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Did you know that most mammals, from a house cat to an elephant, take roughly the same amount of time to urinate? Researchers at Georgia Tech collected data, streamed via online video and in real life, and discovered that a combination of physiology and gravity enable this feat of fluid dynamics.

By studying tiger and cat tongues, Alexis Noel of Georgia Institute of Technology has discovered some surprising uses for their infamously raspy licking apparatuses. Noel research has demonstrated that not only do their tongues tenderize meat, but the conical and scoop-like form of their papillae are optimized for depositing allergen infused saliva baths. So basically every time you pet your cat you are just rubbing your hand over their evenly-distributed saliva.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Filmed by Brandon Swanson
Music by Audio Network
Live Cats filmed at Happy Tabby Cat Cafe
Additional Footage ands Stills by Alexis Noel, Candler Hobbs, David Hu, Joseph Cebak,
Pond5, Youtube User Commissarius, Emmanuel Keller (C.C. BY 2.0), Shutterstock
Special Thanks to David Hu Lab and the Happy Tabby Cat Cafe
All tongues were donated post-mortem. No cats were harmed in the making of this video.
Although some were given a ton of catnip.

What can't 3D printers do? We've all heard news stories about 3D-printed food and medical prostheses—even cars and entire houses. But how does additive manufacturing, as it's also known, really work? And how can an at-home hobbyist get started? Ira teams up with Makerbot's Bre Pettis to present the ultimate beginner's guide to 3D printing.
Produced by Annie Minoff
Video by Luke Groskin

http://www.patreon.com/scifri - Please Help Support Our Video Productions!
Produced by Luke Groskin
By shrinking an entire museum into a 6 foot tall modular design, MICRO hopes that these tiny exhibits can go in all sorts of public areas, like shopping malls, waiting rooms, airports, and parks where they can integrate science and learning into people's day-to-day lives.

Edited by Sarah Galloway

Music by Audio Network

Additional Footage Provided by People’s Television and Science Sandbox, an initiative of the Simons Foundation

Special Thanks to Charles Philipp, Ruby Murray, and Amanda Schochet

Lightning -- one of the great unsolved mysteries.

In 2004, pediatric audiologist Allyson Sisler-Dinwiddie plunged into a world of silence after a car accident damaged her hearing. Under the care of hearing researcher Rene Gifford, she became one of the first test subjects of a new technique to improve cochlear implants, devices that use electrodes to stimulate cells in the inner ear. Since then, Sisler-Dinwiddie and Gifford have worked together to restore other patients' hearing. Watch the pair and their team at Vanderbilt University as they develop a resounding remedy to help people hear again.
A film by Science Friday. Produced in collaboration with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Produced by Emily V. Driscoll and Luke Groskin
Directed by Emily V. Driscoll
Filmed by Jeff Nash
Edited by Erika Sutter
Music by Audio Network
Photographs by Vanderbilt University, Rene Gifford, Allyson Sisler-Dinwiddie
Hearing and Cochlear Implant Animations provided by MED-EL Jack Noble, and Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center

Vanderbilt Team and Patients: Stephen Ball, Tim Davis, David Haynes, Kendall Hill, David Lewellen, Jack Noble Alejandro Rivas, and Morgan Stansberry

Project Advisors: Laura A. Helft, Laura Bonetta, Dennis W.C. Liu and Sean B. Carroll - Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Special Thanks to Rene Gifford, Allyson Sisler-Dinwiddie, Keli S. Lawrence, Kate Carney, Charles Johnson, Christian Skotte, Danielle Dana, Ariel Zych, and Jennfier Fenwick

Science Friday/HHMI © 2016

A new study in Science investigates the wisdom of crowds... well, schools. Andrew Berdahl, graduate student at Princeton University, explains that Golden shiner minnows prefer shady habitat. And he and his co-authors found that large groups of fish are better at tracking shady habitats than smaller groups or individuals--a demonstration of collective sensing.How do fish pool their senses? The researchers filmed fish and digitized their movement to try to answer the question.

