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Cool Finds

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You Can’t Blow Somebody’s Brain Up With Sound

The sounds of nails on a chalkboard, the sound of someone vomiting, the sound of a baby screaming - all pretty unpleasant sounds. But not so unpleasant that you might, say, die

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Tick Bites Cause Freak Allergy to Meat Eating

In addition to acting as vectors for diseases, ticks are now identified as the likely culprit of a new bane specific to carnivores: causing an allergic reaction to meat

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We Can Only Process Thirty Smells at a Time

If we had the technology, I would be blowing smells at you right now. But if I were to try and combine more than thirty, you wouldn’t be able to tell the smells apart

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The Many Uses for Gigantic Balloons

Balloons have far more uses than just party favors

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Different Wars Have Different Sounds

Changing weapons and technologies bring new sounds to the battlefield

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These Communities Decided Not To Rebuild After Disaster

It seems that despite always asking the question, the answer is always the same: rebuild. Except in these cases - when entire communities just pick up and leave

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What Studying Einstein’s Brain Can And Can’t Tell Us

New pictures are giving scientists a better idea of just what made Einstein’s brain so unique - but there’s only so much photographs of a lump of tissue can tell us

Archeologists Uncover Utah’s First Mormon Baptistry

Archeologists uncovered the remains of the first Latter-day Saints baptistry in Utah County, build around 1875

Scanned pages from the Oculists’ coded text.

Cracking a German Secret Society’s Centuries-Old Encrypted Code

A secret society with ties to the Freemason’s coded text has been cracked

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Lonesome George Was Not Alone!

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Shell Oil Has Been Selling Itself As a Protector of Nature Since the 1930s

From gateway to guardian, Shell’s eco-based advertisements through the years

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To Avoid College Admissions Scrutiny, High Schoolers Are Changing Their Names on Facebook

In recent years, colleges have been sharpening their interest in applicants’ online personas, specifically their Facebook accounts - but students have caught on

Killer robots storm the Winter Palace.

Australian Students Accidentally Taught That Robots Led the Russian Revolution

Nearly 6,000 Australian students were inadvertently taught this week that giant robots led the Russian Revolution thanks to a sloppy exam staff Google job

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The Physics of Flocking

There are a few things that people can watch forever - fire, water, and herds of animals moving

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The Space Shuttle Was Almost Called ‘Pegasus’

Alternate names for the Space Shuttle that nearly were: Starlighter, Pegasus, Space Clipper

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Twenty Seasons of Law And Order by the Numbers

There are 456 episodes of Law and Order, and for the past two years Overthinking It has been crowdsourcing a list of how each one ended.

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Protected Mountain Gorilla Population Rises by Ten Percent in Two Years

Conservationists announce good news for mountain gorillas, but the species is not out of the woods just yet

Male head louse

Lice Evolution Tracks the Invention of Clothes

The evolution of body lice shows that humans began wearing clothes between 50,000 to 200,000 years ago

How to Learn a Language in Less Than 24 Hours

A new company called Memrise says their app can teach you an entire language within hours

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Superstorms Can Benefit Bird-Watchers

The strong winds and wide areal extent of hurricane Sandy brought birds from all over to the northeast US

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