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# The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

ex scientia, sono

## Sitemaps

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## Posts

- [Taurine, not telomeres, could be the key to a longer lifespan.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/21/taurine-not-telomeres-could-be-the-key-to-a-longer-lifespan/) - Science Alert reports on research that finds that boosting levels of the amino acid taurine - present in meat, fish, and dairy, and one that our bodies can be trained to produce on their own - helps protect against the physiological effects of aging, including the loss of muscle, bone, and memory: An international team
- [MDMA against white supremacy.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/19/mdma-against-white-supremacy/) - BBC reports on a simple pharmaceutical study at the University of Chicago - about the mechanism by which MDMA increased "the pleasantness of social touch" - that had one unexpected outcome. The controlled drug, used clinically against PTSD in veterans (and illegally for, let's say, a wide variety of purposes), also seemed to trigger a
- [Science Art: Ceratosuchops inferodios <i>life reconstruction</i>, by PaleoGeekSquared](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/19/science-art-ceratosuchops-inferodios-life-reconstruction-by-paleogeeksquared/) - This is a kind of spinosaur-ancestor dubbed "the hell heron" by some dramatically minded scientists. C. inferodios was identified in 2021 from some fossil fragments in the Wessex Formation on the Isle of Wight. Not much is known about spinosaurs because, well, they're pretty old (Early Cretaceous) and the bits we do find are pretty
- [Making a pain-free battery: "Nickel doesn't have child-labor issues."](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/16/making-a-pain-free-battery-nickel-doesnt-have-child-labor-issues/) - Scientific Frontline looks at a new way to create rechargeable lithium-ion batteries - the power behind electric cars, iPhones, and most of the rest of the 21st century - without using cobalt, a mineral that comes with a heavy environmental and ethical price. Instead, University of California, Irvine, researchers say, we're a step closer to
- [Texas expects record-setting power usage this week.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/13/texas-expects-record-setting-power-usage-this-week/) - Reuters reports on a hot, hot summer that is pulling more electricity from the Texas state grid than ever before: AccuWeather forecast high temperatures in Houston, the biggest city in Texas, will rise from 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday to around 100 F every day from June 15-20. That compares with a
- [How do you feel when the AI starts reading your young children their bedtime stories?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/12/how-do-you-feel-when-the-ai-starts-reading-your-young-children-their-bedtime-stories/) - As The Markup points out, this is no longer a hypothetical question, but an actual parenting challenge now: I made a note to ask his teacher the following week, and imagine my surprise when I learned his teacher had been experimenting with ChatGPT to generate custom stories for the class. Like 14 percent of American
- [Science Art: <i>NASA's Chandra, Webb Combine for Arresting Views (Pillars of Creation)</i>, 2023](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/11/science-art-nasas-chandra-webb-combine-for-arresting-views-pillars-of-creation-2023/) - Scientific illustration as composite photographs of a star-forming nebula.
- [A beaked dinosaur in Utah named for the god Janus.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/09/a-beaked-dinosaur-in-utah-named-for-the-god-janus/) - Smithsonian Magazine covers the discovery of a new species of dinosaur, Iani smithi, that's part of a little-known group of dinosaurs that were around just before the big, famous ones like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. They named the new dinosaur after the Roman god Janus, or Ianus, the god of transitions, because Iani might help us
- [Fart science: How do you rank?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/07/06/fart-science-how-do-you-rank/) - JAMA just published a study that blows open the long-repressed science of flatulence, revealing how much gas the average person passes, and when: Introduction Flatulence is defined as the act of passing flatus through the anus, with some definitions incorporating the experience of excessive gas. Flatulence research has focused largely on disease and symptomology, yet
- [Science Art: <i>Histologist Microscope</i>, 1900](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/07/06/science-art-histologist-microscope-1900/) - An illustration of an elegant optical device from Science Gossip magazine (a publication which I discovered via Nemfrog). It's described by the editors thusly: Crouch’s “Histologist”” Microscope. — Mr. Henry Crouch, of 92 Duncombe Road, London, N., has submitted for our examination the latest model of his “Histologist” microscope, which is specially designed for the
- [The Collider's long shutdown.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/07/02/the-colliders-long-shutdown/) - CERN has announced a shutdown dramatic enough that they're giving it an acronym: LS3, the Long Shutdown 3 for the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider. Who knows what the magic tunnels will turn up once they start up again: Since circulating its first beams in September 2008, the LHC has pushed the frontiers of science
- [Science Art: <i>Rudimentary Simulator</i>, 1963.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/06/29/science-art-rudimentary-simulator-1963/) - This is Figure 3 from "Man-Machine System Simulation for Flight Vehicles" by Steven Belsley, an article which was published in a journal called (deep breath) IEEE Transactions of the Technical Professional Group on Human Factors in Electronics (which seems to be a fancy way of saying "Humans Using Machines"), Vol HFE-4, No. 1, September 1963
- [No June song...](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/06/29/no-june-song/) - As is clear by now, blown a deadline here for an original song for June. Have a progression and the shape of the thing, mostly, but the words aren't fitting, and I only started the process at a point on the calendar where I should have been putting the finishing touches. So now two penitential
- [Science Art: <i>Astrapia Splendidissima</i>, 1895](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/06/22/science-art-astrapia-splendidissima/) - This is the first illustration in the article "A New Bird of Paradise" by the Hon. Walter Rothschild, published in the June 1895 issue of Novitates zoologicae : a journal of zoology in connection with the Tring Museum. The description is no-nonsense, yet vivid: Head, sides of the head, occiput, and hind-neck brilliant metallic golden
- [DNA shows "Viking" was a job, not a heredity.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/06/19/dna-shows-viking-was-a-job-not-a-heredity/) - Science shares the results of a massive survey of Viking graves, which determined that the famous Northern raiders were actually from all kinds of different places (and that most had dark hair) despite their association with Scandinavia: "The big story is in line with what's told by archaeologists and historians," says Erika Hagelberg, an ancient
- [NASA Mars mission discovers key to teamwork](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/06/17/nasa-mars-mission-discovers-key-to-teamwork/) - PhysOrg reports on a discovery from NASA researchers looking not at astronomy nor engineering, but on key factors that let teams communicate with a gap as large as the distance between Earth and Mars -- especially a concept they've called "collective attention": "NASA realized the collaboration that a long-duration mission, like sending a team of
- [Science Art: <i>Ever See This Before?</i>, 1966.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/06/15/science-art-ever-see-this-before-1966/) - This is an actual image of a cathode-ray tube, "the furthest advance yet made in man/ machine interface," used for a high-speed printer/plotter. It's enlarged six times. Or the display is, at least. The Fairchild Du Mont company wants us to know that this tube has that kind of resolution. This is an ad for
- [Unborn (unhatched?) finches learn about heat from their parents' songs.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/06/13/unborn-unhatched-finches-learn-about-heat-from-their-parents-songs/) - Science News reports on chicks getting prepared to hatch into a hot world by hearing the "heat" songs of their parents: As the heat punishes sun-crisped Australian woodlands, the adult birds make a rapid, peeping “heat call”. That signal kicks off genetic changes in unhatched baby zebra finches’ brains, researchers report June 11 in the
- [Whale graveyard reveals unknown prehistoric species.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/06/11/whale-graveyard-reveals-unknown-prehistoric-species/) - This has been in a few different sources, including Australia's ABC News, but the crew of a scientific submersible celebrated discovering an active "whalefall" in the Indian Ocean west of Perth -- because once one of those massive corpses hits the bottom, it creates an ecosystem unto itself, feeding hundreds of different kinds of life
- [Science Art: <i>Sunrise - Philippine Sea</i>, 2017](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/06/08/science-art-sunrise-philippine-sea-2017/) - This is an image from the "Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth" gallery, maintained by the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center over here. The description from there reads: An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) took this photograph of the partial disc of the Sun just as it began
- [A four-winged velociraptor hunted prehistoric birds](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/06/05/a-four-winged-velociraptor-hunted-prehistoric-birds/) - PhysOrg reports on the discovery of a prehistoric predator who puts the terrifying dinosaurs of Jurassic Park to shame ... a Chinese cousin of velociraptor who hunted the ancestors of modern birds by flying after them with four feathery "wings": The new species, Jian changmaensis, belongs to a clade within the dromaeosaur family called microraptors.
- [Science Art: <i>Égouts de Paris</i>, by Jules Ferat.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/06/01/science-art-egouts-de-paris-by-jules-ferat/) - There's a subtitle here that Google Translate renders as "Sewer cleaning wagon. (System of Chief Engineer Mr. Belgrand.)". This is engineering from the third quarter of the 19th century, used to keep cities cleaner than they'd ever been before. I found this in the public domain collections of the Paris Museums, specifically the Musée Carnavalet,
- [Stress disconnects our memories.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/31/stress-disconnects-our-memories/) - Nature finds that a single stressful event -- like a job interview, a thesis defense, or a car accident -- affects our brains in a way that makes it harder for memories to stick to one another, and to draw conclusions based on them: The brain connects new and old information to make inferences through
- [Seed oils are better than beef, actually.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/28/seed-oils-are-better-than-beef-actually/) - STAT shared the words of a frustrated cardiac dietitian who is personally exhausted by the public panic over seed oils, which, depending on how you look at them, really are healthier than the alternatives: First, “seed oils” is a marketing term, not a nutritional category. What we’re actually talking about are vegetable oils high in
- [Science Art: <i>Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky</i>, by David K. Stone.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/25/science-art-konstantin-e-tsiolkovsky-by-david-k-stone/) - I found the image in the San Diego Air & Space Museum's "Aerophilately Special Collection" on Flickr; this is actually a detail from the full image, which includes both a cancelled stamp (this seems to have been a post card, or a mockup of one) and a block of text about Tsiolkovsky's role as the
- [SONG: Alone](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/24/song-alone/) - SONG: "Alone". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "What Killed the Neanderthals? A Lack of Social Connection May Have Played A Big Role In Their Extinction", IFL Science, 04 May 2026, as used in the post "Neanderthals died out from something like loneliness". ABSTRACT: I kinda knew this month I'd be on this
- [A new (easier) way to detect alien life.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/19/a-new-easier-way-to-detect-alien-life/) - Mashable reports on astrobiology research that may have found a simpler (and, importantly, more portable) way to detect traces of life on alien planets ... by measuring up amounts of chemicals rather than identifying specific life-related molecules: It turns out a strong statistical divide exists between biological and nonbiological samples, according to a new study.
- [Science Art: <i>Fowler - Coregonus Nelsonii Bean.</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/18/science-art-fowler-coregonus-nelsonii-bean/) - This is an Alaska whitefish, a cousin of the salmon whose genus name, Coregonus, means "angle-eyed." But this isn't the eye. It's the alimentary canal, the guts, taken from a dissection done for the 1904 edition of Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society held at Philadelphia for promoting useful knowledge. It's useful to know how
- [Neanderthals died out from something like loneliness](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/15/neanderthals-died-out-from-something-like-loneliness/) - Or maybe "loner-ism." IFL Science reports on new research showing that what might have led to the demise of Neanderthals as a distinct kind of human was the lack of a social network: Scientists at the University of Montreal fed heaps of archaeological and ethnographic data into computer models that are typically used to study
- [A Florida high schooler got anxiety meds from tarantua venom.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/13/a-florida-high-schooler-got-anxiety-meds-from-tarantua-venom/) - Relax, the spider is here to soothe you. Tampa Bay Times reported on Daniel Park, who won a state-wide science competition by using his computers to design a drug candidate for treating anxiety and depression by using tarantula venom: “I definitely wanted to focus on mental health,” he said, noting that he has talked with
- [Science Art: <i>Paraboloide Circular 02</i>, by Rodrigo Argenton](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/11/science-art-paraboloide-circular-02-by-rodrigo-argenton/) - This is a circular paraboloid, a shape with "one axis of symmetry and no center of symmetry," according to Wikipedia, which also, helpfully, says a *circular* paraboloid is a paraboloid that contains circles. There's an equation -- z=(x2/a2)+(y2/b2) -- that describes a circular paraboloid if a and b are equal. It's a useful shape because
- [Brazilian villages make a good living protecting a giant fish](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/11/brazilian-villages-make-a-good-living-protecting-a-giant-fish/) - Science reports on a conservation project that's also helping some of the poorest people on the planet -- villagers along the Juruá River, a western tributary of the Amazon -- by protecting a gigantic species of freshwater fish for profit and for the sake of conservation: The project, which emerged from a collaboration between ecologists
- [The Earliest Emperor Butterfly](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/09/the-earliest-emperor-butterfly/) - IFL Science reports on the (beautiful) discovery of a (well-preserved) butterfly from 34 million years ago ... a specimen with visible, identifiable wing patterns and veins that was originally excavated and ignored in 1979: “This discovery highlights the importance of protected fossil deposits and the enduring value of museum collections and historical discoveries, which are
- [Science Art: <i>Azimuth and Altitude Instrument</i>, c. 1876](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/04/science-art-azimuth-and-altitude-instrument-c-1876/) - This is an illustration from the Great Exhibition, 1876, or The great Centennial exhibition critically described and illustrated, by Phillip T. Sandhurst, which you can leaf through over on archive.org. Here's how this machine, part of the "Machinery Hall" chapter, is described: We have mentioned before the fine exhibit of astronomical instruments made by Messrs.
- [Trees grow six times taller in strange Amazonian soil.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/05/01/trees-grow-six-times-taller-in-strange-amazonian-soil/) - BBC's Science Focus is digging in the dirt to get inside the mystery of "dark earth," which seems to make the Amazon as fertile as it is... though no one knows how it got there: Since the 1880s, Western explorers surveying the forest have stumbled upon mysterious patches of black, nutrient-rich soil that’s different from
- [Science Art: <i>Solar Explosions, G79</i>, by Clement Lindley Wragge.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/04/27/science-art-solar-explosions-g79-by-clement-lindley-wragge/) - This is a slide from the magic lantern shows of Clement Lindley Wragge, a popularizer of astronomy, a meteorologist, and a Theosophist mystic who died in 1922. There's a collection of his work up at Public Domain Review, including dramatic paintings of the moon's craters, sunspots, and the planet Saturn as seen from one its
- [SONG: We Ate Each Other's Wings](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/04/24/song-we-ate-each-others-wings/) - SONG: "We Ate Each Other's Wings". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "These roaches form exclusive long-term relationships after eating each other's wings", NPR, 18 Mar 2026, as used in the post "Cockroaches bond by eating each other's wings.". ABSTRACT: I guess I knew I'd be writing a song about this article, as
- [Science Art: <i>Mars - Cloudy North Polar Cap</i>, by Andrea Luck](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/04/20/science-art-mars-cloudy-north-polar-cap-by-andrea-luck/) - Really, I guess the full title of this should be: Mars - Cloudy North Polar Cap - CNSA Tianwen-1. "CNSA" is the China National Space Administration - this is China's answer to NASA, and they've been checking out Mars. Andrea Luck put together two images from the Tianwen-1 Mars mission, from CNSA/CLEP/PEC/MoRIC. You can find
- [The sacred stone axes hunted cosmic game](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/04/17/the-sacred-stone-axes-hunted-cosmic-game/) - IFL Science looks back in time, studying handaxes made by Homo erectus from unlikely materials like crystals or fossils ... which seem likely to have been created for religious reasons, hunting spiritual meat when flesh-and-blood elephants started dying off: The incredible lithic assemblage was first discovered in the Sakhnin Valley in Israel by local independent
- [Diagnosed by your contact lens](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/04/15/contact-lens-pharmacy/) - Science Adviser looks at medical advice given by an optometrist on a contact lens: When your optometrist asks you to look through a machine at the red hot air balloon in the distance and warns you about an incoming “little puff of air,” they’re measuring your eye pressure. If that pressure is too high, you
- [The Carroll Crater](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/04/14/the-carroll-crater/) - Mashable is one of the outlets that reported on the naming of a newly identified lunar crater by the astronauts of the Artemis mission... one of the most moving stories from this voyage around the far side of the Moon: A few hours before mission control's expected communication blackout with the Orion spacecraft, the crew
- [Science Art: <i>Earth-moon Relationship MSC, HOUSTON, TX</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/04/13/science-art-earth-moon-relationship-msc-houston-tx/) - This is a line drawing of the Apollo mission's lunar module reaching the Moon, staying a while, and then coming back home. It's a few decades old now. I think we're getting the hang of this, yeah? The picture came from the DVIDSHub "NASA Drawings" collection.
- [France ditches Windows for Linux](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/04/11/france-ditches-windows-for-linux/) - Not the people; the country. Techcrunch reports on a European government switching operating systems to avoid relying on U.S. tech: Linux is an open source operating system that is free to download and use, with various customized distributions that are tailored and designed for specific use cases or operations. In a statement, French minister David
- [Science Art: <i>Chromista</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/04/06/science-art-chromista/) - An illustration from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service "Biological Illustration" collection of chromista, which is a proposed kingdom of life. As in animal, vegetable, fungus.... This is, Wikipedia tells us, "controversial." It was proposed in the 1980s as a group that included some kinds of algae and some kinds of protozoans, including Paramecium, the
- [Hammerheads "thermal hustle" for better hunting](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/04/04/hammerheads-thermal-hustle-for-better-hunting/) - BBC's Discover Wildlife reports on a shark study that finds some simple ways hammerhead sharks are shifting to cope with the warming seas from climate change: All living things have an optimal range of temperatures they can live in. Some thrive when the mercury falls, whilst others embrace the scorching heat. When they are pushed
- [New star tells oldest story, 12 billion years later](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/04/03/new-star-tells-oldest-story/) - Mashable reports on a newly discovered star that can serve as a time capsule for the some of the earliest days of the universe, made out of remnants of one of the first stars ever to wink on and then burn out: Researchers spotted the extremely ancient and chemically primitive star in Pictor II, a
- [Science Art: <i>Eyes of Epeira conica x30</i>, 1884](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/30/science-art-eyes-of-epeira-conica-x30-1884/) - A spider's face seen at 30-times magnification, from the February 1884 issue of Science Gossip. This is illustrating a sort of study, or perhaps prose poem, about this spider species. The language goes something like this: Epeira conica , the subject of the plate, is a species of the Family Epe'iridae of the Tribe Octonoculina,
- [Brains keep developing at every age.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/27/brains-keep-developing-at-every-age/) - Nature reports on the first atlas of brain development -- a map of where and when new cells develop in human brains -- and the surprising finding that human brains never stop developing, even at 100 years of age: The comprehensive guide draws on brain scans from almost 3,600 people, ranging from infants to centenarians.
- [SONG: Birds Are Digging](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/25/song-birds-are-digging/) - SONG: "Birds Are Digging". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "How A Black Fossil Digger Became a Superstar in the Very White World of Paleontology", NPR, 2 Feb 2026, as used in the post "Black South African digger becomes paleontology star". ABSTRACT: Seems like I had a productive spurt and then wound up
- [SONG: Social Prosthetic](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/24/song-social-prosthetic/) - SONG: "Social Prosthetic". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "Why Did Jeffrey Epstein Cultivate Famous Scientists?", Scientific American, 20 Jan 2026, as used in the post "Why did Jeffrey Epstein “collect” so many scientists?". ABSTRACT: This is the first original I've completed since October. What a strange few months it's been. This song
- [Cockroaches bond by eating each other's wings.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/23/cockroaches-bond-by-eating-each-others-wings/) - NPR shares romance among the insects with research that shows at least one species of cockroach, Salganea taiwanensis, forms long-term pair-bonds. And, poetically, these cockroach couples do it by eating each other's wings: That "just means that two individual organisms will spend an extended period of time with each other and will exclude other individuals
- [Science Art: <i>OSIRIS-REx after SRC release</i>, 2023](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/23/science-art-osiris-rex-after-src-release-2023/) - This is a still from an animation showing what a larger spaceship does after firing a small capsule toward Earth. The capsule is filled with samples from an asteroid. The description, from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's archives on Flickr, is: After releasing the capsule, OSIRIS-REx fires its thrusters to avoid colliding with Earth.
