The Psychology of Why Consumer Rewards Programs Suck You In
If the urge to punch the final hole in your coffee shop rewards card has you rerouting your walks, you’ve fallen for a loyalty program. The drive to reach a small “gift” — a free latte, a seat upgrade on a flight — is why businesses offer rewards programs in the first place. Luring people […]
Read More →Asteroids: What They Are and Where They Come From
When we think of the solar system, we tend to think of the Sun and the nine planets that orbit it. But there’s a lot more orbiting the Sun than just planets (and dwarf planets — we see you, Pluto!) Take asteroids, for example. Asteroids are the debris left over from the formation of the […]
Read More →Quantum Mechanics, Plato’s Cave and the Blind Piranha
My quantum experiment, which has consumed me for more than a year now, has dredged up a creepy, long-buried memory. It dates back to the late 1970s, when I was a housepainter living in Denver. One day I found myself in a grungy saloon on Denver’s dusty eastern outskirts. Behind the bar was an aquarium […]
Read More →'SpaceX is the winner' How Elon Musk beat Richard Branson in the billionaire space race
SPACEX mastermind Elon Musk has already won the billionaires’ space race and his biggest competitors, Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos are leagues behind, an expert has claimed. See original article
Read More →Prince Charles warned strategy change needed to secure popularity spike in Canada
PRINCE Charles could enjoy a surge in his popularity if his climate change concerns were better communicated around the world as Canadians and other commonwealth countries are not as familiar with them as the British public are. See original article
Read More →Termite gut microbes can help turn toxic wood into biofuels
By James Urquhart Formosan-termit “Coptotermes formosanus” invasive termite, nicknamed the super-termite because of its destructive habits; Shutterstock ID 1078415000; purchase_order: PHOTO; job: 22 June 2021 Online; client: NS; other: Shutterstock / Dan Olsen Termites are renowned for devouring wood. Now, bacteria in one termite species’ guts have been shown to break down toxic creosote, which […]
Read More →Mysteries of the Oort Cloud at the Edge of Our Solar System
The Oort cloud represents the very edges of our solar system. The thinly dispersed collection of icy material starts roughly 200 times farther away from the sun than Pluto and stretches halfway to our sun’s nearest starry neighbor, Alpha Centauri. We know so little about it that its very existence is theoretical — the material […]
Read More →We thought our eyes turned off when moving quickly, but that’s wrong
By Krista Charles When looking at a scene (left), each quick eye movement creates motion streaks (right) on the retina that we don’t consciously perceive Martin Rolfs It has sometimes been assumed that we experience brief periods without vision every time we shift our focus from one point to another – but it turns out […]
Read More →A molecular sensor for cholesterol in the human serotonin1A receptor
Abstract The function of several G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) exhibits cholesterol sensitivity. Cholesterol sensitivity of GPCRs could be attributed to specific sequence and structural features, such as the cholesterol recognition/interaction amino acid consensus (CRAC) motif, that facilitate their cholesterol-receptor interaction. In this work, we explored the molecular basis of cholesterol sensitivity exhibited by the serotonin1A […]
Read More →A variable-gain stochastic pooling motif mediates information transfer from receptor assemblies into NF-κB
INTRODUCTION A limited number of transmembrane receptors expressed on the cell surface mediate crucial transmission of information between extracellular and intracellular signaling molecules. Key questions are understanding the mechanisms and limitations that underlie signal transmission, in particular for cytokine receptor signaling that is often deregulated in disease. The nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) signaling pathway is […]
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