Let us take a moment, while contemplating the sleek engineering of the quiet engine sonic inlet, to consider that tie. That man is not a model. He is, in all likelihood, an engineer. An actual rocket scientist. There are no horn-rim glasses, no pocket protectors and neither white coat nor jumpsuit. Perhaps… and I can find no higher resolution [...]

Imperial College, London, is learning what makes psilocybin mushrooms *trippy* – and what that means for our brains:

Professor David Nutt, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, the senior author of both studies, said: “Psychedelics are thought of as ‘mind-expanding’ drugs so it has commonly been assumed that they work by increasing brain activity, but surprisingly, we [...]

Who knows what dim, multiform entities could yet lurk for silent millennia beneath that hostile, white blanket of impervious snow and unrelenting wind? Washington Post is almost ready to discover what ancient secrets lie in Lake Vostok?:

After drilling for two decades through more than two miles of antarctic ice, Russian scientists are on the verge of entering a vast, [...]

National Geographic is watching South Florida with a growing sense of unease over the alien monsters eating any creature who wanders into the Everglades:

…[T]his is “the first study to show that pythons are having impacts on prey populations—and unfortunately those impacts appear to be pretty dramatic,” said study leader Michael Dorcas, a herpetologist at Davidson College in North [...]

Vienna’s University of Veterinary Medicine has been listening to the mice as the tiny Casanovas sing to impress the babes:

It has been known for some time that house mice (Mus musculus) produce ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) during courtship but it has generally been assumed that these are no more than squeaks. However, recent spectrographic analyses have revealed that USVs [...]

Into the K-hole and out of altogether darker hole… NPR looks at the new use for an old club drug (and veterinary anesthetic):

[O]ne of the challenges in treating these severely depressed patients is that there simply isn’t any drug that provides quick relief, says Anu Matorin, medical director of the Psychiatric Emergency Center [at the Texas Medical Center].

…

Mental [...]

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E.D. Leavitt, Massachusetts mechanical engineer, designed many huge machines in the 1870s.They moved things, macerated and mangled them, mined and melted them. Leavitt’s machines did things measured in the millions of gallons.

And his niece was one of the great women of astronomy, too.

[image via Old Book Illustrations]

Popular Mechanics recently investigated the forensics of the zombie head shot:

Dr. Steven Schlozman, has written extensively about the brain function of undead zombies (as opposed to voodoo victim zombies). He’s co-director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and, much more importantly, on the advisory board of the Zombie Research Society.

His self-appointed mission is [...]

Scientists have come one step closer to creating artificial life by building a cell membrane from scratch:

“We don’t understand this really fundamental step in our existence, which is how non-living matter went to living matter,” [Neal Devaraj, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, San Diego] said. “So this is a really ripe area to try to [...]