Mind Blowing Facts

So many studies say coffee is hurting you or coffee is helping you… everyone wants something out of coffee, but all it wants to do is give! Howdy hot brown water hawkers, Trace here for DNews. Scientists have again, and again, and again tried to find out what coffee is doing to the human body. A study in Scientific Reports lays out nicely, coffee consumption has been linked to protective effects on various common pathologies such as cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, type 2 diabetes, some types of cancer, and hearing functions, and it may predispose to others such as sleep disturbance. Whew. Scientists have been studying coffee since the 1960s, and a 1972 study in Cell's Biophysical Journal tried to find out exactly what it was doing to our cells, noting caffeine binds to broken DNA, and that if it's present during the formation of new DNA, it can cause breaks in chromosomes (which is why we've long known pregnant humans sh...

Getting naked is usually great .. But not this time What's up guys I'm Sapna here for DNews. In the movie Everest that came out in 2015.. kind of a spoiler alert but not really and the movie is based on a true story... but anyway… so towards the end of the movie .. one of the guys who was stuck at the top of Mount Everest overnight in the bitter cold starts to rip off his coat and outer layers. That might seem super weird but it's actually a documented phenomenon unofficially called paradoxical undressing. The reason it's called “paradoxical undressing” is because stripping down while you're freezing to death is the exact opposite of what we should instinctively do to protect ourselves from the cold! But it happens to some people during extreme stages of hypothermia. Hypothermia is when the body temperature dips to dangerously low levels-- below 95 degrees Fahrenheit A study by German researchers in the International Journal of Legal Medicine looked at 69 cases o...

Every year, the Economist Intelligence Unit releases its ranking of the “most livable cities” in the world. Therein, they attempt to quantify what exactly makes living in a city better or worse. It generally breaks down into five categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. So, what are the world's most livable cities? Well, in fact, the top seven cities actually comprise just three countries, with six countries total in the top ten. Although it is not true everywhere, countries with effective policies tend to see positive effects country-wide. However, many major cities around the world can actually be victims of their own success. Cities like New York City or London are world renown, but also have higher crime rates, overpopulation leading to infrastructure failure, and often much higher costs of living. The cities in this list are able to avoid those pitfalls. The top ranked city in the world is Melbourne Australia, a title it has...

With the 2016 Presidential race coming to a close, we've heard a lot from supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but there is one group we haven't heard from. Early in Trump's campaign, he said “the silent majority is back” and many have pointed to this silent majority as the driving force behind Trump's rise in the past year. So, what exactly is the silent majority and how will these voters impact the election? Well, the term was popularized by President Richard Nixon shortly after he took office in 1969. Enormous demonstrations against the War in Vietnam were taking place around the country, and the youth were extremely vocal and visible. But in his speech, Nixon called on the “silent majority” who agreed with him on a slower withdrawal from Vietnam. However they remained silent because of societal pressure from the comparatively outspoken 1960's anti-war counterculture. Nonetheless, this silent majority undoubtedly existed, and in fact helped Nixon wi...

Harvard and Yale are often referred to as “the best of the best”. But when it comes to the highest ranked universities, these and other Ivy League schools don't even make it into the top five. So what are the world's best universities? Well, according to an index by the Times Higher Education, Stanford ranks 3rd in the world. Most people associate Stanford with tech-capital Silicon Valley, which is where the school is located. And in fact, it's largely because of Stanford that the region is now the global capital of entrepreneurship and technology. In the 1940's and 50's the university heavily encouraged students and faculty to start their own companies, eventually leading to companies like Google and Snapchat. And still today, the school is known to produce some of the most successful entrepreneurs. A Stanford degree is in extremely high demand, and the school maintains the lowest acceptance rate in the country, admitting less than 5 percent of applicants. Much ...

Hard or Soft? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW? THEY BOTH LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME! Hey there, Sapna here for Dnews. From the outside, all water is seemingly the same: clear, mostly flavorless, two hydrogens, one oxygen. But once you get past the basics, water is actually pretty versatile. It can be distilled, filtered, tap, bottled, and if you're real fancy, there's water marketed as kosher, organic or kabbalah. But did you know water can also be hard or soft? No, this isn't to describe how the water actually feels. It actually has to do with its mineral content. Water becomes ‘hard' when it has a higher than normal concentration of minerals, primarily calcium and magnesium. Water picks up these minerals from rocks and soil as it flows through rivers, wells or other waterways. Soft water, on the other hand, has a low mineral content, either because it has not yet flowed through rocks or wells - like rain water - or because the rocks it has come in contact with have little to no...

