A moment of silence for Opportunity.
The rover was sent on a 90-day mission. It kept operating on Mars for 15 years, 28 miles and 5,000 charge cycles. Today, NASA said […]
Articles by grant
Mathematical bees. The insect, not the competition. They know their numbers!
The Guardian demonstrates mathematical skills in creatures that don’t even have internal skeletons, with Australian research that shows bees handling some rather sophisticated calculations… for […]
Science Art: Fig 2. Monoculus quadricornis fuscus, a copepod female by Mlle. Christine Jurine
This is a copepod, a critter related to the Spongebob character Plankton. It’s from a book called Histoire des monocles that came out in 1820. […]
Diet drugs can prevent malaria and encephalitis – by making mosquitos less hungry.
Nature reports on a lifesaving use for diet drugs: Female Aedes aegypti, like other mosquito species, feed on blood to get the protein they need […]
The Little Ice Age happened in part because of Europe reaching the New World.
This story has been doing the rounds lately, but the research is available via Science Direct (publishing the Quaternary Science Reviews article). A team of […]
Prehistoric dragon ate bones with its meat. And its own teeth.
LiveScience digs deep for a prehistoric prize, finding dietary clues about Smok wawelski – a peak predator who, thankfully, left modern scientists poop full of […]
Science Art: Ancient Roman time keeping, sun path hora by Darekk2
Click to embiggen A chart of the sky, showing how Ancient Romans measured time in the year 8 CE – meaning, what hora it was […]
Planner’s hellish prediction: Self-driving cars will circle, not park.
UC Santa Cruz – or at least one of its professors – has raised an ominous warning of “robot gridlock,” caused when self-driving car algorithms […]
Pandas didn’t always live only on bamboo. In fact…
…Science News reveals, they switched to their singular diet within human history – the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms: Although modern giant pandas […]
Brain implant decodes the words your ears are hearing – or that you want to say.
New Scientist reveals an experimental system that uses brain electrodes to translate thoughts of speech into words spoken by an electronic voice: The technique used […]
Science Art: Styracosaurus, by Julio Lacerda
Click to embiggen I’ve always had a thing for these guys – the frills are so, well, *frilly*. I don’t usually picture them looking quite […]
New missing link: The ape that walked like we do.
The Leakey Foundation reveals what we know about the newest proto-human species to be given a name, Australopithecus sediba – and what these guys tell […]
SONG: “2014 MU69 (Approach Me)”
SONG: “2014 MU₆₉ (Approach Me)”. ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Science News, 30 Dec 2018-1 Jan 2019, “Live updates: New Horizons’ flyby of a distant Kuiper Belt […]
Researchers are moving a *forest* uphill to save monarch butterflies.
Nature reports on a peculiar, passionate project led by Mexican scientists who are trying to save an endangered species by transplanting hundreds of fir trees […]
Science Art: RCA Lunar Communications by James Burns
Click to embiggen Phoning home from the next world over. This is how it looked half a century ago. You can find more James Burns […]