Written By: Ivey Ingalls-Rubin, Staff Writer Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are held responsible for nearly 60% of all deaths worldwide. That number comes out to be approximately 36 million each year. Among the top few are deaths from obesity-driven hypertension, cancer, diabetes and heart disease from smoking. NCD deaths worldwide are becoming a serious epidemic. They are being driven by a ...

Written By: Ivey Ingalls, Staff Writer To a fly, an oncoming thwack seems to be in slow motion. Flies process 4 times more visual information per second than humans; that’s 250 frames per second to our 60. Supposedly “one-dog” year is equivalent to seven human years. Does this mean that one year feels like seven to our canine companions? Well, ...

Written By: Ivey Ingalls   Four undergraduate students, studying science and engineering at North Carolina State University are putting their degrees to work early by attempting to produce a nail polish that will expose the company of GHB, xanax or rohypnol by changing color in their presence. Any individual wearing this polish will be able to ensure safety by simply ...

Written By: Ivey Ingalls-Rubin Finally the stats are in! YES! It is A-Okay to urinate in the ocean! Have you ever been one of those individuals that quietly wades away from their swimming partner and has a wee? Well the pressure to feel guilt is over my friend; the American Chemical Society (ACS) has divulged that the components of urine ...

Written by Joseph Albahari In 1987, an urban legend was born. It was reported that 14 trucks of Atari products were taken from a factory in El Paso, Texas to a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The legend revolved around the failure of one particular game: “ET: The Extraterrestrial.” Zak Penn, writer of “The Avengers,” was intrigued by this tale ...

Written by: Joseph Albahari Are your passwords safe? That depends on when you last changed them. On April 7, it was made public that the security of the Internet was compromised by the Heartbleed bug. Heartbleed, or CVE-2014-0160 as it is technically named, is an OpenSSL security bug that has affected about 17 percent of the internet’s websites. The bug ...

This diagram shows the position of Kepler-186f with its host star in relation to Earth. (Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech)   Not too big, not too small. Not too hot, not too cold, maybe just right. Since humans took their first peek into the vast universe that lies right outside our planet, we’ve asked the question, “is there anyone else out ...

(The Pillars of Creation, located in the eagle nebula.)   As the awesome Douglas Adams wrote, “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how mind-bogglingly big it is.” Everyone knows that the unit to measure distance in space is the light year. Have you ever considered what that actually means though? Just one light year is a distance ...

  Written by: Ivey Ingalls-Rubin Have you ever been curious, or annoyed with your dog spinning in circles, walking over here and then over there just to find a spot to poo. Well according to a team of Czech and German researchers, they might not just be trying to bug you. Canines may have an inner compass that dictates how, ...

Written by: Joseph Albahari With the help of generous Kickstarter donations, tech company Oculus VR was set to revolutionize the world of gaming. But in March, much to the dismay of the Internet, Facebook decided to buy Oculus VR for $2 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, commented on the deal after it was made public. “After games, we’re ...