In 2011, comet Lovejoy traveled through the sun's corona and lived to tell the tale. But its tail was the most telling. Reporting in the journal Science, Cooper Downs, an astrophysicist at Predictive Science Inc. in San Diego, Calif., says that the wiggly path of the comet's tail helps explain the sun's magnetic field.

The Rockaways, a Queens, N.Y. neighborhood, is still recovering from Sandy. Debris from fires lingers on the streets, and buildings torn apart by the storm are crumbling on the beach. But at least for those with restored heat and power (7,000 customers in the area are still without power), there is yet another worry: mold. Peter Corless, a community organizer in the Rockaways, gives us a tour of the neighborhood, while Joan Bennett, a mycologist whose house molded after Katrina flooding, describes the species of fungi she found in her own home after that hurricane and in New Jersey homes post-Sandy.

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For more about this work head to Dr. Lydia Bourouiba's Webstie : http://lbourouiba.mit.edu
Although we all know that sneezes and coughs transmit infections, little research had been done to model how they work. To address this knowledge gap, Dr. Lydia Bourouiba and Dr. John Bush of MIT's Applied Mathematics Lab used high speed cameras and fluid mechanics to reveal why we've grossly underestimated the role of gas clouds in these violent expirations.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Video and Stills by
Lydia Bourouiba
John Bush
Shutterstock
Prelinger Archives

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Climbing Kilamanjaro, blasting asteroids, and stopping time to destroy robots are just some of the amazing activities people can experience at VR World NYC. VR World’s Head of Content Tommy Goodkin explains how advances in VR technology have allowed them to transcend an arcade-like atmosphere and redefine what a theme park experience can be.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network.com
Video Game Captures by VRWorld NYC
Featuring Icaros, Google Tilt Brush, The Climb by Crytek GmbH,
Arizona Sunshine by Intel, Raw Data by Survios,
Job Simulator by Owlchemy Labs, and Richie’s Plank Experience
Special Thanks to Jessica Gray, Alexa Lim, Johanna Mayer, Xochitl Garcia, and Rachel Bouton

Why do your fingers get pruney after a swim? Only a handful of researchers, including Einar Wilder-Smith, Mark Changizi, and Tom Smulders, have looked into the phenomenon. Publishing in Biology Letters, Smulders lends a hand to the hypothesis, set forth by Changizi and colleagues, that finger wrinkles improve our grip of wet objects.

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As a choreographer who often collaborates with dancers with disabilities, Merry Lynn Morris has long thought that traditional manual and power wheelchair designs were constraining. Her work in integrative dance, along with her experience growing up with a father who relied on a wheelchair, inspired her to invent a power wheelchair designed for artistic expression. Equipped with omnidirectional movement, a rotating seat, and a hands-free control, the chair enables dancers to explore new movement techniques, and may one day provide greater mobility in everyday life, too.

http://www.sciencefriday.com
Up and down the West coast of the U.S., bees are leaving their hives, flying around at night and then suddenly dropping dead. Learn all about this parasitic horror that quietly zombifies these insects and how you can become a real-life zombee hunter.

In her new book, Bones Books and Bell Jars, physician and photographer Andrea Baldeck documents the collection of medical texts, instruments, and specimens at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum.

Bacteria and viruses hitch a ride inside droplets of all kinds—sneezes, raindrops, toilet splatter. By reviewing footage of different types of drops, applied mathematician Lydia Bourouiba records and measures where they disperse in order to better understand how diseases spread. Watch how Bourouiba designs tests—some inescapably humorous and awkward—to study infectious disease transmission.

