Asteroid Bennu rich in ancient life-sustaining stuff.
IFL Science reports on the 121-gram sample that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe collected from Asteroid Bennu — a handful of dirt that shows a wealth of […]
Articles by grant
Tuberculosis in Kansas City.
Reuters has what seems like a nostalgic headline from the 1800s, but no, it’s happening now. There’s an outbreak of consumption – that is, tuberculosis […]
Science Art: Boulder ejected from Halemaumau, at Kīlauea, May 11, 1925
Such was science in 1925. A man in a fedora and tie, pointing at impact craters on the ground, standing next to a large rock, […]
Bird flu still spreading in cats.
Scientific American is still following the progress of the H5N1 flu virus, and finding it’s spreading more than anyone would want — especially if you […]
SONG: They Can Make It Rain Bombs (a penitential Camper Van Chadbourne cover)
SONG: “They Can Make It Rain Bombs” . (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This isn’t based on any recent research. It’s a penitential cover […]
Science Art: Reconstrucción de Tuzoia canadensis, con Anomalocaris atrás, 2022.
This is an image from one of the ages before dinosaurs. I found it by looking for Anomalocaris, which was a sort of terrifying sea […]
Tricking the immune system into attacking tumors.
Nature reports on Chinese researchers who found a way to make the body get rid of cancer — by disguising tumors as transplanted pig organs, […]
Sustainable superglue.
Science Daily has news from Colorado State chemical researchers, who’ve found an adhesive that does the work of superglue, but is “biodegradable, tunable, and reusable”: […]
Science Art: Earth’s Shadow and Penumbra in Sections, 1898.
This delightful diagram appears on a page of A New Astronomy For Beginners that also has an almanac of “Important Future Eclipses” from 1898 (January […]
You are what your great-grandparents didn’t eat
Nautilus looks at the long-term effects of famine — and finds that extreme hunger can affect the bodies of future generations: To conduct their research, […]
Sparse but robust: Brains are wired to maximize memory.
Science News shares an analysis of the human hippocampus from a computer-designer’s standpoint, finding that though the network of brain-cell connections are relatively sparse, those […]
The first American to die of H5N1 avian flu
Science News puts some important context around the January 6 death of a 65-year-old Louisiana man who caught the virus from his backyard chickens: Since […]
Roman battlefield (probably) discovered in the U.K.
BBC has news of a discovery (yet to be confirmed, likely accurate) made using a combination of historical knowledge and ground-penetrating radar that shows how […]
Science Art: Kingfisher (Ceryle alcyon Boie), 1898
The word “halcyon,” meaning “calm, idyllic, happy times” came from the Greek name for these little guys, who were said to bring, well, halcyon days. […]
Cheaper sodium batteries are getting better.
Notebook Check reports optimistically on a vanadium battery breakthrough that stands to make sodium-ion batteries, which rely on cheap minerals, a real competitor for the […]