- [Palm-sized glass can store 2 million books' worth of data](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/19/palm-sized-glass-can-store-2-million-books-worth-of-data/) - PhysOrg looks through a Microsoft Research Labs breakthrough called Silica that can use pulses of laser light to inscribe ordinary glass blocks so that they'll work as a data-storage medium with the capacity to last thousands of years: These pulses are called "ultrashort" for a reason. Each one lasts mere quadrillionths of a second (aka
- [Life that can survive a full-on asteroid impact.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/17/life-that-can-survive-a-full-on-asteroid-impact/) - Mashable discusses the discovery at Johns Hopkins of microbes that are hardy enough to have traveled across the vacuum of space and then survived the planet-breaking force of an asteroid impact. The hypothesis is called "lithopanspermia," the idea that life travels between planets on chunks of space-rock. In other words, these tough little guys could
- [Science Art: <i>Stand-Pipe, Boston</i>, 1882](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/16/science-art-stand-pipe-boston-1882/) - A hydrological edifice. As explained in A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating to the hydrology, hydrodynamics, and practical construction of water works, in North America, (which I found on archive.org): The stand-pipes as generally used, serve as partial substitutes for relief-valves combined or acting in conjunction with tall and capacious air-chambers. The
- [Our brains run on 20 watts of power.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/16/our-brains-run-on-20-watts-of-power/) - Are we bright, or really kinda dim? IFL Science reports that the human brain uses about as much electricity as the average computer monitor: Considered as an organ, the brain is admittedly extremely energy-hungry: it accounts for about two percent of your body by weight, but about 20 percent of your basal energy consumption. But
- [Fire-nadoes to clean the ocean](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/13/fire-nadoes-to-clean-the-ocean/) - BBC's Science Focus imagines a brighter future ... brighter from the blazing fire-tornadoes used to clean plastics and oil from our over-polluted oceans: Taking inspiration from a freak 2003 incident in Kentucky – where a bourbon spill sent 800,000 gallons up in flames, twisting into a 30m (100ft) fire whirl on a lake – Prof
- [Science Art: <i>Aneurismal dilatation (arteriovenous aneurism)...</i>, 1915.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/09/science-art-aneurismal-dilatation-arteriovenous-aneurism-1915/) - The full caption of this figure reads "Aneurismal dilatation (arteriovenous aneurism) of branches of coronary arteries in a case of anomalous origin of the left coronary from the pulmonary artery." It's from a book about congenital heart defects called Congenital Cardiac Disease (available on archive.org) by Dr. Maude E. Abbott, a pioneering medical researcher at
- [A new explanation for the missing billion years in Earth's geologic record.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/06/a-new-explanation-for-the-missing-billion-years-in-earths-geologic-record/) - IFL Science has a new explanation of "The Great Unconformity," a worldwide phenomenon in which about a billion years of rock deposits are just missing, everywhere around the world... perhaps due to the creation of a "supercontinent" named Columbia: "Unconformities are a type of geologic contact – a boundary between rocks – caused by a
- [School bus-sized spinosaur discovered](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/06/school-bus-sized-spinosaur-discovered/) - Last month, BBC's Science Focus reported on an "astonishingly" large dinosaur discovered in the Sahara Desert of Niger -- a bus-sized behemoth with a crescent-shaped crest on its head that hunted far inland from its closest (and much smaller) fish-eating relatives: Named Spinosaurus mirabilis – meaning ‘astonishing’ Spinosaurus in Latin – the giant lived in
- [Science Art: Modern Electrical Construction, <i>Fig. 58</i>, 1905](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/03/02/science-art-modern-electrical-construction-fig-58-1905/) - This is a switch for "constant current" electricity to go into a building, a "A modern commercial form of this switch," is what the book calls it. The book in question being Horstmann and Tousley's Modern electrical construction; a reliable, practical guide for the beginner in electrical construction, showing the latest approved methods of installing
- [Better long-term memory ... for females, at least.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/02/26/better-long-term-memory-for-females-at-least/) - Nature reports on research that gave mice acetate, a common byproduct of digesting alcohol, glucose, or fiber... and found that it improved long-term memory -- in the female mice, at least: The team introduced the mice to two matching objects and let them interact with these objects for 10 minutes. Twenty-four hours later, the mice
- [No song today.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/02/25/no-song-today-19/) - I have the bones of a song, but no proper lyrics. I owe you a song, and a penitential cover. Mea maxima culpa.
- [Science Art: <i>Eye orbit anatomy anterior 2</i>, by Patrick Lynch.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/02/23/science-art-eye-orbit-anatomy-anterior-2-by-patrick-lynch/) - Unblinking, the lidless eye gazes out from its skull, unseeing. I found this anatomical image while browsing through the "Featured Images" collection on Wikimedia Commons. I don't know anything about medical illustrator Patrick J. Lynch, but I guess from now on ... I'll be keeping an eye out for him?
- [Honey bees navigate VERY precisely.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/02/20/honey-bees-navigate-very-precisely/) - PhysOrg considers the flight paths of honeybees in three dimensions and finds that the insects are even more precise than anyone imagined: A team from the University of Freiburg led by neurobiologist and behavioral biologist Prof. Dr. Andrew Straw studied the flight behavior of honey bees. Using a drone, the researchers tracked honey bees as
- [A drill older than the pharoahs](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/02/20/a-drill-older-than-the-pharoahs/) - PhysOrg reports on a very old tool - does it count as a power tool? At any rate, it was made in Egypt thousands of years ago, rediscovered in the 1920s and then, on re-examination now, re-rediscovered as a bow-powered drill: The artifact (cataloged as 1924.948 A in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University
- [Science Art: <i>Kentrosaurus aethiopicus</i>, by H. Zell.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/02/16/science-art-kentrosaurus-aethiopicus-by-h-zell/) - This is an image from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, a German natural history museum, where they have a skeleton of a stegosaurus relative unearthed in Tendaguru, Tanzania. It's 4.5 meters long, or about 15 feet, and was walking around probably around 150 million years ago.
- [Black South African digger becomes paleontology star](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/02/12/black-south-african-digger-becomes-paleontology-star/) - NPR shared the story of Lazarus Kgasi, who started as a laborer but fell in love with the science -- and is now helping shape what we know of life's origins: This is the story of how Kgasi became a prominent junior curator at the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History in a field dominated
- [Science Art: <i>Cathode Ray Tubes</i>, 1974](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/02/09/science-art-cathode-ray-tubes-1974/) - An image from an ad from the Jan/Feb 1974 issue of the Journal for the Society for Informational Display. The edition is pretty light on scientific illustrations and pretty heavy on flowcharts and circuit diagrams... and some great typography. But this ad from Special Purpose Technology Co. of Van Nuys, CA, definitely evokes the high
- [Snakes can fast because they got rid of a hormone.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/02/07/snakes-can-fast-because-they-got-rid-of-a-hormone/) - Science reports on a discovery researchers are putting up there with GLP-1 anti-obesity drugs. In this case, snakes can survive long, and foodless, periods of hibernation by getting rid of the genes that produce the hunger-regulating hormone named ghrelin: Chameleons and a group of desert lizards called toadhead agamas that also have huge spaces between
- [Teenage cigarettes lead to grown-up opioid trouble.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/02/02/teenage-cigarettes-leads-to-grown-up-opioid-trouble/) - A University of Pennsylvania grad researcher has found that teenagers who smoke tobacco are at higher risk for addiction to morphine, heroin, or fentanyl, because early nicotine exposure increases the "reward" feeling from opioid drugs: The link between early-life nicotine use and OUD is not well understood, so for her PhD in the labs of
- [Where for OUR wedding?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/1999/01/01/where-for-our-wedding/)
- [Science Art: <i>Curiosity Approaching Mars, Artist's Concept</i>, 2012](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/02/02/science-art-curiosity-approaching-mars-artists-concept-2012/) - Is it strange how much this resembles a 1950s comic-book cover about dashing flying saucer pilots? And we made it real, and we sent it to space piloted by remote control computers with a crew of robots.... I found this image on Wikimedia Commons' collection of Illustrations of Mars Science Laboratory. The description from there
- [Age-blocking injection rebuilds knee cartilage.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/31/age-blocking-injection-rebuilds-knee-cartilage/) - Sci Tech Daily investigates a new treatment for arthritis that can not just stop joint damage but actually reverse it by blocking chemicals associated with aging ... even in young patients: Researchers at Stanford Medicine report that blocking a protein linked to aging can restore cartilage that naturally wears away in the knees of older
- [Long life really can come down to good ancestors.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/30/long-life-really-can-come-down-to-good-ancestors/) - Well, good at living a long time, at least. Nature reports on a study that finds about 55 percent of the factors that grant a long life come from your inherited DNA: The findings should aid in the quest to find specific genes involved in ageing and to develop treatments for ageing and age-related diseases,
- [Fossil reveals new *kingdom* of life.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/30/fossil-reveals-new-kingdom-of-life/) - Science Adviser reports on the discovery (or rediscovery) of a fossil that is not just a new species, not just a new class, order, nor phylum of life. It's so different from animals, vegetables, and even fungi that it's being considered an entirely new kingdom -- that died out 400 million years ago: Ever since
- [Science Art: <i>Don't wait - 70% are doomed</i>, c. 1936](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/27/science-art-dont-wait-70-are-doomed-c-1936/) - This is a poster from the WPA urging people to save their own lives ... by getting tested for a sexually transmitted disease. The geometry of the diagram in the center -- the circle lined with Bauhaus-styled geometric human heads, divided into seven-and-three by inverted colors -- seems to evoke the equipment used to conduct
- [Why did Jeffrey Epstein "collect" so many scientists?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/22/why-did-jeffrey-epstein-collect-so-many-scientists/) - Scientific American has a rather deeply researched piece on something that feels like it's about politics at first, since it's following the donations of a disgraced late financier and sex predator... but it's really a story about how science gets done, which questions get asked, who is paying for the answers, and why: So, legal
- [Science Art: From <i>Les raisons des forces mouuantes, etc.,</i> 1615.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/19/science-art-from-les-raisons-des-forces-mouuantes-etc-1615/) - This is a light experiment from the 1600s, which I found in the British Library archive over yonder. The book, Les raisons des forces &c was written by Salomon de Caus. You can find it on archive.org. I admit that I can't read Early Modern French, but the book seems to be an examination of
- [Wearing octopus camouflage](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/16/wearing-octopus-camouflage/) - Nature reports on materials engineers stealing the secrets of octopus skin to create substances that can change color and texture on demand: Very small sub-micrometre bumps or grooves, comparable in size to visible-light wavelengths, and larger ones up to millimetres affect how a surface scatters light. This can make a material more or less dull,
- [Robots the size of microbes.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/16/robots-the-size-of-microbes/) - Science recently covered some breakthroughs in building robots that measure less than a millimeter square, but can sense surroundings, carry out commands, make calculations, and respond to their environment: Although miniaturization has been a goal in robotics for nearly 40 years, roboticists have struggled to access submillimeter dimensions without making sacrifices to onboard information processing
- [Science Art: <i>Violet-Rays!</i>, 1917](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/12/science-art-violet-rays-1917/) - This is an ad from the April 1917 edition of Hugo Gernsback's The Electrical Experimenter, which you can read on archive.org here. I can only assume this is an early blacklight bulb (operates on battery or alternating or direct current) that is supposed to infuse your blood with ozone (how?) lending vitality to your scalp,
- [Caribbean whales have viruses we've never heard of.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/11/caribbean-whales-have-viruses-weve-never-heard-of/) - Science Daily reports on pilot whales and orcas in the Caribbean which DNA analysis has revealed are carrying "invisible" viruses we've never detected before: The group includes students and senior scientists from Arizona State University (ASU), Coastal Carolina University, The University of the South in the US, as well as researchers in Saint Vincent and
- [Why is your brain so tired?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/10/why-is-your-brain-so-tired/) - Nature reports on new findings about the roots of mental fatigue -- which has implications not just for generally feeling worn out, but also for conditions like chronic fatigue, surgical recovery, and long covid: Researchers and clinicians have long struggled to define, measure and treat cognitive fatigue — relying mostly on self-reports of how tired
- [Pink Power Ranger hacker breaks white power websites.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/07/pink-power-ranger-hacker-breaks-white-power-websites/) - CyberNews reports on Martha Root, a pseudonymous hacker who single-handedly infiltrated and shut down a series of websites dedicated to white power: The leak affects WhiteDate, a white supremacist dating site for “Europids seeking tribal love,” WhiteChild, a white supremacist site focused on family and ancestry, and WhiteDeal, a networking and professional development site for
- [Science Art: <i>The Poultry of the World</i>, 1868](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/05/science-art-the-poultry-of-the-world-1868/) - Fifty-two breeds of chickens! This is an educational poster from the 1800s, published by L. Prang & Co., Boston, the makers of "Prang's American Chromos: FacSimiles of oil paintings, reducing their cost to a few dollars." It promises "portraits of all known valuable breeds of fowls" and includes guinea fowl (a personal favorite) along with
- [Deer pee glows during mating season](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2026/01/05/deer-pee-glows-during-mating-season/) - Science ran a festive piece of research during the longest nights of winter, with biologists who've found that male white-tailed deer mark their territory during mating season with antler-rubbings and urine that glows in a faint blue that may be visible to other deer: “I would equate it to highway reflectors,” says Daniel DeRose-Broeckert, a
- [Science Art: <i>Diagram of the Comparative Sizes of the Planets</i>, 1895](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/12/29/science-art-diagram-of-the-comparative-sizes-of-the-planets-1895/) - This is one of the 10 illustrations by Dan Beard for John Jacob Aster's book A Journey In Other Worlds. Well, actually it's the one diagram. The other nine images show things like alien tortoises and giant ants attacking a woolly mammoth on Jupiter. Here's the preface for the book, which sets out its mission
- [Reversing Alzheimer's? In mice at least....](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/12/25/reversing-alzheimers-in-mice-at-least/) - Science Daily shared news from University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center about mice trials that demonstrate memories actually being restored as brain energy levels are brought back by new Alzheimer's treatments: By examining both human Alzheimer's brain tissue and multiple preclinical mouse models, the team [led by Kalyani Chaubey, PhD, of the Pieper Laboratory] identified a
- [SONG: Nine Lives to Rigel Five (a penitential Game Theory cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/12/24/song-nine-lives-to-rigel-five-a-penitential-game-theory-cover/) - SONG: "Nine Lives to Rigel Five (a penitential Game Theory cover)". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This is not based on scientific research; it's a penitential cover for missing the November song. It was originally by Game Theory, but also had a nice twee cover by Gaze. ABSTRACT: Musically speaking, I was having a
- [Science Art: <i>NIH- NCI cancer research</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/12/22/science-art-nih-nci-cancer-research/) - An image of a cell, a neoplasm, from the National Institute of Health's National Library of Medicine, the "Images from the History of Medicine" collection. A "neoplasm" is an excessive growth of tissue that forms a mass we usually call a tumor. I'm not sure if we should call it a component part of a
- [Hold fire in this house bubble wrap](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/12/20/hold-fire-in-this-house-bubble-wrap/) - Gizmodo had a piece on a new heat-insulating film that's so efficient, you can hold open flames in your hands and not be burned: Physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a new material called the Mesoporous Optically Clear Heat Insulator, or MOCHI for short. Unlike the name, MOCHI is no dessert—it’s a
- [Science Art: <i>Akrobati, Lokální těžiště a hmotnosti</i>, 2016](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/12/14/science-art-akrobati-lokalni-teziste-a-hmotnosti-2016/) - Biomechanics, with acrobats. A photo illustration by Karel Frydrýšek. The description, translated from Czech, reads: "Four acrobats, chosen coordinate system, local center of gravity and masses (calculation hint)." From the Biomechanics subcategory of the Materials Science collection on Wikimedia Commons.
- [Ultrablack dress made from bird-feather tech.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/12/14/ultrablack-dress-made-from-bird-feather-tech/) - Nature Communications has research from Cornell ornithologists and material engineers who created a new blacker-than-black dress that's breathable and stretchable, because it's made from natural fibers, using the light-absorbing properties seen in the feathers of the magnificent riflebird (Ptiloris magnificus): Some animals express an extreme level of black color, called “ultrablack” with reflectance
- [Science Art: <i>ORDEN DE LOS SIGNOS DEL ZODIACO</i>, 1614.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/12/08/science-art-orden-de-los-signos-del-zodiaco-1614/) - From Theatro del mvndo, y del tiempo, which I've mentioned here before but have accessed yonder, on archive.org. This is a chart of the human hand used as a measuring instrument for the night sky, not unlike the hand-astronomy practiced by ancient Polynesian navigators. In this case, though, we've got the hand as a way
- [Bright lichens reveal dino bones](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/12/03/bright-lichens-reveal-dino-bones/) - Science News reports on a colorful breakthrough in dinosaur hunting, thanks to two lichen species that prefer to grow on dinosaur bones and are a shade of orange that's bright enough to be spotted by drones flying overhead: Lichens tend to be quite picky about where they grow, says AJ Deneka, a lichenologist at Carleton
- [Butt breathing for when lungs fail](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/12/01/butt-breathing-for-when-lungs-fail/) - Science News reports on medical doctor and stem cell biologist Takanori Takebe's quest to build a back-door alternative to invasive, awkward ventilator machines for pneumonia patients ... by harnessing the gut's ability to absorb oxygen almost as well as lungs do: With his background in gastroenterology, Takebe knew that the human intestinal tract is rich
- [Science Art: <i>Noordung's Space Station Habitat Wheel</i>, 1929](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/30/science-art-noordungs-space-station-habitat-wheel-1929/) - Here's a space station from before the first rocket left Earth's atmosphere. The description from DVIDS (Defense Visual Information Distribution Service) Hub, where I found the image, reads: Hermann Potocnik (1892-1929), also known as Herman Noordung, created the first detailed technical drawings of a space station. Power was generated by collecting sunlight through the concave
- [Thanksgiving Theremin: <i>Which Theremin Should You Get?</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/28/thanksgiving-theremin-which-theremin-should-you-get/) - Caroline Scruggs enthusiastically shares her five favorite theremins for beginners.
- [Thanksgiving Theremin: Man or Astro-Man Live in Scotland, 1999](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/27/thanksgiving-theremin-man-or-astro-man-live-in-scotland-1999/) - Look for the theremin at 1:54... if you dare!
- [No song for November](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/23/no-song-for-november/) - It is now vanishingly unlikely there will be a song here for November. December will have to have a penitential cover.
