Dear Science

Q: I'm so glad that it's finally fall - I love this weather. But as usual, I've got a cold. It seems like everyone gets sick as the seasons change. Is this true? Does "catching a chill" really make you sick, or is it something else?

Now and then health awareness articles use the attention-grabbing statistic "XYZ has more germs on it than a toilet seat!" Is this actually a useful comparison? Is the sheer number of germs what we should worry about? And how germy (and dangerous) is the seat, anyhow?

When we talk about weight loss, we generally talk about "burning" fat. That's not incorrect. But many folks - including plenty of doctors - will mistakenly tell you that this fat is mostly lost as heat as the result of this "burning." But as you so rightly point out, the law of conservation of mass says that the physical stuff that makes up fat has...

IBM's Watson has a new task - crunching tennis statistics and digging through Wimbledon's vast historical archives.

Dear Santa, I've been good. Now can I have a drone, please?

"All I am asking for is my son's body," it was as though the poignant scene from Anupam Kher's iconic Saaransh was coming alive at Hyderabad's Forensic Science Lab. In the film, the character played by Mr Kher breaks down before an official who asks for a bribe in exchange for the ashes of his son's body. In Hyderabad, grieving relatives were vexed...

Q: I'm so glad that it's finally fall - I love this weather. But as usual, I've got a cold. It seems like everyone gets sick as the seasons change. Is this true? Does "catching a chill" really make you sick, or is it something else?

Now and then health awareness articles use the attention-grabbing statistic "XYZ has more germs on it than a toilet seat!" Is this actually a useful comparison? Is the sheer number of germs what we should worry about? And how germy (and dangerous) is the seat, anyhow?

When we talk about weight loss, we generally talk about "burning" fat. That's not incorrect. But many folks - including plenty of doctors - will mistakenly tell you that this fat is mostly lost as heat as the result of this "burning." But as you so rightly point out, the law of conservation of mass says that the physical stuff that makes up fat has...

IBM's Watson has a new task - crunching tennis statistics and digging through Wimbledon's vast historical archives.

Dear Santa, I've been good. Now can I have a drone, please?

"All I am asking for is my son's body," it was as though the poignant scene from Anupam Kher's iconic Saaransh was coming alive at Hyderabad's Forensic Science Lab. In the film, the character played by Mr Kher breaks down before an official who asks for a bribe in exchange for the ashes of his son's body. In Hyderabad, grieving relatives were vexed...