Brood X – the cicada boom we expect this summer – will boost birds. Temporarily….
Scientific American predicts a lively summer 2021, with the noisy emergence of Brood X – three species of 17-year cicadas – filling the air with […]
Articles by grant
We can grow brain tissue in a $5 microchip. (And it’s reusable.)
New Scientist reveals the cost of building a brain from scratch has just gone way, WAY down: The device, dubbed a “microfluidic bioreactor”, is a […]
After 20 years, they found the weird toxin that’s been killing eagles.
Science News celebrates a discovery that may save the lives of hundreds of eagles, ducks, and other birds living on or near lakes in the […]
Science Art: Diagram to Show the Destination of the Arterial Arches in Man and Mammals. (Modified from Rathke. )
Click to embiggen This is an anatomical drawing of the blood vessels around the heart, but it’s odd to me how much it looks like […]
Sugar – as in sweet sodas – disrupts kids’ brain development.
Translational Psychiatry has some research that should be making a bigger splash. It indicates that feeding kids more sugar affects the development of their brains […]
“Xenobots” are tiny robots made from living cells – self-healing swarms that can form bodies… and memories.
Eurekalert introduces the next generation of living robots. Tufts University biologists and computer scientists have created a second generation of tiny, biological machines they’re calling […]
A 12,500-year-old statue is rewriting history. Or prehistory.
The New York Times examines the Shigir Idol, a wooden statue from the Ural Mountains that defied decay to become the oldest known work of […]
Science Art: Owen Magnetic Radiator Emblem
From 1915 to 1922, this was the symbol of electric luxury – or at least a hybrid-electric luxury car. The Owen Magnetic label was a […]
Cone snails trick their prey into thinking it’s time to get it on. Then they eat ’em.
Science News shares a nightmare scenario from the ocean. The lights are low, there’s slow music playing, and look, there’s someone sexy over by the […]
The key to staying fit when you’re less active is maintaining your intensity.
Outside takes a hard, scientific look at our pandemic year (and our softening middle sections) using a measure called “VO2,” which is a way of […]
Fake news is a symptom… of fast scrolling social media. (Not wishes, partisan thinking, or anything else.)
Scientific American broadcasts a study (by David Rand and Gordon Pennycook, published in Nature) that looked at why misinformation spreads online, and found that it […]
SONG: Welcome to the Landing
SONG: “Welcome to the Landing” [Download] ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on NASA, 5 Mar 2021, Welcome to ‘Octavia E. Butler Landing’”, as used in the […]
Science Art: A quarantine safeguards health…, 1936.
Click to embiggen This is how public health was handled in the days before a lot of diseases were considered “eradicated.” It’s from The Body […]
A new Dead Sea Scroll… and even more ancient things.
NPR reports that archaeologists working in caves on the shores of the Dead Sea have found, for the first time in 60 years, another fragmentary […]
They resuscitated 100 million-year-old bacteria.
Scientific American reports on new evidence that bacteria may be “effectively immortal” after researchers brought back microbes that settled to the ocean floor tens of […]