Science Art: Hero’s Steam Turbine, 1903
A machine that converts heat into motion – an amazing feat – from the book New Conceptions in Science by Carl Snyder, found in the […]
Month: September 2019
Common insectides have lowered songbird populations – they eat a couple seeds and lose weight.
National Geographic reports on a study that has found nicotine-based insecticides – the world’s most widely used pesticides – act like appetite suppressants for songbirds. […]
Your cat really does love you.
Or so PopSci would have you believe. That’s their take on behaviorist Kristyn Vitale’s Oregon State University study of the bonding styles of cats: Both […]
Microplastics in your tea, from the teabag.
New Scientist has the less-than-cheerful discovery that a plastic-based teabag will release *billions* of microplastic particles as it steeps: A Canadian team found that steeping […]
SONG: Adria
SONG: “Adria” [Download] . ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Science, 6 September 2019, “Geologists uncover history of lost continent buried beneath Europe,” as used in the post […]
Science Art: Lower Bagshot Clays, Nr. Wareham, 1868
An image from an 1868 book, On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata, which was the subject of a collection in the Public Domain […]
Air pollution can leave soot inside pregnant mothers’ placentas.
Science News shares a small but disturbing Belgian study that found solid particles of air pollutants around developing babies in the womb: Samples of placenta […]
EPA approves a fungicide distributed *by bees*.
Growing Produce has a story that strikes me as super weird, about the first-ever commercial fungicide designed to be carried onto crops by bees: The […]
CDC report: One in 16 US women were forced into having sex for the first time
TW, as they say. New Scientist has some hard numbers on some difficult truths, offering data on just how many women lost their virginity in […]
Science Art: From Theosophia Practica, by Johann Georg Gichtel, 1696
Click to embiggen A secret body around our visible body, from the 1600s. A subtle anatomy. Planetary correspondences. This is where we get the idea […]
Billionaire Bigelow’s Big Balloon – inflatable space station is open for visitors.
Space.com has photos and background on B333, an expandable and expansive zero-gravity habitat for the next generation of space explorers. Bottom line is it’s pretty […]
I don’t know, how *do* you make Saturn Yellow?
LA Times plunges into a chemical and artistic riddle – how can we restore fading Day-Glo paintings when the formula for Saturn Yellow remains a […]
What breathes sulfur, eats fool’s gold and could show us where life came from?
The Independent puzzles over a biological riddle – a strange microbe that doesn’t need oxygen or sunlight to get by. Instead, it thrives deep underground […]
India’s moon lander went silent minutes before landing.
Nature mourns the apparent loss of India’s first lunar lander, which stopped transmitting as it descended to the Moon’s south pole: Mission control at the […]
Science Art: Sunset in the Eye of a Hurricane
Click to embiggen Well, I made it through Dorian just fine this week. Some islands less than 100 miles to the east didn’t. This is […]