When you take a shower and use soap and then lather, rinse and repeat twice with that shampoo, it gets washed off your body and goes down the drain.

Environmentalists have claimed these soaps and shampoos and washing machine detergents - surfactants - seep into groundwater, lakes and streams, where they could pose a risk to fish and frogs.

But do they? Not likely, finds a new report of the potential impact on the environment of the enormous amounts of common surfactants used day in and day out by consumers all over the world. 

Evidence shows children are getting less unsupervised time outdoors. Credit: Brian Yap (葉)/Flickr, CC BY-NC

By Shelby Gull Laird and Laura McFarland-Piazza

Though it has been researched for decades, the cause of nodding syndrome, a disabling disease affecting African children, is unknown. A new report suggests that blackflies infected with the parasite Onchocerca volvulus may be capable of passing on a secondary pathogen responsible for the spread of the disease. 

Concentrated in South Sudan, Northern Uganda, and Tanzania, nodding syndrome is a debilitating and deadly disease that affects young children between the ages of 5 and 15. When present, the first indication of the disease is an involuntary nodding of the head, followed by epileptic seizures. The condition can cause cognitive deterioration, stunted growth, and in some cases, death.

Look at a fan rotating its blades. Now look somewhat to the side of it. It seems to rotate slower now. Now shift your gaze slowly back toward the center of the fan. The fan seems to pick up speed. There are not just two appearances of its speed, one fast if I stare at it, and one slow if it is in the periphery of my visual field, but instead the fan seems to pick up speed gradually!

Oh no – not that mistake again. Credit: Flickr/Alex Proimos, CC BY-NC

By Will J Grant, Australian National University and Rod Lamberts, Australian National University

Call it cathartic but one modern way people in a bad mood feel better is to go on social media like Facebook and find friends doing even worse.

A new paper says that generally people use social media to connect with people who are posting positive and success-oriented updates. No one wants to hang out with downers - unless they are in a bad mood. Then people want to read about less attractive, less successful and more miserable people. The authors believe the
findings give more context to recent papers stating that found people who spend a lot of time on Facebook tend to be more frustrated, angry and lonely – presumably because of all the happy updates from friends that make them feel inadequate. 

Researchers recently used audio and video recording tools to record larval orientation behavior in the pelagic environment. 

In their field experiment, the scientists put the recording devices i a drifting in situ chamber called DISC  near Fowey Rocks lighthouse in the northern Florida Keys. In total 58 deployments were conducted, 27 during the day and 31 at night. The team also recorded sounds in a laboratory setting to confirm that the sounds observed in the field were from gray snapper larvae. The researchers also referred to the public sound archive at the Macaulay Library to compare the larval sounds to those produced by adult L. griseus.