“Journey to the center of the… termite nest? Hard to believe this termite queen will produce almost 165 million eggs in her lifetime!”

“For the first time, scientists have altered natural bioelectrical communication among cells to directly specify the type of new organ to be created at a particular location within a vertebrate organism. Using genetic manipulation of membrane voltage in Xenopus (frog) embryos, biologists at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences were able to cause tadpoles to grow eyes outside of the head area… To do this, they changed the voltage gradient of cells in the tadpoles’ back and tail to match that of normal eye cells. The eye-specific gradient drove the cells in the back and tail — which would normally develop into other organs — to develop into eyes.” w/ photos

“It is a familiar problem for anyone who wears glasses – particularly at this time of the year. Step into a warm pub or restaurant from the chilly street and within seconds your glasses mist up and you can see next to nothing. Fogging, as the phenomenon is technically called, is also a major headache – and even a safety risk – for cyclists and joggers, who can be left struggling to see as moisture from their breath condenses on their glasses. And anyone working in a steamy kitchen is also likely to be plagued by the problem. But now the misery of fogging could be at an end thanks to a new lens coating developed by experts.” w/ photos

“As told in the Bible, Noah built an ark in preparation for a catastrophic flood. But what can science tell us about the ark?”

“NGC travels to Haiti to enter the mysterious, fascinating and creepy world of voodoo magic and discover The Truth Behind Zombies.”

“In parts of China, Korea and Japan it is very common to see people wearing surgical masks. Are they simply hypochondriacs or do they have good reason to wear masks? A better question might be, do the masks actually work?” w/ photos

“We put a lot of energy into improving our memory, intelligence, and attention. There are even drugs that make us sharper, such as Ritalin and caffeine. But maybe cleverer isn’t really all that better. New research suggests that we may have evolved ‘limits’ on our minds, such as faulty memories, almost as a defense mechanisms. Any new drug or technology that ‘raised’ human intelligence permanently could be dangerous. A new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, warns that there are limits on how smart humans can get, and any increases in thinking ability are likely to come with problems. The authors looked to evolution to understand about why humans are only as smart as we are and not any smarter.” w/ photos

“If you’ve ever visited the Hawaiian islands, you may already know that one of them, Niihau, west of Kauai, is off-limits to outsiders. Here’s the story of how that came to be, and what life on the island is like today.” w/ photos

“Mr Piccirillo, 37, claims that his discovery cracks open the meaning of the work – that the Mona Lisa is actually a representation of envy. He says he made his discovery after ‘employing an old artist’s trick’ of turning the Mona Lisa on its side to get a fresh perspective on the painting. It was at that point that he noticed the lion’s head hovering in the air above the Mona Lisa’s head. He said: “Then I noticed the buffalo and I thought: ‘Oh my god’. Then I realized I was really onto something. I just could not believe what I was looking at. I realized: ‘This is what I’ve been looking for’. “I spent the next two months pouring over da Vinci’s journals and came across the passage on envy which for me sums up what this is about. ‘The Mona Lisa is a depiction of envy. It’s amazing because everyone thought that da Vinci never wrote about the Mona Lisa, but now it appears that he did.” w/ photo

“Low-calorie substitutes in food and drink may actually make dieters pile on the pounds, scientists claim. Researchers discovered that the taste of fat and sugar gears the body up to expect a high-calorie hit. When it doesn’t come the body’s mechanism for controlling food intake becomes confused, making us eat more. An American research team from Purdue University in Indiana carried out a series of experiments on laboratory rats. Professor of psychological sciences Susan Swithers said: ‘Substituting a part of the diet with a similar tasting item that has fewer or zero calories sounds like a common-sense approach to lose weight, but there are other physiological functions at work. ‘These substitutes are meant to mimic the taste of fat in foods that are normally high in fat while providing a lower number of calories, but they may end up confusing the body.” w/ photos