WHAT THE SHIT?

CRI PSR CRISPR technology could change the world. Essentially, CRISPR is a technique that allows scientists to make precision edits to any DNA, whether bacterial or human. The potential for this technology is huge: if scientists have the accuracy to replace just a few faulty genes, it might be possible  to cure genetic disorders  as serious as cystic fibrosis and Huntington's disease and as common as lactose intolerance and color-blindness. Dr. Sam Sternberg, CRISPR expert and protein-RNA biochemist, joins the Curiosity Podcast to explain the science, ethics, and future of this cutting-edge technology. Samuel H. Sternberg, PhD, will be starting his own research laboratory at Columbia University in early 2018, as an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. Along with Jennifer Doudna, he is the co-author of  "A Crack in Creation,"  a popular science book about the discovery, development, and applications of CRISPR-Cas9 ...

Dress affect productivity You roll out of bed in the morning and stare into your closet. A voice calls from the back of the rack. "Pick me!" You reach in and pull out that blue shirt you bought on sale at the mall in 2012. It's not all that comfortable, but it meets the minimum workplace requirement for whatever's considered "professional." As you sit at your desk with that collar digging into your neck, you think about how you wish you could be at home in a T-shirt and sweatpants. And while that old blue shirt isn't making you all that happy, it's also sending signals to your coworkers and everyone you pass on the street. Our wardrobe may not  seem  important, but it has a huge impact on how we feel and how the world perceives us. Mind Over Material How does our dress affect us? Formal clothes make us think of ourselves as  competent and rational.  And dressing better than those around us makes us  think more abstrac...

There are some things you learn in school that never leave you: your skin is the largest organ ( true! ). Your tongue is the strongest muscle ( false ). Your body is 70 percent water. True? At least, it was true at one point. Depending on a number of factors, your body could be a lot drier than that. It's All Downhill From Here When you were born, you contained the most water, percentage-wise, that you ever will. Human babies are about  78 percent water  by weight. But within a year, your water content had already dipped below that classic 70 percent factoid your teachers taught you, weighing in at about 65 percent. You maintain that level of moisture throughout your childhood. Around puberty, when noticeable sex differences take the stage, the water levels in boys and girls start to differ. That's thanks to two things: muscle contains more water than fat, and women have more body fat than men. As a result, teenage boys' bodies are a...

Every time people get excited to watch a rocket launch only to have their hopes dashed with a  weather delay , it begs the question: why on Earth do we launch rockets from Florida? It's regularly pummeled by hurricanes, and it gets more thunderstorms than any other state. Couldn't we launch from somewhere milder, like Southern California? No, and there's a good reason. Three good reasons, in fact. It's Close To The Equator To understand why launching near the equator is important, think back to the last time you were at a playground and rode a merry-go-round. If a merry-go-round was spinning fast enough, you probably felt an outward pull that got stronger the further from the center you stood. That pull is what you call  tangential velocity , and it also affects us on this big merry-go-round we call the Earth. Because the equator is the furthest point from Earth's axis of rotation, going north or south from the equator is akin to walking...