The shiniest living thing.
Cambridge researchers have determined that an iridescent berry is the brightest thing in nature: The ‘brightest’ thing in nature, the Pollia condensata fruit, does not […]
Month: September 2012
The reefs are collapsing.
Guardian takes a look underwater, and what it sees (and, more importantly, what scientists are seeing) really doesn’t look good: The decline of the reefs […]
Science Art: Fig. 100 (Outside-Spring Indicator) from Steam-engine Theory and Practice by William Ripper, 1922
This, the text tells me, is an “outside-spring indicator, by Messrs. Elliott Bros.” The spring is not exposed to high temperature, which makes it better […]
Flying robot maps Surprise Valley
Yep. Scientific American has more on the unmanned aircraft that NASA and the USGS is using to explore the alien landscape of northeastern California: Yesterday […]
The robot knows itself.
Machines, BBC reports, are one step closer to personhood, thanks to Yale researchers inventing Nico, a robot who knows himself: “It is a spatial reasoning […]
Climbing cukes clinch kinky springs.
Say that five times fast. Harvard Gazette wraps its tendrils around a new way to build springs based on the coiling shoots of cucumber vines: […]
Cannabis does lower IQ. By about 8 points.
The Independent has a surprisingly lucid summary of a 25-year longitudinal study of cannabis users from ages 13 to 38. And they found that teen […]
It makes them EAT THEIR OWN BRAINS. And even worse….
It’s a bacterium. It preys on insects. And Scientific American makes me worry that one way or another, they’ll figure out a way to make […]
Science Art: Oeufs 2b, 29, by Adolphe Millot, Nouveau Larousse Illustré [1897-1904]
It’s an egg! A jacana laid it on some tropical riverbank or lake shore sometime in the 1800s, just so Alphonse Millot could come along […]