The reefs are collapsing.
Guardian takes a look underwater, and what it sees (and, more importantly, what scientists are seeing) really doesn’t look good: The decline of the reefs […]
Articles by grant
Science Art: Fig. 100 (Outside-Spring Indicator) from Steam-engine Theory and Practice by William Ripper, 1922
This, the text tells me, is an “outside-spring indicator, by Messrs. Elliott Bros.” The spring is not exposed to high temperature, which makes it better […]
Flying robot maps Surprise Valley
Yep. Scientific American has more on the unmanned aircraft that NASA and the USGS is using to explore the alien landscape of northeastern California: Yesterday […]
The robot knows itself.
Machines, BBC reports, are one step closer to personhood, thanks to Yale researchers inventing Nico, a robot who knows himself: “It is a spatial reasoning […]
Climbing cukes clinch kinky springs.
Say that five times fast. Harvard Gazette wraps its tendrils around a new way to build springs based on the coiling shoots of cucumber vines: […]
Cannabis does lower IQ. By about 8 points.
The Independent has a surprisingly lucid summary of a 25-year longitudinal study of cannabis users from ages 13 to 38. And they found that teen […]
It makes them EAT THEIR OWN BRAINS. And even worse….
It’s a bacterium. It preys on insects. And Scientific American makes me worry that one way or another, they’ll figure out a way to make […]
Science Art: Oeufs 2b, 29, by Adolphe Millot, Nouveau Larousse Illustré [1897-1904]
It’s an egg! A jacana laid it on some tropical riverbank or lake shore sometime in the 1800s, just so Alphonse Millot could come along […]
So maybe that reduced-calorie diet won’t extend your life after all….
NIH reports that cutting calories by two-thirds, contrary to what you might expect, might not add years to your lifespan: Scientists have found that calorie […]
Oldest insects ever.
EurekAlert goes back 230 million years to uncover the most ancient arthropods ever found: The amber droplets, most between 2-6 millimeters long, were buried in […]
Learn in your sleep. With your nose….
Nature sniffs out a technique for using smells to pick up new information – and new emotional responses – in your sleep: Anat Arzi of […]
Our languages are Turkish. Virally so.
The BBC reveals that English (and just about every other European language) descends from an ancestor that was not Russian, as was the popular belief, […]
Science Art: Jungle Allure by Diane Walker
This painting was one of the winners of the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest 2007, a mathematical art contest. I suppose nowadays, fractal art seems […]
SONG: “Hi There! (We’re Robots From Earth)”
SONG: “Hi There! (We’re Robots From Earth)” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “Mars rover Curiosity zaps ‘Coronation’ rock […]
Our ROBOT is SHOOTING LASERS at MARS.
How can Christian Science Monitor be so calm about this? Curiosity is on an alien planet vaporizing stuff with lasers: NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has […]