The simple elegance of the Flame Challenge.
Alan Alda asks exactly the right question in exactly the right way: As a curious 11-year-old, Alan Alda asked his teacher, “What is a flame?” […]
Science
Science Art: 5257: Life cycle of Diphyllobothrium latum.
Click to embiggen This is Diphyllobothrium latum, a tapeworm that might make itself at home inside you if you eat undercooked fish. The picture comes […]
What’s made from blue cheese and cleans itself?
If Inhabitat.com’s on the money with this one, the answer could soon be “just about anything,” thanks to Swiss scientists who’ve used blue cheese fungus […]
Happy birthday, zeppelin!
Wired celebrates the anniversary of that very special day, March 14, 1899, when Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin got the U.S. patent for his design for […]
Facebook more efficient than IQ tests at determining employability. (Yeah, HR will be reading your updates.)
Forbes takes us one step closer to the Facebook-dominated society with a Northern Illinois University study that finds a quick social media review works better […]
100% efficiency? Bah. Here’s an LED that’s MORE than 100% efficient.
Wired reveals how MIT made this cool magic trick happen – by using a little bit electricity to convert heat into light: The LED produces […]
Science Art: Manière de pêcher la Tortüe; le Lamantin from Histoire des aventuriers flibustiers, Volume I (1744)
This engraving shows a bunch of humans spearing a sea turtle. But wait! A manatee looks on in terror, clutching her child! And thinks back […]
Vulture CSI: How carrion eaters are upending forensics.
Associated Press goes deep inside one of America’s most macabre jobs – studying how efficiently vultures consume dead bodies: Experienced investigators would normally have interpreted […]
The music of spider-silk strings.
BBC reveals a Japanese project that combines biology, engineering and beauty – spinning violin strings out of spider silk: Shigeyoshi Osaki of Japan’s Nara Medical […]
A salute: Trying and trying and trying by Gethan Dick.
Over the transom this morning, I just got word of an amazing science-music-art project that combined six University College London biomedical researchers with six bands […]
Slipping on the thinking cap.
Over at BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow waxes enthusiastic about the process of zapping your brain into a creative “flow” state: The “thinking cap” is something like […]
Acne antibiotics help treat schizophrenia.
The Independent reports on one of those weird medical side effect whodathunkits (like Rogaine and Viagra coming from blood pressure medications). Minocycline, a drug usually […]
Science Art: Building the Forth Bridge, by Charles J. de Laoy, 1909
Click to embiggen This is the Forth Bridge, spanning the famous Firth of Forth (on the way to Fife)*. And for Archibald Williams, editor of […]
Silence! You fools! You will LEARN silence!
Technology Review cuts out all the chatter with their lowdown on an honest-to-God silence ray: Today, Kazutaka Kurihara at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial […]
Six-legged giant not extinct, found hiding on remote island.
NPR describes the joy of explorers finding “extinct” tree lobsters – the world’s largest known stick insects, once native only to Australia’s Lord Howe Island […]