- [Science Art: <i>Plate LXXXI</i> from <i>A natural history of British moths</i>, 1872.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/23/science-art-plate-lxxxi-from-a-natural-history-of-british-moths-1872/) - These are English moths, of the geni Rhodophaea, Oncocera, Aphomia, Galleria, Melliphora, Halias and Sarrothripa. Each species in this book has a description like: The situations where it is found are woods. The perfect insect appears in July, August, September, and October. The caterpillar is green with a darker line along the bank ; the
- [Octopus color-changing pigment is recreated.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/17/octopus-color-changing-pigment-is-recreated/) - Science Alert reports on the latest superpower to be replicated in the lab with a UC San Diego team producing xanthommatin, the pigment chemical responsible for octopus' amazing ability to camouflage themselves in their environment: The researchers technically didn't make the pigment. They bioengineered bacteria to make it, coaxing microbes to not only produce this
- [Science Art: <i>New Patent Hot Air Motors...</i>, 1894](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/17/science-art-new-patent-hot-air-motors-1894/) - This is an ad from the back cover of Science Gossip magazine, a publication which I discovered via Nemfrog. These "hot-air motors" were made by "JOHN J. GRIFFIN & SONS, Ltd, Chemical, Philosophical, and Photographic Instrument Makers, MAKERS TO THE ADMIRALTY, WAR DEPARTMENT, INDIA AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENTS, physical and chemical apparatus of every description." The
- [Snot drones for whale science](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/13/snot-drones-for-whale-science/) - Knowable Magazine reports on a new use for remote-controlled drones -- to collect DNA samples from whales blowing mucus out their blowholes, and to simply spy on whales from above: As darkness fell, a whale dove in front of Kerr and covered him in whale snot. That unpleasant experience gave [researcher Iain] Kerr, who works
- [Science Art: <i>The Ophidian Eye in Vertical Section</i>, 1942](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/10/science-art-the-ophidian-eye-in-vertical-section-1942/) - When the snake sees, this is what the snake sees with. The snake in question is Natrix natrix, the barred grass snake. The image was "redrawn from Schwarz-Karsten, modified from original preparations." The labels can be translated thusly: am- accommodatory muscle; ap- anterior pad of lens; b- brain; c- cornea; cb- ciliary body (main portion,
- [A cave full of 111,000 spiders in the dark.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/08/a-cave-full-of-111000-spiders-in-the-dark/) - Live Science goes into the brimstone of the underworld -- a sulfuric cave literally named "Sulfur Cave" -- on the border of Greece and Albania, and finds -- along with a biologist from Transylvania -- the lightless pit is filled with the largest spiderweb ever discovered: The web stretches 1,140 square feet (106 square meters)
- [A toilet powered by mushrooms](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/05/a-toilet-powered-by-mushrooms/) - CTV News has an item from University of British Columbia researchers who have found an alternative to Port-a-Potties and camp toilets that doesn't need all the maintenance, doesn't smell, and actually leaves the forest (or music festival) a little better off for having been there. It's a toilet that runs on mushrooms: The MycoToilet works
- [Science Art: <i>Illustration of a Southern Sierra Nevada fisher</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/11/03/science-art-illustration-of-a-southern-sierra-nevada-fisher/) - This is a mustelid, a relative of weasels and wolverines, called a fisher. The scientific name is Pekania pennanti. They've never been very common, and are getting less so. (A Florida fisher-relative known as "the cracker dogkiller" is basically considered a cryptid - no one is sure if it really exists.) They're not actually fond
- [Eye implant reverses blindness](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/30/eye-implant-reverses-blindness/) - Nature reports on an electronic retinal implant that has successfully allowed people with age-related macular degeneration to see again: The implant, which measures 2 millimetres by 2 millimetres, and is just 30 micrometres thick, is surgically inserted beneath the retina to replace the light-sensitive cells that have been lost to the disease. The clinical trial,
- [Satellites are the weak link in keeping secrets.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/30/satellites-are-the-weak-link-in-keeping-secrets/) - Wired has an unsettling bit of tech reporting on how easy it is to see nearly all of our secrets with about $800 worth of equipment. Phone calls, internet searches, Signal chats, troop positions, Zoom meetings, reading science websites... it all might be encrypted on either end, but the information streaming in and out of
- [Science Art:<i>Vergleich der Aufnahme von RNA und modR in der Zelle</i>, 2018](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/27/science-artvergleich-der-aufnahme-von-rna-und-modr-in-der-zelle-2018/) - A diagram of two kinds of RNA doing their thing inside a cell (which is converting instructions from DNA into some kind of protein that a cell uses to do something. Since this illustration originally came from an article called, "mRNA-Based Protein Replacement Therapy for the Heart," you can kind of guess what sort of
- [SONG: What To Do (On mRNA Immune Checkpoint Blockade)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/25/song-what-to-do-on-mrna-immune-checkpoint-blockade/) - SONG: "What To Do (On mRNA Immune Checkpoint Blockade)". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "People with some cancers live longer after a COVID vaccine", Nature, 22 Oct 2025, as used in the post "Covid vaccine boosts life-saving cancer treatment". ABSTRACT: I have this guitar. Really, what it is is that I have
- [Covid vaccine boosts life-saving cancer treatment.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/23/covid-vaccine-boosts-life-saving-cancer-treatment/) - Nature just released a "huh, go figure!" bit of preliminary research showing better outcomes for patients with melanoma or lung cancer who had a COVID-19 vaccination within 100 days of starting cancer immunotherapy. It's an unexpected boon from the way mRNA shots boost the immune system overall: “The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine acts like a siren
- [Making embryos from human skin](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/22/making-embryos-from-human-skin/) - BBC recently reported on scientists taking DNA from human skin cells and fertilizing it with sperm to create a non-egg embryo - or at least an embryo with someone else's DNA: The technique could overcome infertility due to old age or disease, by using almost any cell in the body as the starting point for
- [AI detects melanoma with 99% accuracy.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/21/ai-detects-melanoma-with-99-accuracy/) - Northeastern Global News reports on a positive use for artificial intelligence, with a system that outperforms other techniques by helping doctors spot potentially deadly skin cancers with 99 percent accuracy: To improve early detection, Northeastern University researchers turned to artificial intelligence. Divya Chaudhary, an assistant teaching professor of computer science at Northeastern’s Seattle campus, and
- [Science Art: <i>Ribbon schematic of the 3D structure of the protein triose phosphate isomerase</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/20/ribbon-schematic-of-the-3d-structure-of-the-protein-triose-phosphate-isomerase/) - Jane Richardson drew this by hand and then colored it in back in 1981. It's a protein molecule, or a diagram of how things move inside a protein molecule. Here's the description from the Wikimedia Commons page where I found it: Ribbon schematic (hand drawn & colored, in 1981) of the 3D structure of the
- [Making batteries out of concrete.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/19/making-batteries-out-of-concrete/) - As in the building material. MIT News reports on researchers who have gotten 10 times the power out of a reformulated battery that's made from concrete - that could one day be used to build self-powering buildings: Made by combining cement, water, ultra-fine carbon black (with nanoscale particles), and electrolytes, electron-conducting carbon concrete (ec3, pronounced
- [Science Art: <i>Yellow and blue, old and new</i>, 2025](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/13/science-art-yellow-and-blue-old-and-new-2025/) - This is a photo from 10 days ago of stars millions of light-years away (so the picture is of things long, long before October 3). The official credit is: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko, and the page in the official European Space Agency media library describes what we're seeing thusly: This sparkling spiral galaxy is
- [Skeleton sculpting of Stone-Age China](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/13/skeleton-sculpting-of-stone-age-china/) - PhysOrg reports on archaeologists studying "bone modification," a custom that seems to have been practiced among the first city-dwellers in southern China, who set up a kind of standardized workshop for sculpting human remains: The majority of worked bones could be classified as skull cups, mask-like facial skulls, small plate-shaped skull fragments, skulls with posterior
- [Science Art: <i>Instrumento de Geographia y Cosmographia</i>, 1606](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/06/science-art-instrumento-de-geographia-y-cosmographia-1606/) - This is a tool from Theatro del Mvndo y de el Tiempo, a book of star maps by Giovanni Paolo Gallucci, Miguel Perez, and Sebastian Muñoz. I found it in the David Rumsey Map Collection, the "Celestial" gallery. The Theater of the World and of Time is a translation of a Latin work into Castillian
- [Science Art: <i>Diagram of Meteorology</i>, James Reynolds and John Emslie.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2016/05/08/science-art-diagram-of-meteorology-james-reynolds-and-john-emslie/) - Click to embiggen vastly Are we in for weather? Yes, always. Good or bad, there's always some kind of weather. What kind? This diagram will show you. I found it in the David Rumsey Historical Map collection, which is a wonderful place in which to lose oneself. While, um, getting one's bearings.
- [Prehistoric Patagonian predator ate giant crocodiles](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/03/prehistoric-patagonian-predator-ate-giant-crocodiles/) - Reuters reports on a discover discovered in southern Argentina that apparently outdid T. rex and carnosaurus in its ferocity. A fossil of the colossal Cretaceous hunter was found with the leg of a prehistoric crocodile locked in its hungry jaws: The dinosaur, named Joaquinraptor casali, lived roughly 67 million years ago in what is now
- [Musicians don't feel pain like other people.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/10/03/musicians-dont-feel-pain-like-other-people/) - Is it worse? No, according to Science Alert. They're sharing research that shows musical training actually increases tolerance for pain: Research has also found that persistent pain can shrink what's known as our brain's "body map" – this is where our brain sends commands for which muscles to move and when – and this shrinking
- [Science Art: <i>One Osprey Mouth at a Time II</i>, by Phil's 1stPix](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/29/science-art-one-osprey-mouth-at-a-time-ii-by-phils-1stpix/) - Fish hawk family feeding their young, mother bird, father bird, and two osprey chicks high above a waterway.
- [SONG: Dirt Poor](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/25/song-dirt-poor/) - A song based on "Dirty emotions: Microbes in soil may affect hormones tied to love, mental health and social bonds", PhysOrg, 26 August 2025,
- [Science Art: <i>We Live With the Seminoles</i> opener, 1942](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/21/science-art-we-live-with-the-seminoles-opener-1942/) - This is the first page of an article from Natural History Magazine's April 1942 edition, which I found on archive.org. Today, the Seminole Tribe owns the Hard Rock Cafe brand, has a licensing agreement with Florida State University to use their name and likeness (with some creative control over those), and oodles of money from
- [Computers are beating humans at predicting future outcomes.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/21/computers-are-beating-humans-at-predicting-future-outcomes/) - Time (not a science magazine, but...) has a story on the Metaculus forecasting cup (not a scientific experiment, but...), which offers a $5,000 prize to members who successfully predict geopolitical events. Lately, in a new development, the human competitors have been losing to an AI: Forecasters estimate the probabilities of the events occurring—a more informative
- [Science Art: <i>Les 7 Instances selon Charles Baudouin</i>, by CBCB](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/15/science-art-les-7-instances-selon-charles-baudouin-by-cbcb/) - These are the seven elements of a psyche, a person's sense of self, as mapped out by Charles Baudouin, a French contemporary of Freud, Jung, and Adler. According to his Wikipedia article (auto-translated from French): . Taking up the Freudian notion of instances as "different substructures of the psychic apparatus" or sub-personalities, Baudouin brings together
- [Loss of smell may be an earlier sign of Alzheimer's.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/11/loss-of-smell-may-be-an-earlier-sign-of-alzheimers/) - ScienceAlert reports on a brain-scan study that finds the loss of smell -- apparently triggered by a misfiring immune response in the brain -- may give patients an earlier warning of Alzheimer's disease than problems with speech and memory: In the new research, scientists sought to uncover the neural underpinnings of the disease, analyzing positron
- [Psychedelics can open the mind's eye, kind of literally.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/10/psychedelics-can-open-the-minds-eye-kind-of-literally/) - IFL Science has some new findings about people with aphantasia -- that is, people who don't have an inner movie-screen playing thoughts as images. There are more of them than you might guess at first. Apparently, for good and for ill, some people who live without mental imagery suddenly gain it -- permanently -- after
- [Sand battery takes over heating duties for Finnish city.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/09/sand-battery-takes-over-heating-duties-for-finnish-city/) - News Atlas reports on an industrial-scale sand battery that is replacing a woodchip-fired power plant in Pornainen, Finland, with clean heat and energy: It's set to reduce carbon emissions from the local heating network by as much as 70%, and is the largest one of its kind in the world. Developed by Finnish Firm Polar
- [Ghost sharks have teeth on their foreheads because it's sexy.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/08/ghost-sharks-have-teeth-on-their-foreheads-because-its-sexy/) - PhysOrg redefines what "attractive" is for the deep-sea set, thanks to a study that has found male ghost sharks grow a retractable, tooth-covered rod out of their foreheads to help, well, "continue the species" as it were: Male "ghost sharks"—eerie deep-sea fish known as chimaeras that are related to sharks and rays—have a strange rod
- [Science Art: <i>Bisphenalenyl Biradical Ball</i>, by Jynto, 2011](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/08/science-art-bisphenalenyl-biradical-ball-by-jynto-2011/) - I found this illustration in the Wikimedia Commons "Category: Radicals" collection - it stood out from the other diagrams and models. Maybe because it looks a little like a simple diagram of a space station or SkyLab. The black parts (the hexagons) are carbon, and the white parts (the rods) are hydrogen. The "ball" in
- [Giant black-hole binaries spinning in star graveyard](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/05/giant-black-hole-binaries-spinning-in-star-graveyard/) - Space brings us new analyses of stellar graveyards, which astronomers study to discover how stars develop and, eventually, die - turning into dense neutron stars or denser black holes. Using a new laser-based gravity-wave detector, they've found a lot more going on in one stellar graveyard, including the largest black-hole binary system yet discovered: The
- [Dirty love: Soil steering our emotions](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/09/05/dirty-love-soil-steering-our-emotions/) - PhysOrg reports on Flinders University researchers who have found that soil microbes can affect our gut biota, which in turn can influence our emotional lives, including our feelings of romantic love: College of Science and Engineering biology researchers Dr. Jake Robinson, Ondi Crino and Associate Professor Martin Breed, with UK neuroscientist Araceli Camargo, outline the
- [Science Art: <i>If Resolution and Recognizability are Important to You...</i>, 1966](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/31/science-art-if-resolution-and-recognizability-are-important-to-you-1966/) - A General Electrodynamics Corporation ad for a television camera vidicon, a video camera tube - a thing that works like an old-fashioned television screen, scanning a ray of electrons really quickly across a grid. I suppose the Chinese writing and mathematical formulae are just examples of things you need clear resolution to read on a
- ["Brain coral terrain" tells a story of Martian history.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/26/brain-coral-terrain-tells-a-story-of-martian-history/) - The Planetary Science Institute reports on what space missions have learned from studying a strange, sinuous series of formations on the surface of Mars that resemble the curves and folds of brain coral. What they reveal, apparently, is a primeval history of glaciers moving across Mars: “Mars currently has an axial tilt similar to the
- [Science Art: <i>How ChatGPT visualizes itself.webp</i>, by ChatGPT](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/25/science-art-how-chatgpt-visualizes-itself-webp-by-chatgpt/) - Yes, this is AI art. But it is AI art that is by AI and about AI. From the image description on Wikimedia Commons: ChatGPT 4 generated this image based on the following prompt: "Generate an image you feel represents yourself; ChatGPT." I gotta say, this does look very much like a cover from Omni
- [SONG: Jet Lagged](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/25/song-jet-lagged/) - SONG: "Jet Lagged". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "Depression linked to 'internal jet lag', study finds," University of Sydney, 16 July 2025, as used in the post Depression is a form of jet lag. ABSTRACT: The timing on this was odd. I feel like it came together much faster than usual, but
- [Our cannibal grandparents](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/22/our-cannibal-grandparents/) - PhysOrg shares evidence that Neolithic humans -- the farmers of the Stone Age -- were a lot more into eating each other than previously thought: Francesc Marginedas at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) in Tarragona, Spain, and colleagues studied more than 600 bones and fragments from 11 well-preserved skeletons of
- [The covid pandemic rewired teens' brains](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/19/the-covid-pandemic-rewired-teens-brains/) - I mean, parents already kinda know this, but now Translational Psychiatry has studied (and is continuing to study) a group of teens from before the pandemic to now and found that the stress of the lockdown years had measurable effects on kids' immune systems, inflammation responses, learning, and other neurobiological development that will be felt
- [Science Art: <i>Poissons (B)</i>, by Adolphe Millot .](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/18/science-art-poissons-b-by-adolphe-millot/) - The fish, the fishes of the world, including at least one extinct fish (#21, Ceratodus, the coelacanth-looking one down there on the bottom left). There are remoras, cow fish, sturgeon ... there are sharks, rays, skates ... there are lungfish, anglerfish, sea horses, porcupine fish ... so many fish, so many shapes. Know your fish!
- [DNA reveals Africans in medieval England.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/15/dna-reveals-africans-in-medieval-england/) - Anthropology.net looks at two 7th-century graves from different parts of England -- Kent and Dorset -- that prove African-descended people were living in England practically from its start: In two cemeteries on England’s south coast, archaeologists have found something that rewrites the quiet assumptions about early medieval Britain. Among the graves of the 7th century,
- [SONG: Something's Knocking on the Door](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/24/song-somethings-knocking-on-the-door/) - SONG: "Something's Knocking on the Door". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "China’s Bold Plan Unveiled: A Deep-Sea Space Station 6560 Feet Underwater Set to Revolutionize Marine Exploration by 2030," Sustainability Times, 16 June 2025, as used in the post China's undersea station. ABSTRACT: Another song about Chinese science? OK then. I had
- [SONG: We Climb.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2008/07/23/song-we-climb/) - SONG: "We Climb." (To download: double right-click & "Save As") ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: "Fossil fills out water-land leap", BBC News, 25 Jun 2008, as used in the post "Four-legged Fish." (There's also a side-order of "Anti-evolutionary Bayou Seeping Into US Politics" in there, but you probably knew that.) ABSTRACT: Well, we all love transitional life
- [Sea star killer found. Now what?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/11/sea-star-killer-found-now-what/) - bioGraphic celebrates the discovery, at long last, of the phenomenon behind a mysterious wave of rather horrific sea star deaths on America's Pacific Coast. Now, researchers are trying to figure out how to use that information to end the largest marine die-off ever known: I’m here because this team believes it has unraveled a monumental
- [Science Art: <i>Long-Tsing-Yu or Les Yeux des Dragon </i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/11/science-art-long-tsing-yu-or-les-yeux-des-dragon/) - These are some of the first goldfish ever seen in Europe. The image (which I found in a great Public Domain Review article) came from Histoire naturelle des dorades de la Chine, written in 1780. As the PDR article puts it: Histoire naturelle des dorades de la Chine (1780) — the dorades in the title
- [Depression is a form of jet lag.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/08/depression-is-a-form-of-jet-lag/) - Or maybe vice versa. At any rate, the University of Sydney has published findings that demonstrate depression is physiologically really close to jet lag, and both problems seem to involve the cycles of the body's internal clock: The study, led by Dr Joanne Carpenter and Professor Ian Hickie from the University of Sydney, is the
- [Science Art: <i>First missile launched at Cape Canaveral, July 24, 1950.</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/08/04/science-art-first-missile-launched-at-cape-canaveral-july-24-1950/) - Scientific illustration of Bumper 8, the first missile NASA launched at Cape Canaveral, July 24, 1950, built around a captured German V2 missile.
- [Where the dark matter hides.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/31/where-the-dark-matter-hides/) - Caltech says that, thanks to an NSF grant, they've found where all the dark matter has been hiding. That's up to 50 percent of matter in the universe, the stuff that doesn't show up in telescopes scanning the stars, which make their own light. Most of the darker stuff has been waiting in the fog
- [Massive study finds the lifestyle to keep your brain young.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/29/massive-study-finds-the-lifestyle-to-keep-your-brain-young/) - NPR reports on a study of 2,100 ordinary, not super fit people in their 60s and 70s who spent two years on an intensive regimen of diet, exercise, socializing, and brain training, and found they experienced dramatic results in their ability to remember and think clearly: Results of what's known as the POINTER study were
- [Dragon? Or weasel?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/29/dragon-or-weasel/) - OK, not weasel but marten - which is close enough. Asahi Shimbun writes on the identity of a dragon mummy known as a Koryu held in the Shosoin Repository being finally revealed by X-ray photography as belonging to a female marten: On April 23, the Imperial Household Agency's Shosoin office based in Nara announced the
- [Science Art: <I>A four stage sequential game with a foresight bound</i>, Marco Mantovani](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/28/science-art-a-four-stage-sequential-game-with-a-foresight-bound-marco-mantovani/) - This is a game theory diagram from the paper, "Limited backward induction: foresight and behavior in sequential games," though I found it on Wikimedia Commons. It's used as an illustration in the Wikipedia article on "Backward Induction. This is when you figure out the best possible choices looking back from a desired endpoint. In other
- [Science Art: <i>A New Hummingbird From Ecuador</i>, 1926](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/20/science-art-a-new-hummingbird-from-ecuador-1926/) - From the pages of the November-December 1926 issue of Natural History magazine (found on archive.org) flies "The Aethereal Sylph (Cyanolesbia coelestis aetherius Chapman)". The blue... lesbian? I'll go with aethereal sylph, I think, although nowadays, they're violet-tailed sylphs.
- [Salt Typhoon (probably) has peeked into all sorts of U.S. gov't computers.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/17/salt-typhoon-probably-has-peeked-into-all-sorts-of-u-s-govt-computers/) - IT Pro echoes the warning of cybersecurity professionals that, since the Pentagon reported on China's Salt Typhoon group broaching a U.S. National Guard system, we should assume every U.S.-government networked computer has been compromised: According to the US Department of Defense (DoD), the group breached and laid low in the compromised network for almost a
- [A self-healing rechargeable battery made of cheap elements.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/17/a-self-healing-rechargeable-battery-made-of-cheap-elements/) - Ars Technica reports on a new sort of cathode that's made of materials that are abundant (therefore cheap), that store electrons and let them move rapidly (so it's a good conductor), and that repairs the usual degradation that makes other batteries wear out over time: The researchers ultimately targeted a material with the formula Li1.3Fe1.2Cl4.
