Ancient African genome offers migration clues for the first humans.
Nature shares DNA research on the remains of four children in what is now Cameroon, revealing clues about how they lived and where they came […]
Month: January 2020
How do you say “dinosaur” in Zulu?
BBC Future muses over the ways in which language can limit scientific research – when you don’t have the words for a concept: For Zulu-speaking […]
Science Art: Ophir Chasma, ESP_062483_1755, by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory HiRise.
Click to embiggen vastly This is half of a stereoscopic image of the surface of Mars. The other half is
SONG: Under Orion’s Arms
SONG: “Under Orion’s Arms”. ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: SPACE.com, 3 January 2020, “Will Bright Star Betelgeuse Finally Explode? A Look at the Dimming Red Giant in […]
Ozone-eating chemicals (remember fluorocarbons?) are warming the Arctic.
Nature reports on an old environmental menace. Climate simulations, they say, show that the mass emission of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) beginning in the 1950s could be […]
We’re cooler than we used to be. Literally – human body temperatures have dropped.
The Wall Street Journal reports that since the average human body temperature of 98.7 degrees F was first established, the average human has gotten taller, […]
Science Art: Quasi-Poloidal Stellarator (QPS), 2007
Click to embiggen This is a fusion reactor that was never built, a small power plant that takes the principles of a tokamak (use super-heated […]
Living concrete photosynthesizes, reproduces itself – thanks to gelatin..
The New York Times covers a building material that could be a boon to the planet, a bacteria-enriched concrete that cleans the air and grows […]
Pigeonbot flies on wings that change shape.
Science News introduces us to a robot that flies on wings that can change shape just like a real bird’s: Now, using new insights into […]
Oyster farms against beach erosion: a coastal win-win
Popular Science describes (a bit briefly) a real pearl of a concept, introducing the gentle, coast-restoring art of oyster-tecture: Undoing our damage to oysters can […]
Science Art: Pyramid of the Sun and the Moon (1825-1835), by Jean-Frédéric Maximilien de Waldeck
Click to embiggen A painting of Mayan pyramids by a mysterious man, described on Public Domain Review (where I found this image) as an “artist, […]
Learning from the ashes of Notre Dame
Nature takes a look at how the tragic fire at Notre Dame last year created a unique opportunity for researchers to study medieval construction: The […]
Closing in on the virus behind China’s new pneumonia outbreak.
Scientific American and STAT (with the help of the World Health Organization) inch us a little closer to identifying the microbe behind the mysterious outbreak […]
So Orion’s shoulder might be about to explode.
Something’s going on up there. SPACE.com actually says it’s a good idea to watch the skies “just in case” Betelgeuse is about to blow up: […]
Science Art: From The Helicopters Are Coming, 1944.
Click to embiggen This illustration, by Erik Nitsche and Roslyn Welcher, is from a book by CBF Macauley that claims to be “the first complete […]