From plastic trash into sudsy cleansers.
Science News reports on a system for “upcycling” plastic trash by converting the non-recycled waste destined for the landfill into surfactants, the chemicals that make […]
Articles by grant
Science Art: ECHO 100′ Satellite Inflation Tests, 1958.
A satellite that is also a balloon, as inflated at NASA’s Langley Research Center in 1958. I found this image gleaming in the NASA Image […]
SONG: FAQs
SONG: “FAQs”. (available as .wav here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Popular Science, 14 Aug 2023, “School district uses ChatGPT to help remove library books,” […]
Science Art: Information Display front cover, 1972
This is the cover of the 1972 March/April issue of Information Display, Vol 9 No 2, from archive.org. Stories inside include ways to project different-sized […]
ChatGPT, the Fahrenheit 451 edition
Popular Science discusses a school board in Iowa using ChatGPT to itemize the books that should be removed from library shelves because they ‘contain a […]
Wanna watch the watchers?
The Markup is making an offer to anyone with a Facebook account – even an inactive one. Previously, they mapped out how the Meta Pixel […]
Science Art: 2N930 NPN silicon planar transistor, by Mister rf
This is a tiny component in an amplifier, seen way up close. If you want the specifics, from the Wikimedia Commons page where I found […]
Human coronavirus meds cure deadly cat disease.
The Guardian reports from Cyprus, where an antiviral medicine for human COVID-19 patients has proved effective against a deadly outbreak of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), […]
There’s a bird flu epidemic in fur farms. (This is not great.)
Eurosurveillance reports on an ongoing epidemic that has seen a contagious strain of avian influenza, HPAI H5N1, jump from birds to mammals, where it’s spread […]
Science Art: The First Larva, or the first free-swimming stage of the lobster, 1895.
Baby pictures, from The American lobster; a study of its habits and development, a Bureau of Fisheries document that I found here, at the Biodiversity […]
Twinkle loudly, little star
Science Daily has the story of a research team at Northwestern University that has determined the way any particular star should twinkle – which is […]
Is this a mad scientist being busted? Something worse?
Ars Technica covers a weird, almost cinematic story out of California, where law enforcement officials have, following a code-enforcement tip, just busted an illegal lab […]
Science Art: If Bodies fill the Same Angle, their Size is Proportional to their Distance, 1898
This is an oddly domestic example of an astronomical principle … or maybe it only seems domestic to me because I keep a bicycle in […]
Theater of Nero discovered in Rome.
The expat news magazine Wanted in Rome reports on an archaeological discovery in the shadow of the Vatican – a theater dedicated to the notorious […]
Parrot-heads, celebrate: New isopod discovered in Florida Keys named for you-know-who.
PhysOrg introduces us to Gnathia jimmybuffetti, a little marine mystery-bug (or literally, “cryptofauna”) related to roly-poly pillbugs but named for that fella still looking for […]