Can you hold your breath for more than 3 1/2 hours? This guy can.
Science News reports on a new record – three hours and 42 minutes underwater without coming up for air – set by a Cuvier’s beaked […]
Science
Science Art: Single-Acting Force Pump with Ball Valves, 1903.
Among all the diagrams of force-vectors, there’s this wonderful illustration of a well-made machine in A Text-Book of Applied Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering, on archive.org. […]
We’ve found the world’s oldest sperm. And it’s big.
Science News reports on an ostracod fossil that’s 100 million years old – and contains a a recognizable sample of its giant sperm: A single […]
Science Art: Roseate Spoonbill, study for Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, by Abbot Handerson Thayer
Click to embiggen As its Smithsonian Museum page explains, this painting is from a book that hoped to prove a slightly odd hypothesis: that even […]
The rhythm of an out-of-body experience.
Nature looks at dissociative states, and the specific rhythm in a single layer of neurons that can make everything around you seem unreal: The neurological […]
DNA study confirms: “Viking” was a job, not an ethnicity.
Science reveals the results of a massive genetic study of Viking remains across Europe, which found that people from all genetic backgrounds took up the […]
Phosphine gas means there might be life on Venus.
Science News explains the strange chemistry that’s behind the new discovery, and why it means that Venus can get added to the same list as […]
Science Art: Last Test Article for NASA’s SLS Rocket Departs Michoud Assembly Facility, 2019 – by NASA/Jude Guidry.
Click to embiggen A big part of a big rocket, loading onto a big barge in a big facility in Louisiana. As the NASA Michoud […]
The science of the will to fight.
The Economist has an interesting piece on military psychology – specifically, the research going into predicting when an opponent who is outgunned and outmanned will […]
Puberty can erase childhood trauma’s brain effects
Science News has some optimistic news about the long-term neurological effects of childhood trauma. We know that they can create lasting physical changes inside the […]
Science Art: Gold plaques (items 9-14 in catalogue), by Ian Richardson, The British Museum, 2012
Click to embiggen Treasure! Literally! A hoard of Roman gold and silver, including jewelry, figurines, and a lot of these votive “leaf” plaques. A votive […]
New coffee-based technique promises to rebuild nerves damaged by MS, injuries.
HealthEuropa reveals new research into myelin sheaths, the “insulation” around nerve cells that gets damaged by multiple sclerosis and some kinds of traumatic injuries. Swiss […]
A black hole bigger than a hundred suns.
BBC peers into deepest space to find the origins of a gravity “shockwave” from 7 billion years ago that was still strong enough to shake […]
Flying taxi by Toyota
Endgadget (yes, I know) enthuses over the Toyota-backed SkyDrive flying car, tested with a pilot at a Toyota facility: The SD-03 is billed as the […]
Social isolation damages this brain circuit in kids. And we can fix it with light.
Science Daily has a Mt. Sinai School of Medicine study that isolates a specific cluster of brain cells that regulate social behavior – and that […]