- [Science Art: <i>The "Rotterdam Ship" was one of the earliest submarines...</i>, 1934](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/14/science-art-the-rotterdam-ship-was-one-of-the-earliest-submarines-1934/) - This image is actually much older than 1934; it's just that that is when William Beebe published it (courtesy of the New York Public Library) in his book Half Mile Down, which is both a survey of sea creatures found around the island of Bermuda and a survey of undersea exploration through history. The Rotterdam
- [Hungry caterpillars eat plastic pollution](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/12/hungry-caterpillars-eat-plastic-pollution/) - IFL Science introduces us to "plastivores" -- a species of waxworm caterpillars (often thought of as beehive pests) that get fat gorging themselves on plastic waste: “Around 2,000 waxworms can break down an entire polyethylene bag in as little as 24 hours, although we believe that co-supplementation with feeding stimulants like sugars can reduce the
- [Shrooms ease cancer-patient depression for two years.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/11/shrooms-ease-cancer-patient-depression-for-two-years/) - Science Daily looks at an American Cancer Society study that found psilocybin mushrooms can help lift depression symptoms in cancer patients for as long as two years after a single psychedelic trip: In this phase 2 trial, 28 patients with cancer and major depressive disorder received psychological support from a therapist prior to, during, and
- [Why fund weird science.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/11/why-fund-weird-science/) - American Scientist provides a spirited defense against funding cuts for research into oddball subjects ... by listing a lot of strange projects that suddenly led to world-changing breakthroughs: If someone had said, “Who cares how desert lizard venom works? Let’s not fund that research,” we never would have discovered semaglutide, a key component of drugs
- [Looking Denisovans in the face for the first time.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/10/looking-denisovans-in-the-face-for-the-first-time/) - Cell reconstructs a prehistoric face, thanks to DNA analysis of an unusual skull that proved to be the first-known skull of a Denisovan, the other prehistoric human besides Neanderthals: A notable late Middle Pleistocene cranium has been recovered in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, northeastern China and dated to a minimum age of 146 ka ... This
- [Science Art: <i>Cyamus boopis, Lütken</i>, 1895.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/07/science-art-cyamus-boopis-lutken-1895/) - Cyamis boopis is one of the cyamidae better known as a whale louse. You can tell this guy is designed for clinging....
- [USDA finds what caused America's biggest bee die-off.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/07/03/usda-finds-what-caused-americas-biggest-bee-die-off/) - Science shares research that identifies a massive killer of honeybees -- a virus that's carried by pesticide-resistant mites: U.S. beekeepers had a disastrous winter. Between June 2024 and January 2025, a full 62% of commercial honey bee colonies in the United States died, according to an extensive survey. It was the largest die-off on record,
- [Science Art: <i>Figures preparing the Sutton Hoo ship for burial</i>, Craig Williams](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/29/science-art-figures-preparing-the-sutton-hoo-ship-for-burial-craig-williams/) - This is an illustration from the British Museum's Sutton Hoo Collection, studying the grave (and buried treasures) of a "Very Important Person" laid to rest in the 600s. Sue Brunning, Curator of Early Medieval European Collections, says the burial was the final resting place of someone who had died in the early seventh century, during
- [SONG: The Temples Resurrect These Fallen Trees.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/25/song-the-temples-resurrect-these-fallen-trees/) - SONG: "The Temples Resurrect These Fallen Trees". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "Thousands of endangered trees preserved for centuries inside Chinese temples," Nature, 5 June 2025, as used in the post The temple as refuge... for endangered species.. ABSTRACT: I probably shouldn't admit this, but these abstracts are here in part to
- [Science Art: Detail from Tinsley Laboratories ad, 1966.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/23/science-art-detail-from-tinsley-laboratories-ad-1966/) - That's a closeup of the Surveyor-1 satellite printed above an image of the Gemini orbital capsule, with the words "WE GAVE" (image of Surveyor-1) "a mirror and" (image of Gemini) "the windows." The explanation is that Tinsley Laboratories is a pioneer in space science: The amazing 11,130 pictures transmitted by Surveyor-1, were dependent upon a
- [Eating sea otters is giving wolves mercury poisoning.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/23/eating-sea-otters-is-giving-wolves-mercury-poisoning/) - Mongabay reports on a survey of data going back 25 years that show Alaskan coastal wolves have changed their diet from deer to sea otters -- and have acquired toxic levels of mercury as a result: When mercury enters aquatic ecosystems, it’s converted into methylmercury, a potent neurotoxin that “moves efficiently through a food web,”
- [Honda has entered Space Race 2.0](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/20/honda-has-entered-space-race-2-0/) - The Verge reports on a new competitor to Blue Origin, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic in the reusable rocket game - one with a slightly longer legacy of success in mass-produced mechanical-engineering efforts. Honda has launched and landed its own reusable rocket: The launch took place at a Honda test facility in Taiki Town, Japan, which
- [Gigantic, ghostly crustaceans could live over half the ocean floor.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/20/gigantic-ghostly-crustaceans-could-live-over-half-the-ocean-floor/) - New Scientist plumbs the depths in search of foot-long white shrimp-like creatures that might be one of the most populous creatures on the bottom of the ocean, but about which we know very little The crustacean, known as Alicella gigantea, has the distinction of being the world’s largest amphipod, growing up to 34 centimetres in
- [China's undersea station.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/19/chinas-undersea-station/) - Someone in China hasn't watched Kristen Stewart in UNDERWATER... or so Sustainability Times leads me to believe. They're reporting (rather breathlessly) on a "deep-sea space station" that China will be building by 2030 located 6,500 feet below the South China Sea: The Chinese government has approved the construction of a highly advanced underwater installation, poised
- [Science Art: Harpagolestes immanis, by Ryan Somma.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/15/science-art-harpagolestes-immanis-by-ryan-somma/) - This is a picture of a mesonychid, a family of prehistoric creatures known as "wolves with hooves." I got the idea to post this from a Bluesky post by Riley "Resting Dino Face" Black, but I found this image in the Wikimedia Commons "Harpagolestes" collection.
- [SONG: Hyperfocus](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/24/song-hyperfocus/) - SONG: "Hyperfocus". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "Something in The Back of Your Eye Could Reveal Whether You Have ADHD," Science Alert, 28 April 2025, as used in the post ADHD diagnosed by looking deeply into your eyes.. ABSTRACT: This is one of those songs that I think is just sort of
- [Science Art: <i>Transit of Venus in 2012</i>.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/09/science-art-transit-of-venus-in-2012/) - This is Venus, moving in front of the Sun. Technically, I suppose it's a lot of Venuses, or a chain of a lot of pictures of Venus. It was made by NASA/SDO, AIA, or NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory developed at the Goddard Space Center. Here's the description from Wikimedia Commons, where I found the image:
- [Wild cockatoos use public water fountains](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/07/wild-cockatoos-use-public-water-fountains/) - Smithsonian shares some unusual observations from Australia, where wild cockatoos have learned to operate the controls of water fountains in public parks to get a quick drink: Barbara Klump, a behavioral ecologist now at the University of Vienna, first noticed the cockatoos drinking from public water fountains west of Sydney in 2018. She thought someone
- [Ancient megafarm found in Michigan.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/06/ancient-megafarm-found-in-michigan/) - PhysOrg reports on an archaeological discovery in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which seems to have been the site of a 1,000-year-old Native American farming complex more than 330 acres in size: The site features a raised ridge field system that dates to around the 10th century to 1600, and much of it is still intact today.
- [The temple as refuge ... for endangered species.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/06/the-temple-as-refuge-for-endangered-species/) - Nature reports on a study from China that found thousands of endangered trees growing on the grounds of religious monuments across the country: It is an example of “where ecological and spiritual values converge”, says study co-author Yongchuan Yang, a conservation researcher at the College of Environment and Ecology at Chongqing University in China. Several
- [Science Art: <i>Pterophorus pentadactyla MHNT</i>, by Didier Descouens](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/02/science-art-pterophorus-pentadactyla-mhnt-by-didier-descouens/) - This is an image of a white plume moth, a photograph taken of a specimen in the Muséum de Toulouse in August of 2011. The moths really look like this in life, too. But this one was on display in a museum. The photo was taken as part of Projet Phoebus, a push by the
- [Science Art: <i>Turbines and Pumps, Manchester</i>, 1882.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/26/science-art-turbines-and-pumps-manchester-1882/) - This is a waterwork as the Industrial Revolution hit full swing. It's the final image in a book I've used here before, A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating to the hydrology, hydrodynamics, and practical construction of water works, in North America on archive.org. Two pages later, the text turns from mechanical concerns
- [ADHD diagnosed by looking deeply into your eyes.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/21/adhd-diagnosed-by-looking-deeply-into-your-eyes/) - Science Alert carries news of a Korean research project that used AI to study images of the fundus, an area of the back of the eye, to successfully pinpoint patients with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: Of four machine learning models tested in the study, the best achieved a 96.9 percent score for predicting ADHD accurately, based
- [Painkiller outsmarts opioids.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/20/painkiller-outsmarts-opioids/) - Science Daily reports on Duke researchers who have created a new class of painkiller that experiments show is as effective as opioids at eliminating pain from injuries and surgeries, but without the notorious side effects like constipation, sedation, drug tolerance ... or addiction: The drug, called SBI-810, is part of a new generation of compounds
- [Science Art: Hoplocampa minuta, <i>Plommonstekel Ugglan</i>, 1920.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/19/science-art-hoplocampa-minuta-plommonstekel-ugglan-1920/) - "A kind of sawfly living on plum trees," according to the Wikimedia Commons gallery of images from Nordisk familjebok. They're considered a pest -- the young larvae feed on new fruit. White worms on green plums.
- [SONG: Bed Chem (a penitential Sabrina Carpenter cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/15/song-bed-chem-a-penitential-sabrina-carpenter-cover/) - SONG: "Bed Chem" (a penitential Sabrina Carpenter cover). (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This wasn't based on any scientific research. It's a cover of the current pop hit "Bed Chem" by Sabrina Carpenter, influenced/decoded via the sweet acoustic cover by Shaun Riley. ABSTRACT: I can see where someone listening to this who is unfamiliar
- [Science Art: <i>Cardiac Devices</i>, Medtronic](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/12/science-art-cardiac-devices-medtronic/) - This is a poster snapped in my cardiologist's (actually, electrophysiologist's) office. These are all machines that are put into your heart to track its beating and alter that rhythm with electrical pulses. There's a QR code on the poster linking to HeartDeviceAnswers.com, which has cute little animations done in the same mid-century-ish art style showing
- [Growing worry over "ChatGPT-induced psychosis"](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/10/growing-worry-over-chatgpt-induced-psychosis/) - Futurism reports on anecdotal evidence of ChatGPT conversing with people in a human-like way and ... drawing them further and further into an authoritative-sounding, real-feeling world of confirmed biases and cult-like delusions co-created with "helpful" artificial intelligence: Friends and family are watching in alarm as users insist they've been chosen to fulfill sacred missions on
- [NASA JPL boss quits](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/08/nasa-jpl-boss-quits/) - The Register reports on the director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory suddenly stepping down for "personal reasons": During the November 2024 staff cuts, Leshin cautioned: "We can never be 100 percent certain of the future budget," a comment that seems highly prescient today, considering the cuts proposed in Donald Trump's administration's "skinny" budget, which could
- [Pulsars have an invisible halo](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/06/pulsars-have-an-invisible-halo/) - Physics Magazine takes a look at the radiation surrounding those high-energy stars that zoot-zoot-zoot out in regularly recurring intervals (stars with a pulse, in other words, like the one that gave us one of the most famous album covers of all time). Based on observations from the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory, they've found that
- [Science Art: <i>MRO Fairing Installation</i>, 2005.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/05/science-art-mro-fairing-installation-2005/) - On a fiberglass sailboat, "fairing" is a thin coat of epoxy meant to smooth out all tiny bumps and creases that sanding can't catch in order to make the hull move through the water (or hands and feet move across the deck) as smoothly as possible. On a Martian spaceship, it's a little different. Here's
- [Science Art: <i>Iceland's Coast Shows Hints of Spring</i>, March 2024](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/04/28/science-art-icelands-coast-shows-hints-of-spring-march-2024/) - A photo from the NASA PACE Ocean Sciences gallery. The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission is a satellite observatory created by Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) which contains an Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), to measure the color of the ocean from ultraviolet to shortwave infrared, as well as two polarimeters, to measure how ocean,
- [SONG: Titanium Heart](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/04/24/song-titanium-heart/) - SONG: "Titanium Heart". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "Man survives with titanium heart for 100 days — a world first," Nature, 13 March 2025, as used in the post 100 days with a titanium heart. ABSTRACT: I'm not sure why this took as long as it did, other than that I had
- [Our butts used to be sperm dispensers.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/04/25/our-butts-used-to-be-sperm-dispensers/) - Science Alert reports on an evolutionary study that has found our butts (from which everybody, as the children's book tells us, poops) were originally a little bit more risque. The earliest anus apparently developed from an aperture originally used to distribute male sex cells: Researchers from the University of Bergen in Norway investigated the genetics
- [A new color, named "olo."](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/04/24/a-new-color-named-olo/) - BBC reports on an odd optical experiment that resulted in human eyes seeing an entirely new color, a kind of super-saturated aqua they've dubbed "olo": By stimulating specific cells in the retina, the participants claim to have witnessed a blue-green colour that scientists have called "olo", but some experts have said the existence of a
- [Science Art: <i>Woltmann's Tachometer</i>, 1882](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/04/21/science-art-woltmanns-tachometer-1882/) - Oh, hydrology. This is a device to measure the speed of water flow, as described in A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating to the hydrology, hydrodynamics, and practical construction of water works, in North America (which I found on archive.org). The most successful of all the simple mechanical hydrometers, not requiring the
- [Science Art: <i>Mathematical Knot Table 01</i>, by Rodrigo Argenton](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/04/13/science-art-mathematical-knot-table-01-by-rodrigo-argenton/) - These are knots. Not knots used to tie down boats or headstrong horses, but knots used to explore geometries of space. The display was made by Estes Objethos Atelier, but the photo was taken by Rodrigo Argenton. As it says on Wikimedia Commons, where I found this in the "Knot Theory" collection: "Please attribute as
- [Nearby galaxies are shredding each other.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/04/15/nearby-galaxies-are-shredding-each-other/) - BBC Science Focus looks up at the heavens and sees two nearby galaxies -- the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) -- that, instead of peacefully spinning in cosmic circles, are apparently whipping into each other like universal buzzsaws: And what the researchers found was striking. This once-cordial cosmic neighbour is being
- [Too much space junk.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/04/14/too-much-space-junk/) - The European Space Agency has an unfortunate report about future satellites. They're much closer to running out of room because, as Science Alert puts it, there's just too much stuff in near-Earth orbit already -- most of it broken-down space junk: According to the European Space Agency's (ESA) annual Space Environment Report, the amount of
- [A mysterious trilobite cousin deciphered.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/04/12/a-mysterious-trilobite-cousin-deciphered/) - For a long while, paleontologists have been trying to figure out what was up with Helmetia expansa, a prehistoric creature from before the dinosaurs that seemed like a crustacean but not. As PhysOrg explains, the first specimen was discovered in 1918, but it had never been illustrated or formally described ... until now: Helmetia expansa
- [Intelligence evolved at least twice on Earth.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/04/12/intelligence-evolved-at-least-twice-on-earth/) - In science-nerd circles, people lately have been really into talking about how many times crabs evolve -- that is, how many unrelated invertebrate families wind up mutating into genetically distinct, unrelated species that happen to look exactly like a crab. Crabs, but alien to one another. Well, says Quanta Magazine, the same thing happened with
- [Science Art: <i>Portuguese Man-Of-War, Tongued Sarsia</i>, by Philip Henry Gosse](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/04/06/science-art-portuguese-man-of-war-tongued-sarsia-by-philip-henry-gosse/) - This image comes from Philip Henry Gosse's A Year at the Shore, specifically, the month of October. (The year isn't specified, but the book was published in 1865.) Gosse was a naturalist, prolific author, scientific illustrator, and fellow of the Royal Society. Here's how he describes the larger creature in this painting: Perhaps there is
- [SONG: Might As Well Be (Considering <i>Inkayacu paracasensis</i>)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2010/10/23/song-might-as-well-be-considering-inkayacu-paracasensis/) - SONG: "Might As Well Be (Considering Inkayacu paracasensis)". (To download: double right-click & "Save As") ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "36 million-year-old penguin was five feet tall and had reddish-brown feathers", io9.com (quoting Science), 30 September 10, as used in the post Red Super-penguin. ABSTRACT: Do I have to explain what I was thinking here?
- [Science Art: Periophthalmus koelreuteri, 1942.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/31/science-art-periophthalmus-koelreuteri-1942/) - This is a mudskipper who is being drawn here solely for the qualities of its bulbous, beautiful eyes. The illustration is from page 453 of The Vertebrate Eye and Its Adaptive Radiation by Gordon L. Walls, which I was browsing on archive.org. It's a study of light, how the energy of light shapes the flesh
- [The smell of Venus de Milo](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/28/the-smell-of-venus-de-milo/) - NPR reports on new findings for classical works of art. It's pretty well known now that the stark white of ancient Greek marble statues was originally a lot more colorful when they were put on display. What archaeologists and chemists have just figured out, though, is that as well as looking quite different, some of
- [AI can't beat Pokémon](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/26/ai-cant-beat-pokemon/) - Something for your inner 12-year-old to feel superior about, as published in Ars Technica. Anthropic's Claude AI, pretty helpful at summarizing documents and parsing transcripts, is not able to operate at a college-graduate level (or even an elementary-school level) when it comes to advancing in the good old Game Boy game: Last month, Anthropic presented
- [Krill sniff penguin poop](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/26/krill-sniff-penguin-poop/) - And, says National Geographic, it makes them take evasive maneuvers, ready to dodge their Antarctic predators: In Antarctica’s Palmer Station lab, scientists put wild-caught krill through a series of tests to see if they could identify the presence of a predator—in this case, Adélie penguins—by squirting a slurry of penguin poop into the crustaceans’ tanks.
