: I could have sworn that I heard a strange tapping sound in my house last night. It was faint but chilling . I think there must be a ghost in my house. D: Do you happen to keep caterpillar s , perhaps the hook-tip...
Waving a Flag on the Moon 月球上飘扬的国旗 Don: Yal, Im not a conspiracy theorist or anything, butI must admit that those photographs of the moon landing make me suspicious . I mean,the flag in those pictures of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstro...
Surprise at Stonehenge 神奇的巨石阵 Wizard s and aliens aside, actual scientists dont have much to say about Stonehenge. That is, until now. Just recently, a four-thousand-year old gravesite was found within three miles of Stonehenge. The tomb...
Fetus Learning 胎教是真的吗? Y:Did you know that infants prefer their mothers voices to that of other females? And that they will change their behavior in order to solicit her voice? D: Sounds reasonable to me. Y: Ok, but did you know that a...
Rabbits Down Under In 1859, an unassuming Australian landowner named Thomas Austin got the hunting bug. Eager for something to shoot, he released twenty-four wild rabbits onto his property and had a jolly time tracking them down. Unfortunately, some...