Publications References:

Bourouiba, L. (2016) A Sneeze. New England Journal of Medicine. 357(8):e15.
Wang, Y. and Bourouiba, L. (2016) Drop impact on small surfaces: thickness and velocity profiles of the expanding sheet in the air. Journal of Fluid Mechanics. 814:510-534.
Gilet, T. and Bourouiba, L. (2015) Fluid fragmentation shapes rain-induced foliar disease transmission. Journal of the Royal Society Interface. 12:20141092.
Gilet, T. and Bourouiba, L. (2014) Rain-induced ejection of pathogens from leaves: revisiting the mechanism of splash-on-film using high-speed visualization. Integrative and Comparative Biology. 54:974–984.
Bourouiba, L., Dehandschoewercker, E., and Bush, J. W. M. (2014) Violent respiratory events: on coughing and sneezing. Journal of Fluid Mechanics. 745: 537-563.
Scharfman, B. E., Techet, A. H., Bush, J. W. M. and Bourouiba, L. (2016) Visualization of sneeze ejecta: steps of fluid fragmentation leading to respiratory droplets. Experiments in Fluids. 57:24--1-9

A film by Science Friday
Produced in collaboration with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Produced and Directed by Emily V. Driscoll and Luke Groskin
Filmed by Luke Groskin
Editing and Animations by Jason Drakeford
Music by Audio Network
Additional Photos and Video by
Lydia Bourouiba, Yongji Wang, Tristan Gilet, Sophie Lejeune, Claire Lu, and Eline Dehandschoewercker
Alamy, Pond5, Shutterstock

Project Advisors:
Laura A. Helft, Laura Bonetta, Dennis W.C. Liu and Sean B. Carroll - Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Special Thanks to:
Lydia Bourouiba, Christian Skotte, Danielle Dana, Ariel Zych, Jennfier Fenwick, Timothee Jamin, Stephane Poulain, and Maxime Inizan

To learn more about her research you can visit https://lbourouiba.mit.edu/

Ice can be hard to get a handle on, literally and figuratively. It can be cloudy or clear, as hard as concrete or as soft as a snowflake. Ice experts Erland Schulson, head of the Ice Research Lab at Dartmouth College, and Shintaro Okamoto, founder of Okamoto Studio in Queens, New York, have staked their livelihoods on the slippery material. We asked them what fascinates them about frozen water. (Originally published Jan 27, 2012)

Science Friday salutes a great science teacher. "Office hours are some of my favorite hours of the week," says professor Tom Carlson, a medical doctor, ethnobotanist and instructor of 1700 students annually at the University of California, Berkeley. One of Carlson's former students, SciFri associate senior producer Christopher Intagliata, told us that Carlson's class was the reason he got into science. Listen here: http://www.sciencefriday.com/s....egment/05/31/2013/te

For honey bees, making is a new queens is a simple as adding royal jelly, a unique protein rich secretion, to the cell of a growing larvae. This fairly well studied addition causes a cascade of physiological changes in the growing larvae and voila! A queen is born. However, what causes a baby bumblebee (the fuzzier and more weather-hardy cousins to honey bees) to become royalty remains a mystery. They don’t produce royal jelly but they produce a unique barf for their young. Enter entomologist Hollis Woodard and her students at UC Riverside who hope that by understanding how queens are created, they can mitigate on-going extinction crises in bumblebees species. Woodard and company begin by heading up to San Bernardino mountains outside Los Angeles. Here, the researchers collect emerging queens as they buzz around the blooming Manzanita shrubs. These queens are brought back to the lab, where the establish their own (see through) honeypots. Lavished with food by the lab members, the queens lay dozens of larvae which become daughter drones. These drones are then “milked” for their barf which is analyzed for its chemical properties. Future larvae are hand fed the analyzed barf in various quantities and intervals to determine what factors lead to the generation of queen bees.

Produced by Luke Groskin
Filmed by Christian Baker
Audio Recording by Christopher Intagliata
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage Provided by Woodard Lab, Creative Commons Media (C.C. BY 2.0),
Cees Van Hengstum (C.C. BY 2.0), Alex Murphy (C.C. BY 2.0),
Blue Line Apiary (C.C. BY 2.0), Pond5

Researchers are on a quest to find the lake trout that remain in Lake Michigan.