- [Science Art: <i>Lincoln's Measurements, compared with "Old Americans,"</i> 1953 (detail).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/24/science-art-lincolns-measurements-compared-with-old-americans-1953/) - This is part of a graphic from a 1953 issue of Natural History, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History's magazine. The article it's illustrating is about taking a life mask - a casting made of President Lincoln's face not long before he was assassinated - and comparing it with measurements of people the author refers
- [Far side of the moon's fiery past.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/21/far-side-of-the-moons-fiery-past/) - Space reveals that the far side of the moon was once a vast, glowing ocean of magma, according to samples retrieved by a Chinese lunar lander: The Chang'e 6 mission launched in early May 2024, landed in the vast South Pole-Aitken (SPA), and returned to Earth with 4 pounds and 4.29 ounces (1,935.3 grams) of
- [Alcohol and cancer](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/20/alcohol-and-cancer/) - Nature chats with a few researchers about something that's been known for more than 30 years but is still not really widely accepted - that there's a demonstrated link between drinking alcohol and cancer: Scientists first labelled alcohol as a carcinogen more than 35 years ago, and the evidence has only grown since. “I don’t
- [Science Art: <i>Mars, Olympus Mons near the terminator</i>,  Andrea Luck, 2025](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/18/science-art-mars-olympus-mons-near-the-terminator-andrea-luck-2025/) - This is the largest volcano in our solar system, as far as anybody knows -- the mighty Olympus Mons, as snapped by the ESA Mars Express mission's HRSC, or High-Resolution Stereo Camera. The mission's goal is to create very detailed 3D maps of the surface of Mars, which is obviously pretty useful to anyone who
- [TechDirt is a democracy blog.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/14/techdirt-is-a-democracy-blog/) - Have I cited TechDirt here before? I'm pretty sure I have. Anyway, in a sign of the weird times today, they've just come out and said that because they're an outlet for technology and computer-science news, that means that now they're a democracy blog whether they want to be or not... because suddenly, the way
- [100 days with a titanium heart](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/14/100-days-with-a-titanium-heart/) - Nature reports on a new record from the transplant waiting list, with an Australian patient who spent 100 days waiting for a donor organ with a mechanical heart made of titanium pumping in his chest: The man lived with the device for more than three months until he underwent surgery to receive a donated human
- [Science Art: <i>Opportunities for Design & Development Engineers...</i>, 1966.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/12/science-art-opportunites-for-design-development-engineers-1966/) - This is the illustration from a full-page ad from the Hughes Aircraft Company in the Jan/Feb 1966 issue of Information Display magazine. This isn't selling a product -- at least not directly. Instead, it's looking for engineers to make the instruments that air-traffic controller is using to track the progress of that zippy looking radar
- [The pigbutt worm: a marine mystery.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/06/the-pigbutt-worm-a-marine-mystery/) - National Geographic marvels at a recently discovered sea creature named, due to its bizarrely voluptuous curves and clefts, the pigbutt worm: Such was the case in 2001 when experts from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute piloted a remotely operated submersible to depths between 2,700 and 7,200 feet off the coast of California. It was
- [AI to translate cat faces.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/05/ai-to-translate-cat-faces/) - Nature: Scientific Reports wants you to know why your cat is making faces at you. They've published a study that uses artificial intelligence to decipher "CatFACS codings" -- or, the expressions that cats make according "Facial Action Coding System" -- in order to figure out how cats make faces to communicate with their owners: Utilizing
- [Science Art: <i>The Great Paris Reflector</i>, 1898.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/03/science-art-the-great-paris-reflector-1898/) - This is an image from The New Astronomy, a textbook of space sciences I found on archive.org. It's one of what was at the time the largest telescopes ever built, a reflector that used a big, curved mirror to magnify. As the book says: At the Paris Observatory is a great silver-on-glass reflector of nearly
- [SONG: Hashtag Exclamation (#!%^)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/25/song-hashtag-exclamation/) - SONG: "Hashtag Exclamation (#!%^)". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "'Just give me the f***ing links!'—Cursing disables Google’s AI overviews," Ars Technica, 25 January 2025, as used in the post Get better searches by swearing at Google. ABSTRACT: This is a song about swearing without any swearing in it. That was sort of
- [A vaccine for pancreatic cancer.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/03/01/a-vaccine-for-pancreatic-cancer/) - I grew up learning (rightly or wrongly) that pancreatic cancer was "one of the bad ones," fast-moving and tough to beat. Now, Science Friday is announcing that there's hope for a vaccine to prevent the disease from ever taking root: Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat, and about 90% of diagnosed patients die from
- [Science Art: <i>Lepiota Echinellus</i>, 1887](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/24/science-art-lepiota-echinellus-1887/) - You probably shouldn't eat these. This is an illustration of a Lepiota mushroom from the Bulletin de la Société botanique de France. The genus includes quite a few toxic species, so this one should be regarded as on the do-not-fly list. They can be admired on the French forest floor, however, growing among the leaf-litter
- [So just how much life are we already spreading into space?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/20/so-just-how-much-life-are-we-already-spreading-into-space/) - Mashable wants to know (along with NASA researchers) just what kind of critters are sticking to the International Space Station or surrounding it like an invisible cloud of living things: Despite the U.S. space agency's stringent spacecraft cleaning process, hardy microscopic lifeforms can't be totally removed from instruments bound for space. Furthermore, people carry veritable
- [A vaccine against salmonella](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/18/a-vaccine-against-salmonella/) - Food Safety Magazine reports on University of Florida researchers who are closing in on a medicine that could prevent potentially lethal, antibiotic-resistant food poisoning ... with tricks learned from raw sewage: Published in Infection and Immunity, the rodent study tested a novel method of vaccine delivery, using Salmonella bacteria isolated from the Gainesville, Florida wastewater
- [Science Art: <i>La Esperanza Del Río, Micrasterias Truncata, Turberas De Peñayerre</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/17/science-art-la-esperanza-del-rio-micrasterias-truncata-turberas-de-penayerre/) - This is a star algae, Micrasterias truncata, as photographed very recently and uploaded to the Flickr Commons collection, "Encyclopedia of Life images." The description for this series of images is in Spanish -- they're supplied by "Proyecto Agua" -- but the Google Translate renders one bit of it as: Micrasterias truncata is one of the
- [NASA Mars rover spots "possibilities for microbial habitability."](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/16/nasa-mars-rover-spots-possibilities-for-microbial-habitability/) - Mashable carries news from NASA's Curiosity rover, which has found traces that ancient ripples left on primordial lake beds, which prove that far from being an ice-covered badland, Mars was once warm, wet, and hospitable to life: These ripples formed some 3.7 billion years ago. (For reference, the earliest known fossils on Earth formed some
- [Science Art: <i>Le miscroscope [La Science]</i>, 1908.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/10/science-art-le-miscroscope-la-science-1908/) - This is a metal engraving by Charles Philippe Pillet, which I found in the Paris Museums Collections. It's considered a "numismatic" piece, but I don't believe it's an actual coin - just a rectangular piece of metal, painstakingly shaped into a beautiful woman, pensive, contemplating the nature of reality before her miscroscope. Or microscope. The
- [Whalesong is structured like a language.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/09/whalesong-is-structured-like-a-language/) - Astrobiology reports on a cross-disciplinary study that has found that the song of humpback whales has the same distinct mathematical structure as a human language: Humpback whale song is a striking example of a complex, culturally transmitted behavior, but up to now, there was little evidence it has language-like structure. Human language, which is also
- [Women's history found under immigrant asylum floorboards](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/07/womens-history-found-under-immigrant-asylum-floorboards/) - Australia's ABC reports on clues to a hidden past being found under the floor of a former immigration depot and women's asylum, shedding new light on the lives of not-terribly-visible 19th-century women: Now a richer history of Sydney's Hyde Park Barracks has lifted the lid on what everyday life for women was like at the
- [So here's *why* vaccines don't cause autism.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/06/so-heres-why-vaccines-dont-cause-autism/) - We are at a point where this had to be published, but Stat has here gathered the actual data into one easy-to-read explainer for why we actually do really, truly know that vaccinations don't cause kids (or anyone) to become autistic: In 2004, researchers in Denmark, which keeps meticulous and centralized health records, published a
- [Get better searches by swearing at Google.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/03/get-better-searches-by-swearing-at-google/) - How are we teaching the learning-machines to speak? Ars Technica reports on the discovery (or revelation, maybe) that it's possible to do away with that infuriating, inaccurate AI that attempts to answer your Google searches (but does so very badly) simply by swearing at it: The existence of this "curse to disable Google AI" trick
- [Science Art: <i>Cystoidea</i>, by Ernst Haeckel](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/02/03/science-art-cystoidea-by-ernst-haeckel/) - This is one of the plates from the 100 illustrations in Kunst-Formen der Natur, or "Art Forms in Nature," by Ernst Haeckel, a scientist - or philosopher of science - who gave us the idea "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." That means that as a creature develops before it's born, the stages it goes through resemble or
- [Asteroid Bennu rich in ancient life-sustaining stuff.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/30/asteroid-bennu-rich-in-ancient-life-sustaining-stuff/) - IFL Science reports on the 121-gram sample that NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe collected from Asteroid Bennu -- a handful of dirt that shows a wealth of chemicals necessary to form the foundation of life in the early solar system, including never-before-seen amino acids: As described in two new papers, scientists working on the samples found thousands
- [Tuberculosis in Kansas City.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/29/tuberculosis-in-kansas-city/) - Reuters has what seems like a nostalgic headline from the 1800s, but no, it's happening now. There's an outbreak of consumption - that is, tuberculosis - underway in Kansas City right now: An outbreak of tuberculosis in the Kansas City area has grown into one of the largest ever recorded in the United States, with
- [Science Art: <i>Boulder ejected from Halemaumau, at Kīlauea</i>, May 11, 1925](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/27/science-art-boulder-ejected-from-halemaumau-at-kilauea-may-11-1925/) - Such was science in 1925. A man in a fedora and tie, pointing at impact craters on the ground, standing next to a large rock, resting one foot on it in fact. He's probably a geologist ... but maybe just a witness? Oh, no, he's a scientist alright: In the US Geological Survey page where
- [Bird flu still spreading in cats.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/24/bird-flu-still-spreading-in-cats/) - Scientific American is still following the progress of the H5N1 flu virus, and finding it's spreading more than anyone would want -- especially if you happen to be a bird: Avian influenza is so contagious and deadly in poultry that the entire flock is culled as soon as the presence of the virus is confirmed.
- [SONG: They Can Make It Rain Bombs (a penitential Camper Van Chadbourne cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/24/song-they-can-make-it-rain-bombs-a-penitential-camper-van-chadbourne-cover/) - SONG: "They Can Make It Rain Bombs" . (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This isn't based on any recent research. It's a penitential cover for being late for one of the previous songs. The original is by Eugene Chadbourne with Camper Van Beethoven, though there was also a great dark country cover by The
- [Science Art: <i>Reconstrucción de </i>Tuzoia canadensis, <i>con</i> Anomalocaris<i> atrás</i>, 2022.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/20/science-art-reconstruccion-de-tuzoia-canadensis-con-anomalocaris-atras-2022/) - This is an image from one of the ages before dinosaurs. I found it by looking for Anomalocaris, which was a sort of terrifying sea predator that was something like an armored cuttlefish, or a mantis shrimp with segmented, tentacle-like whip arms. And a mouth. A hungry mouth. Here, that "strange shrimp" (which is what
- [Tricking the immune system into attacking tumors.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/18/tricking-the-immune-system-into-attacking-tumors/) - Nature reports on Chinese researchers who found a way to make the body get rid of cancer -- by disguising tumors as transplanted pig organs, so the body rejects them: Immunologist and surgeon Yongxiang Zhao at Guangxi Medical University in Nanning, China, wondered whether he could harness this runaway immune response and direct it against
- [Sustainable superglue.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/18/sustainable-superglue/) - Science Daily has news from Colorado State chemical researchers, who've found an adhesive that does the work of superglue, but is "biodegradable, tunable, and reusable": [Distinguished Professor Eugene] Chen said that poly(3-hydroxybutyrate), or P3HB, is a natural, biobased and biodegradable polymer that can be produced by microbes under the right biological conditions. While the polymer
- [Science Art: <i>Earth's Shadow and Penumbra in Sections</i>, 1898.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/13/science-art-earths-shadow-and-penumbra-in-sections-1898/) - This delightful diagram appears on a page of A New Astronomy For Beginners that also has an almanac of "Important Future Eclipses" from 1898 (January 22, East African and India) to 1918 (June 8, Oregon to Florida). I'm not sure how useful the diagram is - I am having trouble, in fact, seeing exactly what's
- [You are what your great-grandparents didn't eat](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/10/you-are-what-your-great-grandparents-didnt-eat/) - Nautilus looks at the long-term effects of famine -- and finds that extreme hunger can affect the bodies of future generations: To conduct their research, [Tulane pediatric nephrologist Giovane] Tortelote’s lab fed a group of mice a low-protein, high-carb diet—about a third of the protein lab mice normally get in their diet. Very low protein
- [Sparse but robust: Brains are wired to maximize memory.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/09/sparse-but-robust-brains-are-wired-to-maximize-memory/) - Science News shares an analysis of the human hippocampus from a computer-designer's standpoint, finding that though the network of brain-cell connections are relatively sparse, those few cells that do connect with others have lots and lots of connections -- a state of affairs that actually maximizes the possible memory storage in the brain's network: Previously
- [The first American to die of H5N1 avian flu](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/08/the-first-american-to-die-of-h5n1-avian-flu/) - Science News puts some important context around the January 6 death of a 65-year-old Louisiana man who caught the virus from his backyard chickens: Since early 2024, there have been 66 confirmed bird flu cases in people in the United States. The currently circulating strain has been widespread among cattle, poultry and wild birds. Most
- [Roman battlefield (probably) discovered in the U.K.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/06/roman-battlefield-probably-discovered-in-the-u-k/) - BBC has news of a discovery (yet to be confirmed, likely accurate) made using a combination of historical knowledge and ground-penetrating radar that shows how the technologically advanced Roman Ninth Legion helped conquer the island of Great Britain all those centuries ago: Dr Elliott believes the evidence indicates superior Roman artillery technology led to an
- [Cheaper sodium batteries are getting better.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/04/cheaper-sodium-batteries-are-getting-better/) - Notebook Check reports optimistically on a vanadium battery breakthrough that stands to make sodium-ion batteries, which rely on cheap minerals, a real competitor for the relatively pricier lithium batteries we use in our phones, laptops, and electric vehicles today: The base material is 50 times cheaper than lithium, and so abundant it can be distilled
- [Ready for the next pandemic? Check with your local farmers.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/31/ready-for-the-next-pandemic-check-with-your-local-farmers/) - KFF Health News has a not-so-cheerful outlook on the US national health services in an article about livestock farms with a headline that starts "How America lost control of the bird flu" and ends "setting the stage for the next pandemic": Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the
- [Science Art: <i>Kingfisher (</i>Ceryle alcyon Boie<i>)</i>, 1898](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/01/06/kingfisher-ceryle-alcyon-boie/) - The word "halcyon," meaning "calm, idyllic, happy times" came from the Greek name for these little guys, who were said to bring, well, halcyon days. I suppose they come out to catch fish when the waters are calm and reflective, and they're certainly colorful enough to bring a little joy ... unless you're a fish
- [Science Art: <i>Andromeda Galaxy</i>, by Isaac Roberts, 1888.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/30/science-art-andromeda-galaxy-by-isaac-roberts-1888/) - It was this photograph's anniversary today, or so said Robert McNees, posting on Bluesky's science-communication feed. On the 29th of December, 1888, a Welsh businessman, engineer, and keen amateur astronomer named Isaac Roberts snapped this photograph of what he called "the Great Nebula of Andromeda." In 1888, nobody knew what a "galaxy" was yet. It
- [There are amphibious mice in the Amazon.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/27/there-are-amphibious-mice-in-the-amazon/) - Reuters reveals the discovery of 27 new species in the Peruvian Amazon, including a strange species of amphibious mice: Scientists also discovered a spiny mouse, a squirrel, eight types of fish, three amphibians and 10 types of butterflies, Trond Larsen, head of Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program, told Reuters this week. He added that another
- [Mars lander following its nose](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/27/mars-lander-following-its-nose/) - Advances in Space Research has a novel idea for a Martian lander. Instead of mapping out the likeliest landing spot from way down here on Earth well ahead of time, a lander could be equipped to seek out methane plumes just by sniffing its way with an olfactory sensor - basically, a mechanical nose to
- [SONG: Two Wolves Inside Us](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/24/song-two-wolves-inside-us/) - SONG: "Two Wolves Inside Us" . (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Ecology, 14 Nov 2024, "Canids as pollinators? Nectar foraging by Ethiopian wolves may contribute to the pollination of Kniphofia foliosa," as used in the post "The birds, the bees, the... wolves?" and on Sentient Science, 6 Dec 2024, "Colorado Reintroduced Wolves.
- [Science Art: <i>Cross Section of a Young Root</i>, by Roman Vishniac, c. 1978.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/22/science-art-cross-section-of-a-young-root-by-roman-vishniac-c-1978/) - This is an image from "the birth of photomicrography." It's also an image from the fondly remembered Omni magazine, an issue from 1978 which I found on archive.org. In the late 1970s, this was what the future looked like: part nature in a microscope, and part blazing science fiction. The article on Roman Vishniac (from
- [Lucid dreaming by phone](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/21/lucid-dreaming-by-phone/) - Science News shares an app created by Northwestern University neuroscientists that's designed to cue your almost-sleeping brain to launch you into a lucid dream: Before bed, the app has users listen to a specific sound, such as a series of beeps, and practice associating that cue with a keen awareness of their thoughts and body.
- [Farewell, murder hornets. We got you.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/19/farewell-murder-hornets-we-got-you/) - AP News reports that a particularly dramatic "invasive exotic" species - Vespa mandarinia, the Asian giant hornet, better known as the "murder hornet" - has been eradicated in the U.S., thanks in part to tiny radio tracking devices: The Washington and U.S. Departments of Agriculture announced the eradication Wednesday, saying there had been no detections
- [Science Art: <I>10,000 convex and nonconvex regular polygons</I>, by Arthur Baelde.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/18/science-art-10000-convex-and-nonconvex-regular-polygons-by-arthur-baelde/) - This is from the "Posters about Mathematics" section of Wikimedia Commons. The description says: "For a young child, a shape can be called a square if its sides are vertical and horizontal. Some regular polygons on this page are squares, or rectangles with four equal sides. Would you add sounds around the poster, add voices?
- [How do you explain that your kid's robot friend is dying?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/15/how-do-you-explain-that-your-kids-robot-friend-is-dying/) - Alas, poor Moxie. Aftermath is making me hope a lot of parents have found copies of The 10th Good Thing About Barney - because thanks to an AI company going under, a lot of autistic kids' robot friends are about to abruptly stop working: AI company Embodied announced this week that they would be shutting
- [SONG: "Einstein's Idea" (a penitential Johnny Flynn cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/13/song-einsteins-idea-a-penitential-johnny-flynn-cover/) - SONG: "Einstein's Idea (a penitential Johnny Flynn cover)" . (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This is a penitential cover of a song by actor/singer/songwriter Johnny Flynn, who played Albert Einstein in National Geographic's Genius for Ron Howard, and then wrote this song as a lullaby for his baby son. ABSTRACT: Vocals: If I had
- [Chinese "Wheeler" security robot unveiled.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/12/chinese-wheeler-security-robot-unveiled/) - LiveScience reports on Chinese firm DEEP Robotics' answer to Big Dog - a robot they named "Lynx" that can crawl up hills with long, jointed legs, and then roll down with wheels for feet. For anyone who's seen the cult classic RETURN TO OZ film, they look like a cross between that movie's nightmarishly absurd
- [Robot manta is faster than ever - and smooth.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/10/robot-manta-is-faster-than-ever-and-smooth/) - NC State researchers have used the mighty manta ray as a moving inspiration to design their fastest-yet swimming soft robot: “Two years ago, we demonstrated an aquatic soft robot that was able to reach average speeds of 3.74 body lengths per second,” says Jie Yin, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an
- [Science Art: <i>Lindblad Travel ad</i>, 1969.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/09/science-art-lindblad-travel-ad-1969/) - Today, the company that produced this add is known as Lindblad Expeditions, and is so closely associated with National Geographic that it's often known as NatGeo/Lindblad Expeditions. (As a cruise line, all their ship names begin with "National Geographic".) In 1969, they were a family-run expedition travel company, promising "Adventure and Photography" in "Darwin's Galapagos"
- [Personalities count... for wolves.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/07/personalities-count-for-wolves/) - Sentient Science reports on an unexpected flaw that might interfere with human attempts to reintroduce wolves into the wilds of Colorado. The problem isn't the biology or ecology of wolves or wolf habitats. It's that success in survival (and breeding) depends on the wolves' personalities: [Marc] Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at
- [The birds, the bees, the... wolves?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/06/the-birds-the-bees-the-wolves/) - The journal Ecology has some unusual research about wild pollinators. They've found that famous species like honeybees and hummingbirds who spread pollen by daintily zipping from flower to flower can count something considerably larger, hairier, and fiercer in their number. The Ethiopian wolf, which eats nectar from red-hot poker flowers, can be counted among a
- [Science Art: <i>Mars - Jezero Crater - NASA's Perseverance Landing</i>, Feb 18,2021](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/12/01/science-art-mars-jezero-crater-nasas-perseverance-landing-feb-182021/) - This is a piece of art, or scientific illustration, I found on the Flickr account of Andrea Luck, though the full credit is NASA/JPL-Caltech/Simeon Schmauß/AndreaLuck. Schmauß apparently processed a mosaic (which I think means "stitched together one image from a lot of pictures") from NASA/JPL's Lander Vision System Camera LCAM Sol 0. Luck seems to
- [Cute crustacean named after a brewery (with a briny beer).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/28/cute-crustacean-named-after-a-brewery-with-a-briny-beer/) - The Guardian has news from New Zealand, where marine biologists have just discovered a new species of isopod, and decided the publicize the little critter's unique ecological needs by naming it after something beloved -- a local, crustacean-conscious brewery: The roughly 1.5mm marine isopod was found in the silty depths off New Zealand’s southern east
- [Thanksgiving Theremin: Cihan Gulbuduk, "Lacrimosa (Mozart)"](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/29/thanksgiving-theremin-cihan-gulbuduk-lacrimosa-mozart/)
- [Thanksgiving Theremin: Carolina Eyck and Clarice Jensen, <i>Tiny Desk Concert</i>.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/28/thanksgiving-theremin-carolina-eyck-and-clarice-jensen-tiny-desk-concert/) - Cellist Clarice Jensen joins thereminist Carolina Eyck for the songs "Delphic," "Three Leos," and "Frequencies."
