Trained rats can detect tuberculosis.
Nice when they’re fighting the spread of disease rather than the other way around. Science News looks into how to train giant, explosive-sniffing rats to […]
Science
Finns aren’t happy about being named the happiest country on Earth.
Scientific American recently ran a blog by Finnish psychologist and philosopher Frank Martela, who explains why Finland’s national skepticism about happiness might make them, according […]
Russian cuckoos are taking over Alaska.
Seems a little metaphorical, but it’s really happening. Popular Science reports on a rapid influx of cuckoos from Russia literally taking over American bird populations […]
Science Art: Ptychogena Pinnulata, 1882.
Click to embiggen Jellyfish. Deep sea medusae. By Ernst Haeckel and A. Giltsch. From Vol. 4, pt.11-13 of Report on the scientific results of the […]
Countries in the Eurovision contest are happier overall.
Science Daily finds a correlation between national satisfaction and participation in the Eurovision song contest. Even if your country loses, you and your neighbors will […]
Alan Turing’s idea makes water three times cleaner.
Nature reports on a water filter based on computer pioneer Alan Turing’s only biology paper that appears to clean salt out of water three times […]
Fasting rejuvenates aging stem cells.
MIT News reports on a study that turns back the clock, at least as far as intestinal cells are concerned. Mice who’ve done without food […]
Science Art: Tab X from Ueber den Pollen by Carl Julius Fritzsche, 1837.
Where plants come from. (And hay fever.) These are as seen through a pretty powerful microscope – magnified 500 times – and drawn by a […]
Two new kinds of time crystals.
Science News looks at a strange structure of matter (one we’ve discussed on here in the past) that regularly repeats itself like a crystal… but […]
Island lizards are evolving – in one year’s time.
Scientific American steps into the fast lane, unexpectedly, on the island of Redonda. People wiped out the local (invasive) populations of rats and goats, and […]
Disembodied brains kept alive for 36 hours.
I’m not sure how new this science really is – it’s pigs, by the way, not people, in case you were worried – but The […]
Science Art: NASA spacecraft comparison, by D. Meltzer.
Click to embiggen vastly. You can see the astronauts’ faces! “Here am I floating in a tin can,” indeed. Here’s how much room some of […]
Neanderthals cruised the Mediterranean
I mean, who wouldn’t, really? Science looks back at evidence that Stone Age people traveled to Naxos, Crete, and other islands across the sun-kissed Med: […]
Science Art: Selector Used for Timing Supervisory Signals, from The Bell System Technical Journal
Click to embiggen Mmm. Switches. Communication.
Sigh. Maybe a sweet potato *doesn’t* mean that prehistoric Polynesians visited South America after all.
The Guardian has some sweet potato evolutionary research that unintentionally drives a wedge in the idea that the presence of the humble yam in both […]