News and Updates from WonderHowTo: Page 11

What's in a sneeze? Quite a lot—dirt, mucus, and infectious germs—it seems. And sneezing the right way can reduce the germs you share with neighbors.

If we learned anything from Mulan, it's that "the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of them all." Well, these have been a trying couple of weeks in the US, hence the need for a blooming marshmallow flower.

Super Mario Bros. is one of the most renowned games in history. It helped resurrect a dying video game industry in the mid-'80s and still remains one of the best-selling video games of all time—one reason why the new NES Classic Edition is so popular and impossible to get these days. Its simple story of a plumber trying to rescue a princess resulted in a video game empire for Nintendo.

You know the signs—sneezing, fever, nagging cough, no energy, no appetite. It's the flu, but this time, it's your dog who's down and out. Yes, dogs get the flu, too. However, a team from the University of Rochester Medical Center and their collaborators have developed a new vaccine that may make the doggy flu a thing of the past.

Disengagement report numbers for self-driving car testing in 2016 on public roads in California were just released, and the biggest point we can make about them is that Waymo is very far ahead of their competitors in almost every metric.

Today, at Abundance 360, an exclusive event for tech entrepreneurs in Beverly Hills, California, Boston Dynamics unveiled a video of "Handle," a humanoid-like robot with wheels instead of feet.

As Alfred monologued in The Dark Knight, "Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Using extreme time-lapse microscopy, scientists watched a virus take over a bacteria to create a cell that looked and functioned more like a plant or animal cell. True story.

There are all kinds of theories—many supported by science—about what causes Alzheimer's disease. Tangles of protein called ß-amyloid (pronounced beta amyloid) plaques are prominently on the list of possible causes or, at least, contributors. An emerging theory of the disease suggests that those plaques aren't the problem, but are actually our brains' defenders. They show up to help fight an infection, and decades later, they become the problem.

Humanity is standing on an infection precipice. As antibacterial resistant grows, we're running out of options, and a recent scary case of total antibiotic resistance is a frighting view of our potential future. In the end, it was septic shock that took the life of a 70-year old woman with an incurable infection. One of few such cases in the US, her death could nonetheless be the shape of things to come.

Ask anyone that works on the development of driverless vehicle technology and there is a very good chance that AutonomouStuff will have supplied something to their project.

Over 1.2 million people in the US are infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)—and one out of eight of them don't know it. Even after decades of intense research into the virus, there's still no cure for it. One of the big problems is that the virus hides out in certain cells of the body, resisting treatments that kill it.

A recent pathogen outbreak in Illinois is just one of many outbreaks of an underappreciated, but serious, viral infection passed from rodents to humans. These hantaviruses have been cropping up more frequently in the last decade or so, giving us more reason to clean out our dusty attics, basements, and garages.

To shine light on the future of the relationship between humans and viruses, a team of researchers from the University of Oxford looked into the dim and distant past.

In December of last year, Australian Feliks Zemdegs broke the human world record for solving a Rubik's Cube with a time of 4.737 seconds. Well, this robot did it way, way faster by solving one in under 1 second. Don't tell me a robot takeover isn't real possibility.

Immigration and immigration policy are some of the biggest discussions happening in international and domestic politics right now. From building walls to opening borders, a definitive plan has not been made about how to deal with the large number of people who are fleeing their home countries in hopes of a different life.

Most of us equate feeling cold with catching a virus—but we've also heard plenty of debunkers proselytizing that being cold isn't what gives you the flu.

In the perpetual search for a renewable and convenient energy source, our bacterial friends have once again stolen the limelight.

Responding to the rapid emergence of dangerous pathogens around the world, a new initiative to prevent or contain pandemics was announced in Davos, Switzerland, yesterday. If you ever worried that a highly contagious pathogen could take down your community, or the country, this news is for you.

After California college student Luis Ortiz blacked out and was taken to the hospital in 2015, doctors were startled to discover the reason his brain was swelling—a one-centimeter long, wriggling tapeworm living within a ventricle in the middle of his brain.

A young child becomes very thirsty very often and seems tired all the time. A visit to the pediatrician determines she has type 1 diabetes. The onset of type 1 diabetes may seem sudden, and it can be, but the disease may actually have been triggered by common childhood viruses years earlier.

As researchers learn more and more about our intestinal bacteria—also called the gut microbiome—we're finding out that these microbes aren't just influencing our health and wellness, they're a useful tool for improving it, too.

Breaking off a piece of that Kit Kat bar gets a lot more difficult when the whole thing weighs 13 pounds.

A gold-medal winning entry into the iGEM synthetic biology competition could change the way we look at Esherichia coli, the bacteria better known as E. coli.

You might feel the bite, you might not, but an infected mosquito has injected you with a parasite named Plasmodium falciparum, a single-cell protozoa that quickly takes up residence in your body.

The presence of certain bacteria can indicate whether the vaginal tract is healthy or not. It could also impact the likelihood of acquiring certain sexually transmitted diseases, like HIV, a new study suggests.

Using mathematical modeling, researchers suggest weather and warming created the "perfect storm" that drove the Zika outbreak in 2016.

When Kaci Hickox, a Doctors Without Borders nurse, returned to New Jersey from working with Ebola patients in West Africa in 2014, she was surprised by her reception. Instead of a quiet return to her home in Maine after four weeks on the front line of Ebola treatment, she was quarantined by the State of New Jersey in Newark. She later filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for violation of her civil rights, false imprisonment, and invasion of privacy.

Cats give us so much—companionship, loyalty, love... and now the bird flu.

For anyone who has spent an entire afternoon attempting to assemble a set of IKEA chairs, these wooden masterpieces probably seem pretty appealing.

It's 2017—new year, same us. We vow to keep scouring the net for the best how-tos and feature the makers and doers who create mind-blowing projects.

The story of Helicobacter pylori is a real testament to the tenacity of medical researchers to prove their hypothesis. It took decades before the scientific world would accept that the bacteria H. pylori caused ulcers.

New weapons are needed to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Instead of drugs, scientists have discovered in an animal study that they may be able to harness vampire bacteria to vanquish pneumonia.

You just sat down, coffee in hand, and the day is ready to start. Now that you have taken a few sips, let me pose a question: What is living in that coffeemaker of yours? The answer might make you dump that coffee down the drain pronto.

Earlier today, Alphabet announced that the Self-Driving Car Project has officially graduated from their innovation factory (X) and will now operate as an independent company called Waymo.

With the height of the flu season ahead, there are some good reasons to keep a flu vaccination in mind.

When the time comes to replace your car, you most likely have a checklist of criteria that you would like on the new one. Your car is possibly the most expensive possession you have—or the second-most expensive, after your home—so you want to make sure that you are not only getting what you want, but that you are getting the best deal possible.

Google's former Self-Driving Car project, now graduated from Alphabet's X division as Waymo, has found a collaborator and potential new partner in Honda. This is an interesting turn of events given traditional automakers' reluctance to work with driverless-car startups over the years.

The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear, right?

I truly don't understand why anyone would pay $10.99 for a case of carbonated water just to feel like a Midwest mom on a diet. Every time I talk about LaCroix, pronounced La-CROY (rhymes with enjoy), it's like I take all the money I spent on my French major and light it on fire.