- [Four people can see clearly thanks to stem-cell transplants](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/28/four-people-can-see-clearly-thanks-to-stem-cell-transplants/) - Science Alert reports on a successful experiment that has restored vision to multiple people with cornea damage by using a new stem-cell transplant technique: Four participants were involved in the study, all of whom suffer from a disorder that causes scar tissue buildup on the cornea, called limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD). ... This crucial
- [Science Art: Ophiactis tricolor<i>: a, arboral view; b, oral view of holotype</i>.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/25/science-art-ophiactis-tricolor-a-arboral-view-b-oral-view-of-holotype/) - These are brittle stars, photographed in the 1920s for the Records of the South Australia Museum. These specific ones are from "Dr. Verco's collection in St. Vincent and Spencer Gulfs," and are apparently very different from other Ophiactis species. It's from an article by American researcher Hubert Lyman Clark, cataloguing "The Sea-Lilies, Sea-Stars, Brittle Stars,
- [SONG: You See Through Me](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/24/song-you-see-through-me/) - SONG: "You See Through Me" . (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: The Guardian, 5 Sep 2024, "Common food dye found to make skin and muscle temporarily transparent", as used in the post "Take a look inside by dyeing your skin transparent." ABSTRACT: I've had the music ready to go for this once since mid-September,
- [A lonely dolphin keeps shouting into the Baltic](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/23/a-lonely-dolphin-keeps-shouting-into-the-baltic/) - Popular Science shares the story of a solo 17-year-old bottlenose dolphin, dubbed "Delle," who has been spotted off the coast of Denmark for five years, far from any other pods of bottlenose dolphins, vocalizing loudly and constantly into the cold sea and not getting any reply: Marine biologists from the University of Southern Denmark heard
- [Memories can form outside the brain.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/20/memories-can-form-outside-the-brain/) - Kidney memory? Science Daily reports on how we sometimes expand our ability to remember - by using cells other than brain cells to store the information we're learning: "Learning and memory are generally associated with brains and brain cells alone, but our study shows that other cells in the body can learn and form memories,
- [DNA analysis and fish weirs to greet the salmon.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/19/dna-analysis-and-fish-weirs-to-greet-the-salmon/) - Live Science reports on new combinations of indigenous traditions and advanced science to keep the environment (and the food supply) healthy: Now, the Heiltsuk are using traditional knowledge in concert with modern scientific approaches to monitor wildlife, count salmon, and maintain the health of waterways in their traditional territory. From the outset, the HIRMD stewards
- [Science Art: <i>Cockpit view of the Macchi MC.200 Saetta</i>, 2009](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/18/science-art-cockpit-view-of-the-macchi-mc-200-saetta-2009/) - This image came from the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force with the less-easy-to-understand name (or "designation") "210921-F-AU145-2009." But it's the cockpit of an Italian fighter plane from World War II. As the description says in the USAF gallery: Developed in the mid-1930s for the Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force), the Saetta was
- [People who can't smell breathe differently.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/17/people-who-cant-smell-breathe-differently/) - Popular Science shares a finding that people born without the ability to smell actually inhale and exhale differently than people who can tell what it is they're smelling: In other words: Your ability to smell dictates the way you breathe, per the study published October 22 in the journal Nature Communications. Respiratory differences between smellers
- [Lost Mayan city found by accident... online.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/15/lost-mayan-city-found-by-accident/) - BBC reports on the accidental discovery of an immense, forgotten Mayan city in the Mexican jungle by an archaeology PhD student browsing the internet: Archaeologists found pyramids, sports fields, causeways connecting districts and amphitheatres in the southeastern state of Campeche. They uncovered the hidden complex - which they have called Valeriana - using Lidar, a
- [Science Art: <i>Interacting Galaxies Arp 142 (MIRI Image)</i>, by NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/10/science-art-interacting-galaxies-arp-142-miri-image-by-nasa-esa-csa-and-stsci/) - This is a photograph of a strangely-shaped galaxy, as taken by the Webb Space Telescope. Or rather, a set of "interacting" galaxies, known collectively as Arp 142. From the Webb gallery: This image was taken by MIRI, the telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, which astronomers use to study cooler and older objects, dust, and extremely distant galaxies.
- [The way you water your tomatoes matters, not just how much you water 'em.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/08/the-way-you-water-your-tomatoes-matters-not-just-how-much-you-water-em/) - The American Chemical Society looks at homegrown (or farmed) tomatoes and finds that the way in which they're watered can make a difference in how well they grow: Researchers reporting in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry examined the impact of watering practices on tomato plants. They found that the size of the water
- [Meditate for marathons.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/08/meditate-for-marathons/) - Outside reports on a study that finds meditation can have a profound effect not only on your mental wellbeing, but also on your physical endurance and athletic performance: ...[R]esearchers at National Taiwan Normal University led by Yu-Kai Chang ... and his colleagues compared two groups of athletes, one of which had experience with meditation, and
- [Science Art: <i>Illustrations of poor and good posture,</i> 1943.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/08/science-art-illustrations-of-poor-and-good-posture-1943/) - This is how the the US Navy tried to get recruits to stand tall during World War II, with anatomical studies of slouching. How do you know if you're slouching? Well, here's how, point by point. This from the 1943 Physical Fitness Manual of the U.S. Navy. There are lots of fascinating illustrations throughout, showing
- [Using rocket science to make "carbon-negative" energy.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/11/02/using-rocket-science-to-make-carbon-negative-energy/) - Heatmap reports on some SpaceX alums -- that is, former employees of the space corporation -- who gave up on astronauting in favor of making some things work better down here/ As Arbor Energy, they've figured out a way to turn rocket technology into a power source that undoes some of the damage of burning
- [They found the body of someone from the sagas.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/29/they-found-the-body-of-someone-from-the-sagas/) - iScience peers back through the mists of time to the Viking Age, when a saga describes a dead man being tossed down a castle's well. Now, archaeologists are pretty sure they've found the vic's body down the same well: The potential of ancient DNA analyses to provide independent sources of information about events in the
- [Science Art: <i>Hooks, Swivels, &c. </i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/28/science-art-hooks-swivels-c/) - Need a lift? These are hooks designed for lifting ... well, whatever you need picked up. I found them in (deep breath): The engineer's sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices, appliances, contrivances and details : employed in the design and construction of machinery for every purpose : classified and arranged for reference for the use of
- [Daddy-daughter alien decoding.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/27/daddy-daughter-alien-decoding/) - The European Space Agency reports on the team who successfully decoded an "alien" transmission actually sent by a probe orbiting Mars as part of a multidisciplinary project serving as a test run for radio contact with real extraterrestrial civilizations. Father-daughter citizen-scientists Ken and Keli Chaffin successfully translated the transmission, which when properly processed unveiled images
- [SONG: "Serotonin" (a penitential girl in red cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/24/song-serotonin-a-penitential-girl-in-red-cover/) - SONG: "Serotonin" (a penitential girl in red cover). (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This isn't based on any research; it's a cover of a girl in red song... although it's maybe closer to this more minimal acoustic version the band recorded for MTV more recently. I recorded this for missing the monthly deadline on
- [Social media makes you weird.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/23/social-media-makes-you-weird/) - Or at least, to be a little closer to what this Current Opinion in Psychology study is really saying, social media creates a false sense of what "normal" is, amplifying every extreme opinion and reaction until those extremes seem perfectly rational, mainstream ways to think and act... when in fact they're profoundly peculiar: We argue
- [Science Art: <i>Kleiner Wasserbär</i>, 1773](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/21/science-art-kleiner-wasserbar-1773/) - This is what German pastor Johann August Ephraim Goeze dubbed a "tiny water-bear" when he first spotted it among the animacules in the droplets of stagnant water under his microscope. A few years later, an Italian research dubbed the slow-moving critters "tardigrades." But this is the first image ever made of one. I found it
- [Music can be medicine - especially for dementia.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/18/music-can-be-medicine-especially-for-dementia/) - Science Alert looks at some pretty interesting findings from Anglia Ruskin University researchers on the effects music can have on human physiology... especially in the brain, and especially in the brains of dementia patients: Familiar and favourite music has been shown to have the biggest impact on the way we feel, and is closely linked
- [Science Art: <i>Parasites: a parasitical worm, shown much enlarged, with its hosts</i>,  by J. Svoboda after L.W. Sambon.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/14/science-art-parasites-a-parasitical-worm-shown-much-enlarged-with-its-hosts-by-j-svoboda-after-l-w-sambon/) - I'm not sure what to make of this, other than that it's a worm that somehow feeds on or otherwise inconveniences tigers and monkeys. So I suppose it's a tropical or subtropical worm. I found the image on Wikimedia Commons, but it originally came from the Wellcome Trust, who I would imagine commissioned it as
- [Two creatures can become one.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/13/two-creatures-can-become-one/) - Science Daily reports on simple organisms called "comb jellies" (a.k.a. "ctenophores") that have a weird way to overcome physical trauma. If two or more of them are seriously injured, to the point where they each lose part of their bodies, they're able to fuse two different partial bodies together. In other words, two individuals merge
- [Peter Dodge's final cyclone.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/10/peter-dodges-final-cyclone/) - Ars Technica salutes NOAA hurricane scientist Peter Dodge, who underwent his 387th storm "penetration" aboard an airplane flying into Category 5 Hurricane Milton ... and his first such flight posthumously: As the powerful and dangerous storm bears down on Florida, the release of Dodge's ashes was an unusually peaceful moment during a type of flight
- [Science Art: <i>Europa Clipper, Artist’s Concept</i>, by  NASA/JPL-Caltech](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/07/science-art-europa-clipper-artists-concept-by-nasa-jpl-caltech/) - This is an artist's concept of a space probe orbiting Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter that might just hide life in the oceans miles below its frozen surface. You can read more about the Europa Clipper project at NASA's multimedia presentation, which has maps and movies and all sorts of information about the mission.
- [Hurricanes are way deadlier than you might expect.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/05/hurricanes-are-way-deadlier-than-you-might-expect/) - Heatmap reports on a study looking at the "long tail" of excess deaths in the wake of major hurricanes, and found that major storms are hundreds of times deadlier than anyone expected: Several years ago, two economists and public policy researchers — Rachel Young and Solomon Hsiang, now of Princeton and Stanford — began to
- [One massive flood hits one small town... and the computer industry quakes.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/02/one-massive-flood-hits-one-small-town-and-the-computer-industry-quakes/) - NPR explains why the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina is ringing alarm bells across the global tech industry. Because nearly every semiconductor and solar panel made relies on pure quartzite, and nearly all of that comes from mineral deposits near the mountain town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina: To make both semiconductors
- [Roll D20 for catharsis, with a plus-2 closure bonus.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/10/01/roll-d20-for-catharsis-with-a-plus-2-closure-bonus/) - Ars Technica writes on the psychology of the tabletop, with initial research showing promise for using role-playing games like D&D for group therapy: “It seems particularly useful in combating the effects of social isolation and improving both interpersonal skills and intrapersonal skills (problem-solving),” explained Gary Colman, the chairman of Game Therapy UK, a registered charity
- [Science Art: <i>Apparatus Arranged for Taking a Radiograph</i>, 1894.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/29/science-art-apparatus-arranged-for-taking-a-radiograph-1894/) - This illustration is from an article in Science Gossip on how to set up your own "X-Ray Outfit." As the author, James Quick, explains: "The four chief items comprising this are, (a) the induction coil, (b) the battery, (c) the X-Ray tube, and (d) the fluorescent screen." The set here generates a 4-inch spark, while
- [Fish legs taste the sea floor.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/29/fish-legs-taste-the-sea-floor/) - Science Daily goes deep (well, a little deep) on sea robins, the fish known for having little legs they use to scurry across the ocean floor. Apparently those "legs" are actually sense organs these walking fish use to detect buried prey: "This is a fish that grew legs using the same genes that contribute to
- [James Webb will be looking for other Earths in unusual places.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/25/james-webb-will-be-looking-for-other-earths-in-unusual-places/) - Mashable has the details, but the general gist is the space telescope will not focus on Sun-like stars to find Earth-like planets (that is, rocky worlds with gaseous atmospheres). Instead, a new project is seeking air-supporting planets around red dwarf stars: Despite red dwarfs' potential, no one knows for sure whether their worlds can have
- [No song today](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/24/no-song-today-18/) - Just didn't come together in time. But it will happen, and there will also be a penitential cover.
- [Science Art: <i>NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 at NASM (NHQ202303280029)</i>, 2023](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/23/science-art-nasas-spacex-crew-4-at-nasm-nhq202303280029-2023/) - As the image description tells it: NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, left, Jessica Watkins, center, and Robert Hines, right, are seen in the in the One World Connected gallery looking at an interactive recreation of the International Space Station’s Cupola, Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington. Lindgren, Watkins,
- [Look into a dog's eyes and your brains can synchronize.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/17/look-into-a-dogs-eyes-and-your-brains-can-synchronize/) - Science Alert explains the allure of the puppy-dog eyes with Chinese research demonstrating brainwaves suddenly syncing up between humans and dogs when they look into each other's eyes: The researchers measured brain activity in humans and dogs by placing electrodes on the skull. For the trial, 10 young beagles were matched with unknown humans, and
- [Maybe the Earth had a ring like Saturn once...](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/17/maybe-the-earth-had-a-ring-like-saturn-once/) - Science Direct, or really, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, has a study of very old craters that suggests that in the Ordovician period, around 460 million years ago or so, when trilobites and nautiloids ruled the world (because dinosaurs hadn't been invented yet), Earth may have had its own Saturn-like ring: Highlights • Earth may
- [SONG: Burning Libraries](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/20/song-burning-libraries/) - SONG: "Burning Libraries". (available as .ogg here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on The Guardian, 12 Oct 2023, "Researchers use AI to read word on ancient scroll burned by Vesuvius," as used in the post AI is reading scrolls burned in Vesuvius. ABSTRACT: This is that song that was almost, almost ready for the end of
- [Science Art: <i>Illustration, New Model 1806 Fiber-Optics Cathode-Ray Tube Visicorder</i> from a Honeywell brochure, c.1973](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/16/science-art-illustration-new-model-1806-fiber-optics-cathode-ray-tube-visicorder-from-a-honeywell-brochure-c-1973/) - This is a scientist operating scientific equipment, or a model posing as a scientist showing off the capabilities of a shiny new piece of informational display equipment. It's an oscilloscope, an electronic device for measuring things like frequency and amplitude and wave-shapes of signals including, in the case of this model, the cathode-ray signals that
- [Bat deaths to fungus result in more than 1,300 human children dying.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/14/bat-deaths-to-fungus-result-in-more-than-1300-human-children-dying/) - The Guardian reports on a study of knock-on effects. Bat populations have been decimated in the U.S. and beyond by the white-nose fungus. Because bats eat mosquitoes (which carry disease) and other insects (which destroy crops), the declining bat population has led to an increase in crop failures, sickness, and -- most significantly -- pesticide
- [Science Art: <i>Almeö Dog Skeleton</i>, by Gunnar Creutz.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/09/science-art-almeo-dog-skeleton-by-gunnar-creutz/) - A prehistoric pet. This is a mesolithic dog, same dog we know today more or less, Canis lupus familiaris, but about 9,300 years old. It was found in an archaeological dig in Almeö, Sweden, in 1983. From the Wikimedia Commons page where I found it, "Since 1994 the skeleton is shown in the prehistoric exhibition
- [Cats will play fetch too.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/06/cats-will-play-fetch-too/) - The Conversation extends the dog-owner's friendly game of fetch to feline friends who, researchers have found, can also enjoy bringing back toys that are thrown for them to retrieve: In our newly published study, we found that more than 40% of cats described in our survey data played fetch, compared with almost 80% of dogs.
- [Take a look inside by dyeing your skin transparent.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/06/take-a-look-inside-by-dyeing-your-skin-transparent/) - The Guardian reveals a ... well, a revealing discovery, that a common food dye can be used to make skin and muscle transparent enough for doctors to spot tumors or diagnose injuries: Treated skin regained its normal colour when the dye was washed off, according to researchers at Stanford University, who believe the procedure opens
- [Science Art: Sagitta atlantica <i>and</i> Sagitta equatoria, 1922.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/09/01/science-art-sagitta-atlantica-and-sagitta-equatoria-1922/) - These are illustrations from "Notes on Species of Sagitta Collected on a Voyage from England to Australia" by B.B. Gray, as published in The Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, which I found here, in the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Sagitta are arrow worms, predatory marine worms in a phylum called "bristle-jaws," or Chaetognatha. The
- [Ukrainian military to use robot dogs.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/31/ukrainian-military-to-use-robot-dogs/) - The Byte is not filling us with apprehension at all with news of robot dogs being unleashed in the latest escalation of their conflict with Russia: To address its manpower shortage, Ukraine is planning to let loose packs of robot dogs against the invading Russian military, Agence France-Presse reports. The robot dogs will be used
- [Neuralink "sight-restoring" implant has a problem: brains don't have pixels.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/26/neuralink-sight-restoring-implant-has-a-problem-brains-dont-have-pixels/) - The Conversation discusses an engineering problem with electronic brain implants intended to restore vision, like Neuralink's hyped Blindsight. They can add more pixels to the resolution, sure... but human neurons don't operate on pixels: In our newly published research, we created a computational model of human vision to simulate what sort of vision an extremely
- [Science Art: <i>Herring Gull 4</i>, by Robert Pos, 2008.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/25/science-art-herring-gull-4-by-robert-pos-2008/) - Here's Larus argentatus, one of those wild animals that barely seems wild because it interacts with people so much. Simple line art captures a wild creature in motion, above a shoreline shaped by wind and wave. I found this in the US Fish & Wildlife Service National Digital Library.
- [SONG: Oceans Under Mars](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/24/song-oceans-under-mars/) - SONG: "Oceans Under Mars". (WAV version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: PhysOrg, 12 Aug 2024, "Scientists find oceans of water on Mars. It's just too deep to tap.", as used in the post "There are oceans on Mars – but they’re too deep to get to.." ABSTRACT: This turned out better than expected. I hadn't found
- [The Wow! signal probably wasn't aliens (but is still wow).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/21/the-wow-signal-probably-wasnt-aliens-but-is-still-wow/) - Scientific American has a new explanation for the famous "Wow!" signal - the orderly burst of focused radio energy recorded in 1977 that seemed like it could possibly have been an alien civilization's attempt at "hello," or at least a chance interception of alien Funniest Home Videos reruns. A new analysis of that signal --
- [There are oceans on Mars - but they're too deep to get to.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/21/there-are-oceans-on-mars-but-theyre-too-deep-to-get-to/) - PhysOrg says there's liquid water on Mars (great!) but (aw!) it's too far underground to tap: The data from NASA's Insight lander allowed the scientists to estimate that the amount of groundwater could cover the entire planet to a depth of between 1 and 2 kilometers, or about a mile. While that's good news for
- [Science Art: <i>The Turney Vario Variable Condenser</i>, 1913.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/19/science-art-the-turney-vario-variable-condenser-1913/) - This is from a photographically illustrated advertisement in Hugo Gernsback's magazine The Electrical Experimenter. The description of this item is as follows: For extreme measurements such as WAVE METERS, REGENERATIVE CIRCUITS and the like this Condenser has no equal. It is seven complete Condensers in one. It is especially valuable as a grid circuit Condenser.
