Science Quickly

The simple question “To what extent do you agree with this statement: I am a narcissist” is about as good at identifying narcissists as a 40-question clinical assessment. Erika Beras reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The kilometer-size rubble pile appears to be held together by van der Waals forces. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Study volunteers who had listened to bass-heavy music were more likely to act dominant or aggressive in games and debates. Erika Beras reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Women who reported feeling stressed or depressed burned fewer calories after a calorie-packed meal than mellow women. Erika Beras reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The number of invertebrates has fallen by nearly half over the past 35 years—the same period of time in which the human population has doubled. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When penalty shots repeatedly head in one direction, world-class goalkeepers are more likely to lunge the other way. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By analyzing the evolving structure of the Beatles’ music, the computer program was able to correctly place the Fab Four’s albums in chronological order. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sulfates used in water treatment become sulfuric acid in our sewers, eating away at the concrete infrastructure. Cynthia Graber reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Exercising in the future could make dirty clothes and some clean energy. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recession lowers mortality in the population overall—even as the out-of-work individual’s risk of death rises. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When people with asthma think they’re smelling something noxious, their airways become inflamed—even when the odor is harmless. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To activate or loosen their grip on a surface, geckos extend and angle or retract tiny toe hairs that create contact points. Clara Moskowitz reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guys would rather zap themselves with electricity than be left alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Web searches related to business and politics go up, the market tends to take a dive—although that connection may already be fading. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new estimate finds that the Milky Way, once thought to be twice as massive as Andromeda, may actually only have half our neighbor galaxy's mass. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Masquerading as a bird turd appears to protect certain arachnids from getting eaten by wasps. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A graphite disk resting on carbon foam collects sunlight to heat water directly to steam with 85 percent efficiency. Cynthia Graber reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Raising beef uses 28 times more land, 11 times more water and six times more fertilizer than the average expenditures for other livestock. Cynthia Graber reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pack rats given the right gut bacteria via a fecal transplant from other pack rats can then digest foods that they formerly could not, but the donors could. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A survey of the tanagers reveals that birds do not have to choose between colorful plumage and a melodious song. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Small changes in the protein sequence of sodium channels of American compared with German cockroaches leave the latter susceptible to a venom that has little effect on the former. Cynthia Graber reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sea creatures eat plastic dumped in the ocean, but they also might be accumulating plastic by sucking up tiny particles with their siphons and gills. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Salmonella's primary fuel source is the molecule fructose-asparagine. Starving it of that fuel in an infected person could kill it without harming beneficial gut bacteria. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a German study, half of those with a university degree were myopic compared with less than a quarter of folks who quit after high school or secondary school. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A preliminary map of the bread wheat genome includes the locations of more than 75,000 genes. Cynthia Graber reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Liver transplant time from human donor to patient is limited to 12 hours, but rats that got livers specially stored for three days were going strong three months later. Cynthia Graber reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Satellite data can help geologists predict major floods up to 11 months in advance in areas where snow melt or groundwater is a significant contributor. Cynthia Graber reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The bacteria found on someone's mobile phone is a good match for the most common kinds of bacteria that live on their hands. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mice infected with the parasites that cause their type of malaria produce odorous compounds that attract mosquitoes, increasing the odds that the parasites will be spread to the next victims Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By analyzing what came out of Neandertals, researchers have verified that at least some of them mixed vegetation into their meaty diet. Cynthia Graber reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All mammals that weigh more than about six-and-a-half pounds take about the same time to urinate, thanks to the structure of the urethra. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The smallest galaxies in the universe gave rise to an unexpectedly large proportion of stars. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kids deemed cool in early adolescence have a poor chance to keep that status by their early 20s, because their behavior gets old. Erika Beras reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The guts of white bread eaters appear to contain more lactobacillus, a type of bacteria that wards off digestive disorders. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tiny spores from mosses, algae and lichens can stick in bird feathers, travel from the Arctic to the bottom of South America and grow into whole new specimens. Erika Beras reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recently discovered galaxies shaped like jellyfish leave a long trail of hot gas and dust, victims of even hotter gas from their surrounding cluster of galaxies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new analysis says that the asymmetry between the two faces of the moon is due to crust thickness differences that resulted from variable cooling rates after the molten formation of our companion. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Five-year-olds in highly decorated classrooms were less able to hold their focus, spent more time off-task and had smaller learning gains than kids in bare rooms. Erika Beras reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eleven-year-old Simon Kaschock-Marenda's science fair project led to a publication about the insecticidal effects of the sweetener Truvia. Karen Hopkin reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As northern Europe warms, the light-colored butterflies and dragonflies typically found in the Mediterranean are moving north, and outcompeting their darker-colored rivals. Erika Beras reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Isotope composition within fish tails found in London archaeological digs shows that the city began importing cod from northern Scandinavia some 800 years ago. Cynthia Graber reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The May Camelopardalids meteor outburst turned out to be a dud, because meteor storm prediction is not a sure thing, unlike, for example, calculating the next eclipse Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices