Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Evolution has fostered many reproductive strategies across the spectrum of life. From dandelions to giraffes, nature finds a way.One of those ways creates quite a bit of suffering for humans: pollen, the infamous male gametophyte of the plant kingdom.In the Southeastern U.S., where I live, you know it’s spring when your car has turned yellow and pollen blankets your patio furniture and anything else left outside. Suddenly there are long lines at every car wash in town.Even people who aren’t allergic to pollen – clearly an advantage for a pollination ecologist like me – can experience sneezing and watery eyes…

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.Why do I need to sleep for a long time at night? – Sly M., 6, Cambridge, MassachusettsJust like eating, drinking or breathing, sleep is an essential part of life.In fact, all animals do it – with some interesting variations. A dolphin, for example, sleeps with one eye open and only half of its brain snoozing at a time. This is likely because dolphins need to be partly conscious to breathe while in the water. Zebras…

Shortly after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced AWS’s groundbreaking $50 billion investment deal with OpenAI, Amazon invited me on a private tour of the chip development lab at the heart of the deal, at (mostly*) its own expense.  Industry experts are watching Amazon’s Trainium chip, created at that facility, for its implications for lower-cost AI inference and, potentially, a dent in Nvidia’s near monopoly.   Curious, I agreed to go.   My tour guides for the day were the lab’s director, Kristopher King (pictured below right) and director of engineering Mark Carroll (below left), as well as the team’s PR person who…

ATLANTA (AP) — Allergy season can be miserable for tens of millions of Americans when trees, grass, and other pollens cause runny noses, itchy eyes, coughing and sneezing.Where you live, what you’re allergic to and your lifestyle can make a big difference when it comes to the severity of your allergies. Experts say climate change is leading to longer and more intense allergy seasons, but also point out that treatments for seasonal allergies have become more effective over the last decade.Here are some tips from experts to keep allergy symptoms at bay — maybe even enough to allow you to…

Unlocking a new vibeAt Business Insider, we like to keep you on the cutting edge of innovation and work.Vibe coding marries the two.This new tech — which enables even non-techies to code — is upending assumptions in almost every direction.That’s why we’ve created a new weekly newsletter on the topic: Vibe Mode. You can sign up here!And there’s an awful lot to cover. The prospect that vibe coding (or now “vibe designing”) will make software companies more replaceable is denting their stocks. It’s also stressing private credit, which we’re learning has financed some of these businesses. (Not everyone loves the…

If the AI boom collapses, it won’t be as catastrophic as the dot-com crash — but the shockwave will be felt far and wide, Igor Pejic says. Loading audio narration… The banker and author of a new guide for tech investors titled “Tech Money” told Business Insider this week that Big Tech’s unprecedented dominance will limit the magnitude of any market decline.Pejic underscored the greater “stickiness” of companies like Alphabet and Microsoft compared to the leading companies of the past, such as Exxon Mobil, General Motors, and IBM.Big Tech companies have remained dominant for decades partly because of their platform…

The math it took to calculate the number of calories in your favorite snack involved a lot more guesstimation than you may think.The Food and Drug Administration began requiring standardized nutrition labeling — including the number of calories per serving — on most packaged foods in 1990. Obesity rates skyrocketed in the United States over the next few decades, spurring a 2016 change to the rule to list calorie counts on nutrition labels in a large, bold font.Just how accurate are these calorie counts?The popular protein bar brand David is currently fighting a lawsuit alleging the company’s bars contain nearly…

The math it took to calculate the number of calories in your favorite snack involved a lot more guesstimation than you may think.The Food and Drug Administration began requiring standardized nutrition labeling — including the number of calories per serving — on most packaged foods in 1990. Obesity rates skyrocketed in the United States over the next few decades, spurring a 2016 change to the rule to list calorie counts on nutrition labels in a large, bold font.Just how accurate are these calorie counts?The popular protein bar brand David is currently fighting a lawsuit alleging the company’s bars contain nearly…

Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. Wow, time flies. Nearly 20 years ago, soon after my 50th birthday, I started making a list of what I considered mistakes my parents (and many of their generation) had made as they aged – and that I swore I would not repeat. Some of the items were silly (“I won’t color my hair anymore”), but most of them had substance (“I won’t limit myself to friends my own age” and “I won’t worry about what I can’t control”), and a few took…

For the techno-optimized, nearly everything in life can be improved with the help of engineering. Bots can auto-swipe on Tinder and flirt with matches on your behalf. AI avatars can attend Zoom meetings so that you don’t have to. Almost nothing is off limits, including the flesh. For that, there are peptides.Scientifically, peptides are short-chain amino acids, or little chemical messengers that tell cells what to do. Culturally, they are vials of injectable drugs that have taken Silicon Valley and Hollywood hostage. Over the last year, scores of people in both ends of California have begun dosing themselves with compounds…