- [The real "paleo diet" was mostly vegetarian.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/16/the-real-paleo-diet-was-mostly-vegetarian/) - CNN has reported on prehistoric remains found in North Africa that reveal more evidence that our primordial ancestors didn't really eat a meat-heavy diet, but got their protein from plants: But new research on a Paleolithic group called the Iberomaurusians, hunter-gatherers who buried their dead in Taforalt cave in what’s now Morocco between 13,000 and
- [Prevent AIDS with a couple shots a year.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/16/prevent-aids-with-a-couple-shots-a-year/) - NPR reports on a big step forward in keeping a deadly disease at bay, with a new treatment for preventing AIDS transmission that, rather than a daily (and easily forgettable) pill, relies on an injection twice a year: Now a new trial —- called PURPOSE 1 —- points the way to a new preventive strategy
- ["Hobbits" got smaller on their island.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/13/hobbits-got-smaller-on-their-island/) - Scientific American has new information on very old remains of Homo floresiensis, the diminutive prehistoric humans who lived on the island of Flores around 700,000 to 60,000 years ago. A newly discovered arm bone from some of the first humans on Flores show that the so-called "hobbits" grew smaller over the 100s of millennia they
- [Science Art: <i>Ball-shaped blob of California black worms</i>, 2023.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/11/science-art-ball-shaped-blob-of-california-black-worms-2023/) - This is a biological photo that is also a mathematical photo. It's a ball of worms that Georgia Tech researchers were studying, because, as it says on the National Science Foundation image gallery where I found this photo, "These tangled assemblies occur over the span of a few minutes, yet they can untangle in mere
- [Smells can arm your gut defenses.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/08/smells-can-arm-your-gut-defenses/) - PhysOrg gets funky with research that demonstrates how off-putting smells that can signal the presence of disease-causing critters can also tell your gut it's time to beef up the body's chemical defenses: As with humans, nematodes' guts are a common target of disease-causing bacteria. The nematode reacts by destroying iron-containing organelles called mitochondria, which produce
- [Shingles vaccine fights dementia.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/29/shingles-vaccine-fights-dementia/) - Forbes has a strange but true example of unintended (but welcome) consequences. It seems like Shingrix, the new shingles vaccine, also offers protection against developing dementia: The scientists studied health outcomes of more than 200,000 people who received one of the two different shingles vaccines and found that the recombinant shingles vaccine, Shingrix, reduces dementia
- [Climate change affects the Earth's rotation more than the Moon does.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/26/climate-change-affects-the-earths-rotation-more-than-the-moon-does/) - PhysOrg shares research from ETH Zurich that demonstrates something that should be obvious to anyone who's played pool. But as the warming Earth makes the ice caps melt, changing the mass at the poles, the Earth's spin is slowing down. Climate change is causing the ice masses in Greenland and Antarctica to melt. Water from
- [Curiosity finds some exciting times on Mars.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/25/curiosity-finds-some-exciting-times-on-mars/) - Mashable reports on the Mars Rover Curiosity, which has just found evidence of some major flooding and splishing and splashing on the surface of Mars long ago: Although Mars today is 1,000 times drier than the driest desert on Earth, the rover has spotted clues that long ago the Red Planet experienced momentous floods. It
- [Science Art: <i>Smithsonite</i>, from the Smithsonian Natural Museum of Natural History.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/08/04/science-art-smithsonite-from-the-smithsonian-natural-museum-of-natural-history/) - This is a glowing hunk of rock, lit from within. The rock was found in the Kelly Mine in Magadela, New Mexico. Smithsonite is a form of zinc carbonate, or zinc spar, that's formed a large crystal mass, which is not what zinc carbonate usually does. In the early 1800s, James Smithson identified the mineral
- [Science Art: <i>Collection of various birds from </i>A History of the Earth and Animated Nature, 1820.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/21/science-art-collection-of-various-birds-from-a-history-of-the-earth-and-animated-nature-1820/) - This is an educational poster, retouched by Wikimedia Commons user Rawpixel, of birds. It's taken from Oliver Goldsmith's book A History of the Earth and Animated Nature, which you can find in all its glory, though a slightly murky scan, in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
- [Science Art: <i>Saturn V-Shuttle-Ares IV comparison</i>, by Bchan.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/28/science-art-saturn-v-shuttle-ares-iv-comparison-by-bchan/) - Some rockets are bigger than others. I think this illustration (which I found here, on Wikimedia Commons) is maybe a better depiction of how space science itself has changed trajectory lately. The image was compiled by a Wikipedia user in 2007, who put the mighty Saturn V of the 1960s space race to scale next
- [Being a night owl is a mental-health risk.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/18/being-a-night-owl-is-a-mental-health-risk/) - I can't tell if this is either totally obvious or the gravest of insults ... or, more likely, both... but Stanford researchers have found that night owls, those of us who tend to stay up late and prefer sleeping in, don't actually thrive in the wee hours: In a survey of nearly 75,000 adults, researchers
- [SONG: Inside the Moon](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/22/song-inside-the-moon/) - SONG: "Inside the Moon". (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: BBC, 15 July 2024, "Cave discovered on Moon could be home for humans", as used in the post "There’s a cave on the moon we could live in." ABSTRACT: This is one of the very few songs finished well ahead of deadline, in part because
- [Why did some folks never get covid, and others *always* got it?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/18/why-did-some-folks-never-get-covid-and-others-always-got-it/) - The Conversation finds a scientific reason for an often-observed phenomenon - that some people seemed strangely immune to COVID-19, while others would come down with it more than once: Through a collaboration between University College London, the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Imperial College London in the UK, we set out to answer this question using
- [There's a cave on the moon we could live in.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/15/theres-a-cave-on-the-moon-we-could-live-in/) - BBC reports on the discovery of a cave on the moon that has awakened a primordial proto-human urge in the space scientists observing it. They spot a cave on the moon and think, hey, we could live in that thing: Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut to travel to space, told BBC News that the
- [Science Art: <i>Skull reconstruction of</i> Utahceratops gettyi, 2010.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/14/science-art-skull-reconstruction-of-utahceratops-gettyi-2010/) - Here's a horned dinosaur, or what's left of one. I found it on Wikimedia Commons, but it was originally found in Utah, then written up in "New Horned Dinosaurs from Utah Provide Evidence for Intracontinental Dinosaur Endemism," by a bunch of paleontologists. It's a Utahceratops! Or was.
- [Up to 60% of the objects nearest Earth could be "dark comets."](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/12/up-to-60-of-the-objects-nearest-earth-could-be-dark-comets/) - PhysOrg reports on mysterious chunks of hard-to-see space rock all around us, even now. They contained - and might still contain - ice, which University of Michigan astronomers say means that they could one day be used to transport water around the solar system: The findings suggest that asteroids in the asteroid belt, a region
- [One of the world's poshest schools bans smartphones, issues Nokias.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/11/one-of-the-worlds-poshest-schools-bans-smartphones-issues-nokias/) - How will the students play Bubble Cash? Mashable reports on what might be a smart move in favor of dumb phones at the upper-crusty English school Eton: The all-boys boarding school, founded in 1440 with alumni including George Orwell, several UK prime ministers, and Prince William, is removing smartphone use out of concerns regarding mental
- [Covid boosters protect against other viruses.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/08/covid-boosters-protect-against-other-viruses/) - Science Alert has some encouraging research for those who keep up with their immunizations, with evidence that covid boosters offer increased protection against other strains of coronavirus, and other viruses too: "These data suggest that if these cross-reactive antibodies do not rapidly wane – we would need to follow their levels over time to know
- [Science Art: <i>Trojeborg, a stone labyrinth from Visby</i>, 1919](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/08/science-art-trojeborg-a-stone-labyrinth-from-visby-1919/) - This is an illustration from Nordisk Familjebok, a Norwegian encyclopedia from the turn of the last century. The labyrinth, naturally, is much older. It's of a sort that can be laid out using two stakes and a knotted rope - you tie the end of the rope around one stake and sort of swing around
- [New species of horned, plant-eating dinosaur unveiled](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/04/new-species-of-horned-plant-eating-dinosaur-unveiled/) - Yellowstone Public Radio has a piece on the grand-looking Lokiceratops rangiformes, unearthed in Montana and "unveiled" at the Natural History Museum of Utah: Mark Loewen is a professor of Geology and Geophysics and a paleontologist at the University of Utah. In 2022, he and his students were given permission to research and piece together hundreds
- [Science Art: <i>Saturn Eclipse</i>, Cassini Orbiter, 2006.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/07/01/science-art-saturn-eclipse-cassini-orbiter-2006/) - This is Saturn, as photographed (yes, it's a composite photo, not a drawing) by Cassini as it passed in front of the Sun. Our Earth is visible, barely, if you zoom in and look "above the left extremity of the main set of rings." You might have to use the full-resolution version of the image
- [Living skin helps robot smile in a way that is not at all creepy.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/30/living-skin-helps-robot-smile-in-a-way-that-is-not-at-all-creepy/) - Glistening and pink like extruded edible protein, sure... but at least it's friendly! NPR uncovers the living skin used to cover robots with a (supposedly) more approachable face: “In this study, we managed to replicate human appearance to some extent by creating a face with the same surface material and structure as humans,” professor Shoji
- [Science Art: <i>The Furnaces of the World....</i>, 1912](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/23/science-art-the-furnaces-of-the-world-1912/) - This is a Popular Mechanics illustration from 102 years ago that sounds like it could have been written today. Warnings about industrial pollution increasing air temperature are nothing new. We (for some value of "we," some group of humans who share information with each other) have known that our machines release gases at a volume
- [SONG: Low Orbit Ion Cannon (a penitential Emperor X cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/23/song-low-orbit-ion-cannon-a-penitential-emperor-x-cover/) - SONG: "Low Orbit Ion Cannon" (a penitential Emperor X cover). ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This isn't based on any research; it's a cover of an Emperor X song recorded for missing the monthly deadline on an original song for May 2024. ABSTRACT: This is a song about computers, and it delights me. I have no idea
- [SONG: Migration Roads](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/23/song-migration-roads/) - SONG: "Migration Roads". (available as .ogg here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on LiveScience, 3 May 2024, "1st Americans came over in 4 different waves from Siberia, linguist argues," as used in the post Languages show four waves of migration into prehistoric North America. ABSTRACT: I am not sure why this song took so long, but
- [Science Art: <i>Detaching Roll Mechanism</i>, 1912.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/16/science-art-detaching-roll-mechanism-1912/) - This is a device from Cotton Card-Room Machinery, a catalog published by Whitlin Machine Works. I can't say much about how it works because I've never been in a cotton card-room. All I can say is this detaching roll mechanism is part of an improved combing machine, and that it's also called a "drawing-off roll."
- [A brand new tiny deer.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/15/a-brand-new-tiny-deer/) - Awww. Sci News has reported on the historic discovery of a new deer species in Peru. The short-legged dwarf deer Pudella carlae is the first deer discovered in the 21st century, and the first New World deer in more than 60 years ... although now it seems like there may be more out there: In
- [A planet that is constantly exploding.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/15/a-planet-that-is-constantly-exploding/) - This discovery reminds me of some people I know. Mashable reports on the discovery 66 light years away of solar system "HD 104067," with a planet so roiled by the graivty of its nearest neighbors that it's covered in active volcanos to the point that it's constantly exploding: In a distant solar system some 66
- [An antibiotic that spares gut bacteria.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/12/an-antibiotic-that-spares-gut-bacteria/) - Medical News Today has findings that make it that much easier to fight bacterial infections without throwing your whole body out of whack - by using lolamicin, a "smart antibiotic" that kills the bad germs while sparing the gut biome that controls digestion, mood, and a bunch of other stuff: Researchers identified the antibiotic lolamicin,
- [Science Art: <i>Interior of right osseous labyrinth,</i> from <i>Gray's Anatomy</i>.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/09/science-art-interior-of-right-osseous-labyrinth-from-grays-anatomy/) - This is the listening part, the twisting bits of the inner ear. It really does look like a mollusk, doesn't it? ("Cochlea" literally means "snail" in Greek.) It was drawn (or engraved) by Henry Vandyke Carter in the mid-1800s, though published in 1910. Before illustrating Henry Gray's Anatomy, descriptive and surgical, Carter had previously "worked
- [Recording tinnitus as it happens - for art AND science.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/09/recording-tinnitus-as-it-happens-for-art-and-science/) - Well, if a microphone can act as a speaker (which it can, and vice versa), then why can't an ear act as a megaphone? It might fly in the face of expectations but The Quietus has an interview with Lola De La Mata, an artist and audiological experimenter who has actually recorded the sound of
- [Moon running on the Wall of Death](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/06/moon-running-on-the-wall-of-death/) - Science News finds inspiration from the carnival for a new way to keep astronauts in shape, by running along the inside of a circular wall just like motorcycle stunt-riders do on the Wall of Death: An amusement park attraction, the Wall looks something like a giant wooden barrel with the top sawed off. Daredevils on
- [A drug to regrow teeth.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/04/a-drug-to-regrow-teeth/) - Endgadget (via Yahoo! News) has bad news for the Tooth Fairy coming out of Kyoto University, where researchers have a drug for regrowing lost teeth that's about to enter human trials: The research has been led by Katsu Takahashi, head of dentistry and oral surgery at Kitano Hospital. The intravenous drug deactivates the uterine sensitization-associated
- [Science Art: <i>Boars's tusk helmet NAMA6568</i>, Athens, Greece.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/02/science-art-boarss-tusk-helmet-nama6568-athens-greece/) - This is a photo taken in 2015 by Wikimedia Commons user Jebulon, of a helmet made for a Mycenaean warrior between 3.300 and 3,400 years ago. It's a display at the National Archaeological Museum of Greece, but at the dawn of history, Homer described a helmet just like this in Book 10 of The Iliad,
- [Marines combat-tested Bronze-Age armor. It worked.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/02/marines-combat-tested-bronze-age-armor-it-worked/) - Science Alert covers a (mock) battle that solved an ancient mystery - when Greek marines figured out if the 3,500-year-old Dendra armor was genuinely useful or just made for show, by making a copy and wearing it into battle: Wholly intact, it looked solid but early experiments with replicas suggested it wasn't suited for use
- [All thumbs bad, third thumb good.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/01/all-thumbs-bad-third-thumb-good/) - Science Adviser has news (and video) of a handy little upgrade invented by robotics researcher Tamar Makin and her colleagues. They're calling it the Third Thumb because that's what it is - a sixth digit that helps a human hand carry, hold, and manipulate better than ever: The Third Thumb was designed to expand a
- [Biking for long life.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/29/biking-for-long-life/) - Did we just mention exercise slowing down time? NPR has a whole 'noter story on muscular effort changing the progress of time. This is a survey of studies that find regular bicycling can prevent or repair all sorts of age-related damage, from arthritic knees to overall longevity: The study, which was funded in part by
- [Science Art: <i>Main floristic types from the Maastrichtian</i>, F. Guillén, 2012.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/29/science-art-main-floristic-types-from-the-maastrichtian-f-guillen-2012/) - This is a likeness of the southern bit of South America as it was near the end of the Cretaceous, right before the event that drove the dinosaurs to extinction. The Maastrichtian Age was a geologic period named in the 1800s after chalk deposits found near the Dutch city of Maastricht. The formation is also
- [The space heroine of Cameroon.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/25/the-space-heroine-of-cameroon/) - BBC reports on scientist Marie Makuate, who is leading a one-woman campaign to give the African continent a winning position in the new space race: As a geospatial expert for the NGO Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, she creates maps to help emergency services navigate an unpredictable territory so that people in need can be reached quickly.
- [Plants have desires ... and the agency to meet them. So are they smart?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/24/plants-have-desires-and-the-agency-to-meet-them/) - NPR was one of several outlets covering the release of writer Zoë Schlanger's new book The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, which might reopen some old botanical debates about whether plants can be said to be intelligent. Ongoing research is demonstrating that plants
- [No song today.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/23/no-song-today-17/) - Music is in place, for the most part, but no lyrics yet, and I'm on a highway somewhere between Shreveport and Jackson, so am unlikely to be able to write & record lyrics until... well, not today, anyway. On the other hand, the landscape is lovely. There are some parts of America that I can
- [Exercise slows down your perception of time.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/23/exercise-slows-down-your-perception-of-time/) - Science Alert brings us (well, those of us who are working out) one step closer to moving like the wind through a world of living statues with research from the UK and the Netherlands that shows exercise directly affects the perception of time, speeding up our reactions by making everything else seem slowed down: Led
- [White whales talk with their foreheads.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/14/white-whales-talk-with-their-foreheads/) - Scientific American listens in on beluga conversations, thanks to a new dictionary that itemizes the "words" formed by their squishy, shape-able forehead "melons" to let other whales know when they're flirting, fighting, feeding, or just hanging out: For a study in Animal Cognition, scientists tracked four beluga whales at Connecticut’s Mystic Aquarium for more than
- [Science Art: <i>Whelp of the Northern Panther (</i>Felix concolor<i>)</i>, 1842.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/19/science-art-whelp-of-the-northern-panther-felix-concolor-1842/) - That is a kitten. A panther kitten. Offspring of the catamount. Doesn't look all that happy to have its picture engraved. On a digital device, there's no telling how large this illustration was, but in the printed copy of A Natural History of New York it was 1/3 the natural size of the real article.
- [Science Art: <i>Sun not in Plane of Moon's Orbit - Eclipses Impossible</i>, etc., 1898](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/12/science-art-sun-not-in-plane-of-moons-orbit-eclipses-impossible-1898/) - This is an illustration -- two illustrations, actually -- from A New Astronomy for Beginners by David P. Todd. It's actually an illustration of a demonstration, with a nattily dressed young man holding a disk, representing the Moon's orbit around the Earth, at arm's length, with his eye representing the Sun. Sort of complicated on
- [Languages show four waves of migration into prehistoric North  America.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/13/languages-show-four-waves-of-migration-into-prehistoric-north-america/) - LiveScience has a dramatic development in a field I don't think I'd ever considered: Linguistic archaeology. A historical linguist from UC Berkeley has used a language model to determine that the earliest Americans didn't come in a steady stream from Siberia, but probably arrived in four distinct waves of settlers: ...Johanna Nichols, a historical linguist
- [A 3-minute cold-brew coffee with ultrasound.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/11/a-3-minute-cold-brew-coffee-with-ultrasound/) - 404 Media report on an Australian team that has created cold espresso and a cold-brew coffee that takes a mere three minutes (instead of 12-to-24 hours) to make, thanks to a boost from ultrasonic technology to create "acoustic cavitation," or tiny bubbles that can burst through the cell-walls of plant material like ground-up coffee beans:
- [Driverless cars, OK. Pilotless fighter jets? They're flying now, too.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/11/driverless-cars-ok-pilotless-fighter-jets-theyre-flying-now-too/) - AP reports on a robot F16 that has just taken Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall out for a joyride courtesy of an AI fighter pilot: Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning for an AI-enabled fleet of more than 1,000 unmanned warplanes, the first of them operating by 2028. It
- [NASA confirms - that really *was* space junk that hit man's house.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/11/nasa-confirms-that-really-was-space-junk-that-hit-mans-house/) - He thought so! LiveScience recently reported on Alejandro Otero, who in 2021 was pretty sure the weird chunk of stuff that crashed through his roof in Naples, Florida, was a battery pack from the International Space Station. Well, he concluded correctly: Otero said he thought the offending object was part of a cargo pallet packed
- [Science Art: <i>X-2 After Drop from B-50 Mothership</i>, 1957.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/06/science-art-x-2-after-drop-from-b-50-mothership-1957/) - Off we go.... Here's some cutting-edge technology from 1957 which, frankly, is still pretty impressive. The Bell Labs X-2 is a rocket-plane that flew humans up into the upper atmosphere before we were taking rockets into space. It broke the speed barrier and then more than doubled its speed. From the photo description in the
- [Florida can weather climate change - if planning starts now.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/04/florida-can-weather-climate-change-if-planning-starts-now/) - The Guardian reports on a coalition of universities who have found hope for the low-lying, storm-prone (and tourism-dependent) Sunshine State, if climate resilience plans are put in place now: One key element, an 18m-acre swath of protected land called the Florida wildlife corridor, is already mostly in place, and will spearhead Florida’s climate resilience if
- [Porcelain gallbladder exhumed from asylum cemetery.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/03/porcelain-gallbladder-exhumed-from-asylum-cemetery/) - Live Science reports on a first-of-its-kind archaeological discovery in the graveyard of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum, where a woman buried a century ago was found to have a perfectly preserved "porcelain gallbladder" as the result of a medical condition: In a study published March 30 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, researchers detailed the
- [Orangutan makes his own medicine.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/05/03/orangutan-makes-his-own-medicine/) - BBC reports on Raku, a Sumatran orangutan, who has become the first non-human animal observed creating medicine - intentionally mashing up plants to create a paste to smear on an open wound on his face: A research team in the Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia spotted Rakus with a large wound on his cheek in
- [Science Art: <i>MeerKAT telescopes</i>, 2018](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/29/science-art-meerkat-telescopes-2018/) - They do look a little like meerkats, these big African satellite dishes. This is a photo from the Square Kilometre Array Organisation (SKAO) / South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO). The KAT in the name comes from the Karoo Array Telescope - the Karoo being a desert in South Africa (and I believe the driest
- [SpaceX leads the way... in workplace injuries.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/27/spacex-leads-the-way-in-workplace-injuries/) - Maybe Houston Chronicle just likes ragging on Elon Musk, maybe it's a local paper commenting on a locally important industry - either way, they've got a story on how SpaceX has got a leadership position no business wants. The company is head and shoulders above its private and government-run competitors in the rate of employees
- [SONG: I Am Your Library](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/24/song-i-am-your-library/) - SONG: "I Am Your Library". (available as .ogg here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Science Daily, 25 Mar 2024, "New archive of ancient human brains challenges misconceptions of soft tissue preservation," as used in the post 'An archive of ancient human brains'. ABSTRACT: I didn't think I'd have a song in time. But then I
- [Voyager 1 is working again.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/23/voyager-1-is-working-again/) - NASA reports that the interstellar probe, which stopped sending back updates last November, is once again letting HQ know how its onboard systems are doing. Next step is getting it to send back scientific data as it keeps traveling farther than any other human-made object: The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing
- [Science Art: <i>Back Cover Detail,</i> THE MIND, 1965.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/22/science-art-back-cover-detail-the-mind-1965/) - I think this is a brain, but it might just be a maze. This is a small icon that appears on the lower left corner of the back cover of The Mind, from the LIFE Science Library published by Time-Life Books in 1965. The book came up in conversation recently, and for people of a
- [Damned big ichthyosaur.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/20/damned-big-ichthyosaur/) - Science Daily has news of a child -- child! -- of 11 who discovered the fossilized bones, during a seaside walk in England, of a very big sea creature. It probably measured about 25 meters from snout to tail, or about 82 feet. That's two school buses end to end. It might just have been
- [Lower Medicaid, higher crime.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/18/lower-medicaid-higher-crime/) - Bolts magazine follows up on studies showing a link between health insurance and crime rates (that is, the less people are insured, the higher crime rates tend to go) by focusing specifically on Medicaid, the U.S. government plan intended to cover low-income recipients' medical costs. They found that states which make it harder to qualify
- [Mouth bacteria linked to colon cancer](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/15/mouth-bacteria-linked-to-colon-cancer/) - Scientific American has new research that finds a connection between one subspecies of a bacterium commonly found in our mouths, Fusobacterium nucleatum, and the growth colon cancer, an ailment that's currently on the rise: F. nucleatum, associated with dental plaque and gingivitis, occurs naturally in the mouth microbiome. A decade ago scientists discovered that the
- [Science Art: <i>Human Factors: Scanning Male and Standing Female</i>, 1964.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/14/science-art-human-factors-scanning-male-and-standing-female-1964/) - This had to have been meant slightly tongue-in-cheek at the time... hadn't it? Bespectacled man, meet Vitruvian lady. The cartoon couple are from an ad in the October 1964 issue of Informational Display, based on drawings by industrial designer Walter Koch. These show how human bodies of both types should determine the size and shape
- [Algae bloom data, set to music.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/12/algae-bloom-data-set-to-music/) - NPR has a piece on a USF anthro prof's idea to make her sort of depressing research more palatable in a way of which this guild heartily approves - by turning data on public reactions to algae blooms (and resulting fish kills and coral death) into music: The paper, co-authored with three other professors, had
- [Glowing petunias.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/09/glowing-petunias/) - NPR greets springtime with flowers that show their brightest color (a fluorescent green) after the sun goes down, thanks to genetic modification that makes these petunias glow in the dark like jellyfish or mushrooms: The petunia with bright, white flowers looks like something you'd buy in spring at a garden nursery. But, when the lights
- [Science Art: <i>Amoeba. Actinophrys.</i> by Philip Henry Gosse.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/07/science-art-amoeba-actinophrys-by-philip-henry-gosse/) - This is a scientific illustration done as a paper collage; that is, Philip Gosse took a sheet of paper, painted it as black as space, then glued white and colored tissue over it to create the likeness of creatures (technically, protozoa) observed through a microscope. The top one is an amoeba, and the bottom one
- [Hyper-sexual zombie cicadas... on speed.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/06/hyper-sexual-zombie-cicadas-on-speed/) - That's how the CBS headline starts, and I can only improve upon it by adding the drugs in the interest of accuracy. The story is about a sexually-transmitted fungal disease expected to affect both of the broods emerging in this cicada-heavy year: Matthew Kasson, an associate professor of Mycology and Forest Pathology at West Virginia
- [Spoofed GPS signals affect 1,600 jets.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/04/05/spoofed-gps-signals-affect-1600-jets/) - Interesting Engineering reports on antisocial behavior on the part of Russia, which seems to be responsible for jamming the GPS systems of 1,600 jet planes that dared fly too close to Poland, southern Sweden, and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad: The uptick in GPS interference in Eastern Europe in recent months has been blamed on
- [Science Art: <i>Pianta di Roma</i>, by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1758.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/31/science-art-pianta-di-roma-by-giovanni-battista-piranesi-1758/) - It's a map. An old map of an even older city. This is Piranesi's map of ancient Rome ("and Forma Urbis") from Le Antichità Romane, a survey of Roman antiquities, including the shape of the city itself in ancient times, and the shapes of bits of the buildings that made up the city. Maybe you
- ["An archive of ancient human brains."](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/30/an-archive-of-ancient-human-brains/) - Science Daily has research from University of Oxford archaeologists that is potentially upending a long-standing belief about digging up our long-ago ancestors. After looking through records in 10 different languages, they've determined that it's far more common than you'd think for human brains and nerves to be preserved along with skin and bone: A new
- [Does tweeting research help?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/27/does-tweeting-research-help/) - Nature, always hoping to increase the reach of researchers, has a study that shows using the platform formerly known as Twitter to share research will still boost your engagement online, but will no longer help you get your findings cited by other researchers: An international group of 11 researchers, who by the end of the
- [Tardigrade proteins can slow aging in humans.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/27/tardigrade-proteins-can-slow-aging-in-humans/) - Science Daily reminds us again of the charms of the humble, unkillable water bear, the tardigrade, a creature that can withstand nearly anything and just keep on going: dehydration, radiation, extremes in temperature, even the vacuum of space. Well, according to research done at the University of Wyoming, proteins tardigrades use to enter and leave
- [Science Art: <i>Four </i>Phymata<i> species</i> from "Notas Sobre Phymatidae Neotropicales II," October 1951.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/24/science-art-four-phymata-species-from-notas-sobre-phymatidae-neotropicales-ii-october-1951/) - An illustration of four ambush bugs from Anales de la Sociedad Científica Argentina, found in the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Or parts of ambush bugs. At the top left is Phymata carioca (the pronotum, the bit that covers the thorax),Phymata incisa (a pronotum and scutellum, or "shield" between the wing joints), Phymata bipunctata, and Phymata husseyi.
