Month: September 2014

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Could Diet Sodas Be Making Us Fatter?

The artificial sweeteners in “diet” beverages, thought to help people trim their waistlines, may be having the opposite effect.
A new study reveals that three of the leading artificial sweeteners produce an increase ­in blood-sugar levels in both mice and humans, by disrupting the balance of helpful gut bacteria. High blood-sugar levels, in turn, are the telltale sign of glucose intolerance, a condition which can evolve into diabetes and metabolic disease.
It Takes Guts
The role artific

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Scientists made people wear blindfolds for 4 days. The resulting hallucinations were incredible.

Sometimes our brains do funny things. Take this study, for example, in which scientists blindfolded 13 people for 96 hours (four days) and had them record everything they "saw". Ten participants had visual hallucinations, some of them incredibly vivid and intense, all of which began within the first day of wearing the blindfold. Many hallucinations were of lights and shapes, though some were more elaborate (see below for complete descriptions of many of the visual "trips"). But in every case

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The Chemistry Behind the Different Colors of Autumn Leaves

The Chemistry Behind the Different Colors of Autumn Leaves

At some point when you were a wee child, your parents or teachers probably gave you a simple—but incomplete—explanation of why leaves change color in the fall: green chlorophyll fades to reveal the yellows and oranges that have been there all along. That’s true, but that’s not the whole chemical story.

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