Stone Age flip-flops
PhysOrg reports on Witwatersrand researchers who’ve found tracks left by prehistoric footwear – a pair of flip-flop sandals that go back at least 75,000 years, […]
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Neolithic engineers
The Guardian visits a huge, 5,000-year-old tomb complex on Scotland’s Orkney Isles that reveals a surprisingly sophisticated level of engineering know-how: The tomb measures more […]
Fossil antibiotics
Stat covers a medicine-making strategy right out of Jurassic Park, with a UPenn researcher named Cesar de la Fuente, who is looking for protein-chains called […]
No song today
Once again, have a full instrumental track and melody, even, but the lyrics are not there. I now owe either two or three covers. One […]
Science Art: 821393 – Flying Machine – Wright Brothers, May 22, 1906.
It’s an airplane. Maybe the airplane. And this is how it looked when the U.S. Patent Office made it official. I found the illustration on […]
Hit the snooze button; your brain will thank you.
BBC’s Science Focus recommends indulging in another few minutes of shut-eye, because Swedish research shows hitting the snooze button on your morning alarm can boost […]
Unlocking brain fog: is it serotonin?
STAT reports on a new study that might be getting to the root of the long-covid brain fog, finding that the symptom appears to go […]
Chinese programmer fined RMB 1 million for using a VPN.
The Guardian reports on a dramatic sentence for the crime of internet privacy: The programmer, surnamed Ma, was issued with a penalty notice by the […]
Science Art: Two-Step Multi-Audi-Fone ad, 1916.
This is an ad from, as Thomas Dolby put it, the Golden Age of wireless. More literally, it’s from the October, 1916, issue of The […]
An AI anesthesiologist to detect pain during surgery.
EurekAlert! shares the slightly unnerving announcement made at the annual Anesthesiology meeting about a new application for AI – monitoring pain levels in surgical patients […]
Samples from asteroid Bennu “an astrobiologist’s dream”
Popular Science raves about the carbon, oxygen, and other life-sustaining material NASA scientists have found in samples retrieved from the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu: […]
Uruguay gets 98% of its power from renewable sources.
NPR had a piece on the little South American nation that’s leading the way to a less polluted future, getting nearly all of its electricity […]
Science Art: Cafeteria virion by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics ViralZone.
It looks like a D20 wrapped in iguana leather and filled with caramel and chocolate sprinkles. It’s actually a rheavirus, also known as cafeteriavirus. It’s […]
Ultrasound cleans “forever chemicals” from polluted groundwater.
Scientific Frontline reports on new Ohio State University research that shows sound waves can shake apart toxic PFAS, molecules so durable they previously earned the […]
AIs are in the hurricane-forecast business now.
Ars Technica, in not so many words, is saying that AIs could be coming for the meteorologists next. But for now, they’re helping the pros […]