Inside magic mushrooms… inside the MRI
Imperial College, London, is learning what makes psilocybin mushrooms *trippy* – and what that means for our brains: Professor David Nutt, from the Department of […]
Articles by grant
Lovecraft report: Scientists set to disturb primordial lake, deep under Antarctic ice.
Who knows what dim, multiform entities could yet lurk for silent millennia beneath that hostile, white blanket of impervious snow and unrelenting wind? Washington Post […]
Python problem grows in the Everglades
National Geographic is watching South Florida with a growing sense of unease over the alien monsters eating any creature who wanders into the Everglades: …[T]his […]
A house mouse serenade.
Vienna’s University of Veterinary Medicine has been listening to the mice as the tiny Casanovas sing to impress the babes: It has been known for […]
“Special K” for depression.
Into the K-hole and out of altogether darker hole… NPR looks at the new use for an old club drug (and veterinary anesthetic): [O]ne of […]
Science Art: Leavitt Pumping Engine, from Appletons’ cyclopaedia of applied mechanic, 1880.
Click to embiggen vastly E.D. Leavitt, Massachusetts mechanical engineer, designed many huge machines in the 1870s.They moved things, macerated and mangled them, mined and melted […]
The Walking Dead anatomy lesson.
Popular Mechanics recently investigated the forensics of the zombie head shot: Dr. Steven Schlozman, has written extensively about the brain function of undead zombies (as […]
Building cells from the outside in.
Scientists have come one step closer to creating artificial life by building a cell membrane from scratch: “We don’t understand this really fundamental step in […]
The new U: Take the red pill
The Chronicle of Higher Education is watching closely as a tenured Stanford professor leaves his secure job to teach at an online startup: Sebastian Thrun, […]
Drones of Titan
I never thought that within my lifetime, we’d be planning – as PopSci reports – to send flying robots to find aliens on Saturn’s moons: […]
SONG: Bioluminescence at the Dragon Vent
SONG: “Bioluminescence at the Dragon Vent.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: Squid Pro Crow. SOURCE: Based on “Exotic creatures discovered living at […]
Science Art: From United States Steel International, a porfolio of probabilities, by Syd Mead
Click to embiggen This early ’60s vision of the future (in all likelihood, right now) was painted by visual futurist Syd Mead, who worked in […]
Sharks eat whatever they want. Even songbirds.
National Geographic ruins the illusion that maybe larks and mockingbirds might be safe from shark attacks. Nope. Songbirds are being found in tiger sharks’ stomachs: […]
The Great Apes of Europe.
Science Daily tries to figure out what the Greek gorilla or Austrian orangutan were really like: To date scientists have assumed that great apes went […]
SOPA and PIPA and TEMPORARY BLACKOUT
SOPA and PIPA probably seem like good ideas at first glance, but they aren’t. They really aren’t.