We've heard a lot about the presidential candidates in this election, but few people are talking about arguably the second most important vote many will be making on election day. State propositions, which voters can use to change state law directly. Certain important issues have cropped up in multiple states, and may even end up changing federal law. So we wanted to know, what are the most controversial 2016 ballot trends? One of the most attention-getting issues this year is recreational marijuana, the US's most popular illicit drug. Five states have ballot initiatives that could legalize the drug. If passed, California, Nevada, Arizona, Massachusetts and Maine will join the weed-legal Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and the District of Columbia. The major player in this scenario is California. The state has the sixth largest economy in the world with a GDP of nearly $2.5 trillion dollars and it commands 55 seats in Congress. Should marijuana be completely legalized, it...

“I am God! I am Satan!” These words were screamed by a 17-year-old girl in Melbourne, Australia. Naked and bloody, she ran through the window of a house before throwing herself at a moving car. In Florida, student Austin Harrouff was just 19 when he savagely stabbed a couple to death, before chewing the face off another victim. With superhuman strength, he threw off several policemen before being subdued. Both of these people were fuelled by a drug known as “flakka”, or “gravel”. Since 2010, it has caused a rising number of extremely violent and frequently cannibalistic attacks. “Flakka” is the street name for the highly potent amphetamine derivative alpha-PVP. It is usually manufactured in China, and distributed in the United States for between $3 and $5 a hit. It is relatively inexpensive compared to similar drugs, which has contributed to its unprecedented popularity. Methods of consumption include snorting, eating, vaporising and injecting. It is related to the lethal “bath salt...

So what if I can't see the Milky Way at night, it's just a little light pollution right? Hey there stars, Sapna here for DNews. According to the Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness about 83% of humans on Earth are exposed to night skies that are at least 10% brighter than natural levels, or what the Atlas defines as “light pollution”. When I say pollution you probably think of smog or oil spills or some other substance we put into the environment that really mucks up the place. By comparison then, calling an overabundance of light “pollution” may sound a bit overdramatic. What effect can leaving the light on all night really have on the environment?  As it turns out our love of light can mess with both flora and fauna more than you might think. Earth's ecosystems have spent billions of years adapting to a day-night cycle, but the invention of artificial light and subsequent vanquishing of the darkness is throwing some organisms outta their groove in very profound wa...

It smells. It gets on you. But that's okay because to me urine is exciting. This is William Tarpeh, an Environmental Engineering PhD student from UC Berkeley. His field of study basically harnesses the principles of engineering, biology, and chemistry to develop solutions to problems that negatively affect our environment. So Environmental Engineers tackle things like air pollution, contaminated water and reducing garbage waste. But like with any field, there are outliers. Like Will. Will spends all day, every day, transforming pee into liquid fertilizer, attempting to spin gold out of something that the rest of us flush away without a second thought. I mean. It's gold in color but… it's also valuable. I'll just let him tell you. We focus on the nitrogen in urine because it's in fertilizers that people buy and it's also in urine. Our big idea is to extract the nitrogen preferentially out of urine into a product that we can sell. Now, Will doesn't plan on be...

Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump faces three class-action lawsuits for fraud, false advertising, and deceptive business practices over his so-called “University”. Some have suggested that Trump U is actually a Ponzi scheme. And while Trump U was more of an expensive real-estate seminar than a university, and a lot of participants lost their money, it was NOT a Ponzi scheme. Many people are quick to call this, and similar scams, “Ponzi” or “pyramid” schemes, so what exactly are they and how do they work? Well, in short, a ponzi scheme is a scam, in which victims are coerced into investing in an entity that doesn't exist. Ponzi Scheme operators recruit unsuspecting individuals by promising that they will [quote] “get rich quick” by putting money into a promising business or exclusive investment portfolio. However, this money is never actually invested, and, instead, ends up as profit for the frauders or small payments for early investors, to provide the illusion of sto...