We were consuming chocolate 5,300 years ago.
Nature pushes the date of the very first hot cocoa back by a millennium, with evidence of the dawn of chocolate in 3,300 BCE: Until […]
Science
Science Art: Lidar-derived digital surface and elevation models of a stream channel, by the USGS
Click to embiggen This is the earth under a stream inside a forest in Iowa, with all the trees and the water digitally removed. Or […]
The very first vertebrates came from the beach.
Science News looks back at the shallow coastal waters of eons past, when the wading was comfortably uncrowded and the first creatures with spinal cords […]
Parasitic wasp makes zombie cockroaches.
That’s a string of creepiness there, isn’t it? Everybody knows (I hope) the way some parasitic wasps turn caterpillars into living meat lockers for their […]
Weird life force: Quantum-entangled bacteria.
Scientific American reveals how some strange research is bringing the weirdness of the subatomic world – where things can be (more or less) in two […]
Science Art: Electricity: condenser jars, an electro-static generator, and a vase with flowers, c. 1850.
Click to embiggen. A goache painting from the Wellcome Collection. A rather polite setting of research equipment with a bouquet. No idea whose, or what […]
A peek at the quantum internet: secrets and superpositions
Nature speculates about the ways quantum computing will change the way the internet works, with unbreakable privacy and more: The first stages promise virtually unbreakable […]
Spacecraft sniffer makes sure NASA’s missions come up roses.
Chemistry World introduces us to a particularly talented NASA veteran, George Aldrich – an expert smeller whose olfactory sensitivity ensures that bad smells don’t disrupt […]
Science Art: Introverted Millipede (Magukbaforduló ikerszelvényesek).
Click to embiggen This is an old, old fellow named Polydesmus. One of the first land animals there ever was. From the image’s description on […]
Exercise might be the next Alzheimer’s therapy (or might lead to it).
Scientific American reveals how a new look at exercise’s effects in the brain might show the way to a one-two punch against Alzheimer’s disease: Exercise […]
Climate change will be raising beer prices. (It’s the barley.)
Nature repeats a warning you’ve probably heard a few times this week. Global warming is likely to make your beer more expensive, unless we do […]
Statistics are complicated, right? Well, thinking that is why we tend to get misled.
Ars Technica keeps it simple, smart, with a new study that shows why statistics can be the third kind of lie* – sometimes the hard […]
Science Art: 254th Combat Communications Group emblem
This is the insignia of the 254th Combat Communications Group, a unit that’s normally part of the Texas Air National Guard, but if federalized, becomes […]
Neanderthal kid got chomped by a giant bird
It’s not quite caveman versus dinosaur, but LiveScience has new research on a Neanderthal child’s bones from Poland’s Ciemna Cave that got digested by a […]
Mushrooms could save the bees. Maybe.
Wired shares the latest unexpected benefit from mushroom fundi Paul Stamets, who may have found a weapon to beat back CCD, the syndrome that’s devastating […]