The sea cucumber doesn’t look like much until you really look at it. They’re complicated little creatures. They have complicated little parts. In this case, they are labeled… Read the rest “Science Art: Holothuria tubulosa (Sjogurka stor ugglan, a sea cucumber) from Nordisk Familjebok, 1919.”
Rice University robotics engineers are playing with dead things – spiders, to be precise – and say they’ve come up with a breakthrough in precision picker-uppers by… Read the rest ““Necrobotic” spiders grab things more precisely than machine fingers.”
Reuters reports from Senegal on a new anti-erosion project that uses dirt-cheap, pollution-free materials to defend an island from Atlantic swells that threaten to wash the land away… Read the rest “Saving the beach with some stick-and-palm-frond engineering.”
Progesterone is a hormone released by ovaries. It’s made from cholesterol, which might seem odd. It’s a key component in birth-control pills and in hormone replacement therapy… Read the rest “Science Art: 20alpha-Dihydroprogesterone 3D spacefill, by Jynto, 2011.”
SONG: “Octopus Gloves”. (OGG version)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Science News 13 July 2022, “This octopus-inspired glove helps humans grip slippery objects,”… Read the rest “SONG: Octopus Gloves”
Scientific American takes a look at our online habits and finds we’re not making ourselves happy. The technology makes us lose track of time, disrupts sleep, lowers our sense of satisfaction,… Read the rest “Social media makes people unhappy… but it doesn’t have to.”
CNN reports on an unexpected discovery in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s East Asian collection, where an unremarkable-looking bronze mirror was just revealed to reflect a hidden … Read the rest “Magic mirror brings the Buddha’s enlightenment… when the light hits it just right.”
Basking sharks are really big. As fish go, only whale sharks get bigger, and only then sometimes. And both of them eat plankton, not sailors. They’ve got nothing to prove.
This photo… Read the rest “Science Art: Cetorhinus maximus, by Greg Skomal”
Science News reports on gloves that are especially good at picking slippery things up and sticking to ’em thanks to “rapidly switchable” materials inspired by octopus… Read the rest “Octopus gloves. They grab things better.”
Science News takes a long whiff of a chemical that smells like oranges and flowers that’s given off by people (and other mammals) infected with dengue and Zika. The chemical seems … Read the rest “The orange-blossom odor of mosquito-borne diseases… actually attracts mosquitoes.”
This is an illustration of a defunct theory. The idea being put forward explains sunspots as the impacts of meteors, which come from the rings of Saturn but are knocked out at regular intervals… Read the rest “Science Art: Fig 61, A Voyage in Space, “Fragments from the Rings Falling into the Sun,” 1915.”
Science News looks at a newly discovered, large-headed carnivorous dinosaur that, like T. rex, had surprisingly small forelimbs. But these independently evolved little arms were apparently… Read the rest “Little arms: T. rex didn’t invent them, and they didn’t come out of nowhere.”
Reuters enlightens a pandemic-weary world with news of a discovery of new life in the icy wastes of Antarctica. Unfortunately, the Chilean scientists study the novel bacteria say they’re… Read the rest “Antibiotic-resistant bacteria discovered in Antarctica. The question is: Will they stay there?”
Solar systems have a “goldilocks zone” where planets capable of sustaining life forms similar to ours can form. Well, galaxies might also have a goldilocks zone where habitable… Read the rest “Science Art: The galactic habitable zone of the Milky Way, as predicted by Lineweaver et al (2004), NASA/Caltech 2013.”
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