Onshore, or on a boat, have you ever wondered what swims below in the dark water? Using standard equipment and a new process, marine scientists can now get a good look at what is swimming by—just by analyzing the water.
The squiggly guys in this article's cover image are Propionibacterium acnes. These bacteria live in low-oxygen conditions at the base of hair follicles all over your body. They mind their own business, eating cellular debris and sebum, the oily stuff secreted by sebaceous glands that help keep things moisturized. Everybody has P. acnes bacteria—which are commonly blamed for causing acne—but researchers took a bigger view and discovered P. acnes may also play a part in keeping your skin clear.
Having a Clostridium difficile infection means stomach pains, diarrhea, fever, and loss of appetite, and if the symptoms weren't bad enough, the disease often reoccurs. Now, new research has found an increased risk of recurrence in people who take medication to treat their stomach acid, gastroesophageal reflux disease, peptic ulcer disease, or stomach discomfort.
To keep fungal pathogens at bay in their crowded homes, wood ants mix potions to create powerful protection for their nest and their young.
Nineteen days ago, several hundred people could have been exposed by a traveler with measles in Nova Scotia, Canada. The next day, someone flying from Minnesota to Nebraska may have spread the measles to other passengers. A couple weeks ago, it's possible that a man and his six-month old child spread the measles in several Seattle-based locations. Authorities are trying to locate persons who may have been in contact with these people. None of the persons with measles were vaccinated. Why?
Augmented reality seems to be the talk of the town lately, with everything from glasses to furniture stores prepping to implement exciting, new AR technology. Well now, it looks like even our food is getting a makeover for the augmented reality future.
Overweight kids often become overweight adults. New research suggests a couple reasons why and suggested that there may be ways to intercept that fate.
Even as health authorities describe the symptoms of Zika infection in the general population as mild, a new surveillance study finds serious side effects are more common, and serious, than previously thought.
A robust appetite for imported foods is leading to increased disease outbreak in the US. Despite the locovore and slow food movements, America's demand for foreign foods is picking up. According to a study published in the journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases, demand for imported fresh fruits, vegetables, and seafoods has jumped in recent years.
A new study confirms that antibiotics can prevent surgical intervention if your child's appendix becomes inflamed, potentially saving his or her life.
Some studies have shown that vitamin D supplements help fight respiratory infections, but some haven't. A new study published in The BMJ clarified the confusion, and identified a group of people that might be better able to fight off colds and flu with vitamin D supplements.
Using extreme time-lapse microscopy, scientists watched a virus take over a bacteria to create a cell that looked and functioned more like a plant or animal cell. True story.
Despite the availability of a vaccine against it, almost 50% of men aged 18-59 in the US are infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV). Why?
To shine light on the future of the relationship between humans and viruses, a team of researchers from the University of Oxford looked into the dim and distant past.
No one can dispute the evolutionary success of bugs. The oldest insect fossils were found encased in crystallized mineral silica in Scotland in 1926, and they're between 396 and 407 million years old.
As many of you know, I have been running a couple of series here on Null Byte about digital forensics called Digital Forensics for the Aspiring Hacker and Digital Forensics Using Kali. Although many readers have seemed to enjoy these series, just as many seem to be pondering, "Why should I study digital forensics?"
Editor's Note: The research described in the article below has been criticized and any conclusions based off this research should be examined with a skeptical eye. The article has been edited to reflect these issues.
What's your top pet peeve? Open-mouthed chewing? Nail biting and knuckle cracking? The sound of silverware scraping? Or perhaps it's a bigger behavior, like leaving the toilet seat up?
If you've already read the first part exploring what geniuses actually eat as opposed to what the rest of us are told to eat for brain health, you've noticed that there are some big discrepancies. Instead of favoring healthy, wholesome foods high in antioxidants, lots of high-achieving types tend to go for caffeine, sugar, and processed foods. One notable health habit practiced by many: eating breakfast.
We tend to assume that eating is mostly a physical act, but the mind has so much to do with the choices we make.
Journals are a great source of hilarity and embarrassment, detailing everything from your elementary school crushes to those super awkward middle school dances. While rereading your old hand-scrawled entries might make you cringe, that old journaling habit could benefit you as an adult.
Think eating food is as easy as putting it in your mouth? It's considerably more complicated than that. Your brain plays a big role in determining what and how you eat. Understanding how your brain interprets food choices is key to managing your eating habits.
Tequila is a hard liquor that's often been misunderstood. Produced from the agave plant, this aged spirit has complex flavors that bloom the longer it's aged and can rival the finest scotch.
An open bottle of wine can be dangerous. You intend to enjoy—nay, savor—a single glass, but then two episodes of Top Chef later, that sucker is empty. Now you have to go to work the next day with a wine hangover. What happened? Turns out there are some unconscious reasons you might be chugging more wine than you wanted. Never fear. Along with clenching your fists to make better food choices, there are some tricks you can use to moderate your wine intake. Researchers at Cornell University disc...
Welcome back, my budding hackers! One of the most time-consuming, but necessary, activities in hacking is reconnaissance. Before we can hack a system, we need to know what operating system it's running, what ports are open, what services are running, and hopefully, what applications are installed and running.
Welcome back, my nascent Hackers! In my last blog, we looked at a passive way to gather information necessary for a hack. The advantage of using passive recon is that it's totally undetectable, meaning that the target never knows you're scouting them and you leave no tracks. The disadvantage, of course, is that it's limited to only some websites and not entirely reliable.
Welcome back, my novice hackers! Most of my tutorials up until this point have addressed how to exploit a target assuming that we already know some basic information about their system. These include their IP address, operating system, open ports, services running, and so on.
Cats. Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, you've got to admit—they've got minds of their own. While this makes them incredibly entertaining at times, it can also cause tons of issues for their owners. Trying to "train" a cat is usually an exercise in futility.
Dianne Tice and Roy Baumeister gave a bunch of college students a questionnaire in which the students answered questions about their work habits. In a class which she taught, Tice also assigned a paper with a deadline which she said could be extended and observed which students availed themselves of the option to extend.
Ahoy, landlubber! Next to vampires and werewolves, seafaring pirates are going to be the most popular costumes this Halloween. And luckily, you don't need to pillage or plunder in order to prove your scoundrel worthiness.
It's funny to us that so many Victorian makeup looks done for Halloween emphasize heavy, dead makeup with lots of deep plums and reds because the Victorians wore little to no makeup (women were basically considered whores if they wore rouge).
Hydrogen can be used to improve mileage. The hope with this method is that hydrogen will increase the amount of gasoline combusted and increase fuel efficiency, as you trickle hydrogen into the tank. Often propane is used to increase gas mileage. The studies are still being done. There's no official data at present, but there is significant experimentation.
LEGO and Harry Potter unite in this extensive video game called LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4. Each year corresponds to the years in J. K. Rowling's wizardry series, so this is like four games in one! This 80-part series will take you through the complete gameplay of LEGO Harry Potter for the Xbox 360, but it's also available for the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS, PSP and Windows. For more information on this walkthrough, visit Mahalo.
Every gal has her trouble areas, but it seems that most girls cite their belly and butt as the hardest areas to tone. After all, scientific studies have shown that these areas are the first place to gain weight and the last place that gets smaller when you're exercising to lose weight. Sad but true facts.
We can't seem to divulge ourselves from our stick figures, which we perfected to an art in second grade. But if you're a true artist who's looking to become better at realistically rendering a human body, then you've come to the right place.
It's been proven in studies of areas with the longest living people that a Mediterranean diet full of vegetables, fish, and nuts makes for a long and healthy life. You can catch on to some of this wisdom by simply incorporating light and healthy foods like fish into your diet.
From Ramanujan to calculus co-creator Gottfried Leibniz, many of the world's best and brightest mathematical minds have belonged to autodidacts. And, thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever to follow in their footsteps (or just finish your homework or study for that next big test). With this installment from Internet pedagogical superstar Salman Khan's series of free math tutorials, you'll learn how to unpack and solve word problems invplving permutations and combinations in basic stati...
From Ramanujan to calculus co-creator Gottfried Leibniz, many of the world's best and brightest mathematical minds have belonged to autodidacts. And, thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever to follow in their footsteps (or just finish your homework or study for that next big test). With this installment from Internet pedagogical superstar Salman Khan's series of free math tutorials, you'll learn how to unpack and solve word problems that require you to apply quadratic functions in algebra.
From Ramanujan to calculus co-creator Gottfried Leibniz, many of the world's best and brightest mathematical minds have belonged to autodidacts. And, thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever to follow in their footsteps (or just finish your homework or study for that next big test). With this installment from Internet pedagogical superstar Salman Khan's series of free math tutorials, you'll learn how to solve quadratic equations by completing the square in intermediate algebra.
From Ramanujan to calculus co-creator Gottfried Leibniz, many of the world's best and brightest mathematical minds have belonged to autodidacts. And, thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever to follow in their footsteps (or just finish your homework or study for that next big test). With this installment from Internet pedagogical superstar Salman Khan's series of free math tutorials, you'll learn how to find answers to quadratic function problems in intermediate algebra by graphing.