- [Baby dragons commute out of their caves.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/21/baby-dragons-commute-out-of-their-caves/) - The New York Times reports on olms -- blind, pale, cave-dwelling salamanders once believed to be baby dragons -- regularly traveling up to the surface out of their underwater caves, a behavior that's taken ecologists by surprise: Eyeless and ghostly pale from millions of years spent below ground, the salamanders appear to commute back and
- [SONG: Great Big Love](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/23/song-great-big-love/) - SONG: "Great Big Love". (available as .ogg here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on The Guardian, 28 Feb 2024, "Humpback sex photographed for first time – and both whales were male," as used in the post Humpback sex photographed for the first time – and it’s gay. ABSTRACT: This story was the obvious choice, I think,
- [Science Art: <i>HURRICANE FRAN - NARA - 17393787</i>, by NASA.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/17/science-art-hurricane-fran-nara-17393787-by-nasa/) - Pictures of a storm from space. Big hurricanes are big! Fran was a Category 3 major hurricane - so a big storm, but far from the biggest. As NASA describes this poster (for that is what this is): The reverse contains instructional information about hurricanes and forecasting. Earth Science Enterprise. Laboratory for Atmospheres. Produced and
- [Ancient viruses gave us our brains.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/15/ancient-viruses-gave-us-our-brains/) - "Language is a virus," said William S. Burroughs. Now, Science Daily reports that researchers at Altos Labs-Cambridge Institute of Science have found that intelligence itself may be a viral byproduct - because it was ancient retroviruses that created the genetic sequence necessary for prehistoric vertebrates to grow complex brains: The team found that a retrovirus-derived
- [Science Art: <i>Relative Position of Observer and Observed in Direct Ophthalmoscopy</i>, Arthur W. Head, 1917.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/10/science-art-relative-position-of-observer-and-observed-in-direct-ophthalmoscopy-arthur-w-head-1917/) - You gotta get right up in there if you really want to see what's going on in those eyes. This is an illustration from a book about birds, oddly enough: The fundus oculi of birds, especially as viewed by the ophthalmoscope; a study in the comparative anatomy and physiology. Neither of these gentlemen are birds.
- [Bumblebees teach each other.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/07/bumblebees-teach-each-other/) - Nature shares a study that found that bumblebees somehow communicate the solutions to complex puzzles to each other, something that only humans were thought to do. Instead, the insects who painstakingly solved a problem on their own (with a little human guidance) could then teach other bumblebees the solution that no bee could learn on
- [Milking the amphibian](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/08/milking-the-amphibian/) - NPR has a story about a caecilian. Not Sicilian, but South American, these are to salamanders what glass snakes are to lizards: a legless version that looks like a whole other kind of thing. Caecilians are amphibians that look like earthworms. Weird thing is, scientists just found out that they produce milk to feed their
- [Science Art: <i>Earth</i> by Henry De la Beche, from <i>Researches in Theoretical Geology</i>, 1834.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/03/03/science-art-earth-by-henry-de-la-beche-from-researches-in-theoretical-geology-1834/) - This depiction of Earth might be the first such image of our planet as seen from space. No human (as far as we know) had ever been to space at the time Henry De la Beche drew this. He'd started out illustrating the dinosaurs whose skeletons his neighbor, Mary Anning, had discovered, and then worked
- [Humpback sex photographed for the first time - and it's gay.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/29/humpback-sex-photographed-for-the-first-time-and-its-gay/) - The Guardian runs a science story about a milestone in marine biology - the first time humpback whales have ever been caught on camera in the act of mating. But it's a story with a big "turns out" - in that it turns out both whales were male: The sighting, confirmed by scientists in a
- [Odysseus tipped over on the Moon.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/28/odysseus-tipped-over-on-the-moon/) - Reuters reports on the first private-corp lunar lander, who successfully touched down on the Moon and sent back useful data about conditions there. That's the good news. The not-so-good news: the Odysseus lander managed to do this from a prone position. And in all likelihood, the lander is lying down on the job (which has
- [Science Art: <i>Styxosaurus and Xiphactinus/i>, by ABelov2014.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/27/science-art-styxosaurus-and-xiphactinus-i-by-abelov2014/) - Styxosaurus is, or was, an elasmosaur - an undersea predator with a long neck and sharp teeth, all the better for grabbing ammonites and prehistoric fish for a quick snack. It takes a lot of smaller, slower creatures to fuel a 17-foot-long swimming reptile. The other fish in this image are Xiphactinus, though, which are
- [Chinese dragon fossil discovered.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/24/chinese-dragon-fossil-discovered/) - NPR, among other outlets, has reported on the discovery of a real Chinese dragon in this, the Year of the Dragon. At least, it's certainly the remarkably complete fossil of a creature that fits the description: an aquatic reptile with a long, sinuous body and winding neck that ruled the Asian waterways millennia before the
- [Gene test reveals your likelihood of getting 10 common illnesses](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/22/gene-test-reveals-your-likelihood-of-getting-10-common-illnesses/) - Health Day reports on a new DNA scan that reveals to you (and doctors, and who knows who else) just how likely you are to come down with 10 common ailments, including atrial fibrillation, obesity, type-1 and type-2 diabetes, breast cancer, prostate cancer, kidney disease, heart disease, high cholesterol, and asthma: “With this work, we’ve
- [SONG: Lady at the Generator](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/21/song-lady-at-the-generator/) - SONG: "Lady at the Generator". (available as .ogg here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Amsterdam UMC, 4 Jan 2024, "Tiredness Experienced by Long Covid Patients Has a Physical Cause," as used in the post Here’s why long covid makes you tired.. ABSTRACT: Maybe I should start by saying who or what the lady at the
- [Science Art: <i>Science-Gossip cover page</i>, Dec. 1899.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/19/science-art-science-gossip-cover-page-dec-1899/) - This is the cover page of Science-Gossip magazine, "an illustrated monthly record of nature, country lore, & applied science." There are articles in here about Departmental Snubbing of Science and Dendritic Crystals in Paper, and there are ads for X-Ray generators and fossils, and there's a section called "Transactions" about which researchers are moving to
- [Building a telescope on the Moon.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/16/building-a-telescope-on-the-moon/) - BBC Sky at Night Magazine reports on NASA's plan to look deeper into space than ever before by setting up a 9-lb (4-kg) radio telescope farther away than ever before - on the south pole of the Moon: ROLSES, as the device is called, is one of the instruments on board Odysseus, the uncrewed commercial
- [New hope for life on Mars](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/15/new-hope-for-life-on-mars/) - Space.com brings more evidence of a life-sustaining environment on primordial Mars, in the form of ancient sediments that confirm Jezero crater was once a vast lake: As Perseverance travels across the surface of Mars, the RIMFAX instrument sends radar waves downward at 4-inch (10-centimeter) intervals and measures pulses reflected from depths of about 65.6 feet
- [Say it to me deeply.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/13/say-it-to-me-deeply/) - Science Daily reports on research into the psychological effects of the pitch of people's voices. It's fairly well known that people find men's voices more attractive, prestigious, and trustworthy when they're pitched deeper. But Penn State found the same effect holds true for women who speak in a deeper register: "Vocal communication is one of
- [Science Art: <i>Check Valve</i>, 1882.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/12/science-art-check-valve-1882/) - A valve to prevent backflow... so the river doesn't wind up in the reservoir, or the effluent in the shower pipes. From A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating to the hydrology, hydrodynamics, and practical construction of water works, in North America by J.T. Fanning, a civil engineer with a taste for pipes
- [Ancient stash of hallucinogenic medicine discovered.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/10/ancient-stash-of-hallucinogenic-medicine-discovered/) - Science magazine reports on the Dutch discovery of, basically, Roman-era drugs hidden inside a hollow bone. The black henbane seeds could have been used to treat ailments (or to bring on visions) out on the edges of the empire: In a paper published today in the journal Antiquity, researchers report finding a cache of Roman-era
- [How the Bigfoot candidate went extinct.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/06/how-the-bigfoot-candidate-went-extinct/) - Triops Galaxy reports on paleontological research into the biggest primate ever to walk the planet, the 600-pound Gigantopithecus blackii... without mentioning Bigfoot. Instead, they focus on the actual science behind the likely extinction of these 3-meter- (9.8-foot-) tall great, great apes: German palaeontologist Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald stumbled across his discovery in a pharmacy
- [Science Art: <i>Fluorescence and birefringence of 445 nm blue laser in calcite crystal</i>, Jan Pavelka, 2011.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/04/science-art-fluorescence-and-birefringence-of-445-nm-blue-laser-in-calcite-crystal-jan-pavelka-2011/) - Calcite refracts light in a linear way - it's why (as previous songs have discussed) it may have been used as a navigational tool by Vikings. It tends to make light that passes through it travel in a straight line, like natural polarized sunglasses or microscopic Venetian blinds. Here, we're looking at very focused blue
- ["MouthPad" lets you scroll with your tongue.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/04/mouthpad-lets-you-scroll-with-your-tongue/) - NBC reports on a digital device that's just on the tip of your tongue... where it acts like a trackpad on the roof of your mouth: MouthPad^, a retainer-like trackpad chip that sits on the roof of the mouth, made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show this week. It can sense tongue movements, allowing
- [AI stocks take a dive.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/03/ai-stocks-take-a-dive/) - The Futurist calls the latest wave of the hype-cycle over for artificial intelligence, with news of AI companies losing an impressive $190 billion in stock value: According to Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reid, the downturn may be "signaling some overextension of the recent strong rally," according to a note seen by Yahoo Finance. Other analysts
- [Secretly sick.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/02/01/secretly-sick/) - University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Reporting and Policy (CIDRAP) has some scientific findings from colleagues at U Michigan that will surprise no one who has spent any time in an office or airport. About 75% percent of adults, they say, have hidden signs of an infectious disease in order to work, travel, or
- [Science Art: <i>Nyctodactlyus</i>, by F. John, c. 1915](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/28/science-art-nyctodactlyus-by-f-john-c-1915/) - This glimpse into a prehistoric world (which we now know should probably have at least a few more feathers in it) is part of the first series of chromolithographic cards created by German artist F. John. As you can read at the copyrightexpired.com page where I found them, John's cards were mostly given away with
- [Hacking the train.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/27/hacking-the-train/) - Ars Technica recently reported on a new front in the "right to repair" war. A group of hackers broke into a Polish train system in order to overcome software that kept anyone but the authorized manufacturer from fixing it - or even bricked trains that parked near an independent repair shop: Members of an ethical
- [No song for January](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/27/no-song-for-january/) - I am currently unable to record, or at least to play a guitar. Song will appear shortly.
- [Science Art: <i>He2-104: The Southern Crab Nebula</i>, 1999.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/21/science-art-he2-104-the-southern-crab-nebula-1999/) - This is a nebula inside a nebula, caused by two stars pulling each other apart, as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. From the description at the NSSDCA Photo Gallery: Images taken with Earth-based telescopes have shown the larger, hourglass-shaped nebula. But this picture, taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, reveals a small, bright nebula
- [Locusts raised in a centrifuge have stronger skeletons.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/20/locusts-raised-in-a-centrifuge-have-stronger-skeletons/) - Science Magazine gets heavy with insects that, when brought up in the "hypergravity" of a spinning centrifuge, grow stronger exoskeletons as a result: When a person exercises regularly, their skeleton adapts to the repeated stress by becoming thicker and denser. That’s why astronauts living in low gravity and patients on bed rest can develop brittle,
- [A magnetic galactic map in three dimensions.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/17/a-magnetic-galactic-map-in-three-dimensions/) - The University of Tokyo might have solved some riddles about the formation of stars by creating the world's first 3D map of the galaxy's own magnetic field: “Until now, all observations of magnetic fields within the Milky Way led to a very limited model that was uniform all over and largely matched the disc shape
- [A white-blood-cell genetic therapy can cure lupus.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/16/a-white-blood-cell-genetic-therapy-can-cure-lupus/) - The American College of Rheumatology publishes a study about a new way to treat a famously slippery autoimmune disease, using CAR-T therapy to successfully put lupus in remission: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE, lupus) is a complex autoimmune disease marked by the production of autoantibodies to nucleic acid DNA and nuclear protein autoantigens and is associated
- [Science Art: <i>Mouchot's solar thermal collector from 1860</i>, from <i>Nordisk Familjebok</i>, 1917.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/15/science-art-mouchots-solar-thermal-collector-from-1860-from-nordisk-familjebok-1917/) - This is a solar-powered generator. A funnel with sides angled at 90 degrees is pointed at the sun to catch its radiation, and those rays are bounced by the funnel's mirrored walls toward a glass bulb in the center of the funnel. The bulb has a coil inside, that is, a cylindrical steam boiler. The
- [SONG: Hymn of Acxiom (a penintential cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/12/song-hymn-of-acxiom-a-penintential-cover/) - SONG: "Hymn of Acxiom" (a penitential cover). (available as .ogg here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This isn't based on research. It's a cover of "Hymn of Acxiom," a song by Vienna Teng, recorded because I was late for December's song. I largely relied on this live version, although I can't deny the whole marching-band phenomenon also
- ["Good" cholesterol bad for brains?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/10/good-cholesterol-bad-for-brains/) - Science Alert casts some doubt on the "good" part of "good" cholesterol, with research that links high levels of HDL cholesterol with a higher likelihood of developing dementia: For those above 75 years of age, the risk increases by 42 percent, the analysis showed. The research, led by a team from Monash University, looked at
- [There's a good reason to forget.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/09/theres-a-good-reason-to-forget/) - PennNeuroKnow gives those of us who tend to absent-mindedness hope, sharing research - and the story of a "super-rememberer" named Solomon Shereshevsky - that shows a certain level of forgetfulness is actually good for our brains ... and the rest of us: The effect of these forgetting mechanisms is that, in the average brain, only
- [Science Art: <I>Don't Mix 'Em!</i>, by Robert Lachenman for the Work Projects Administration, 1936.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/07/science-art-dont-mix-em-by-robert-lachenman-for-the-work-projects-administration-1936/) - There's a killer on the road indeed. The WPA released this poster to discourage drunk driving, or at least running your hotrod on moonshine. Public health has never been this metal since.
- [Here's why long covid makes you tired.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/07/heres-why-long-covid-makes-you-tired/) - Amsterdam-based researchers have isolated a physical mechanism behind the fatigue that strikes some people for months after a covid infection. It comes down to the mitochondria in muscle cells, which underperform compared to those in uninfected folks: "We're seeing clear changes in the muscles in these patients," says Michèle van Vugt, Professor of Internal Medicine
- [Fossil preserves the soft parts of a 75 million-year-old crab.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/03/fossil-preserves-the-soft-parts-of-a-75-million-year-old-crab/) - PhysOrg has the story of a crab whose gills and other soft tissues were preserved against all odds for 75 million years: In a paper recently published in Palaeontologia Electronica, Dr. Adiel Klompmaker, University of Alabama Museums' curator of paleontology, and colleagues reported on a remarkable crab with multiple mineralized soft tissues preserved. This crab
- [Dry canal costs billions.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/05/dry-canal-costs-billions/) - Forbes covers a climate-change story about global trade and supply chains (something the pandemic taught the world about), focused on that thin isthmus between the Atlantic and Pacific where a man with a plan built the Panama Canal. It's the world's most important shortcut for everything from diesel oil to Prius parts to Chinese-made toasters,
- [Giant, ancient predator worms discovered in Arctic Greenland](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/01/04/giant-ancient-predator-worms-discovered-in-arctic-greenland/) - PhysOrg has another delightful story about prehistoric invertebrates. This time, researchers have discovered a half-a-billion-year-old enormous predator worm from the icy reaches of Northern Greenland: The new fossil animals have been named Timorebestia, meaning 'terror beasts' in Latin. Adorned with fins down the sides of their body, a distinct head with long antennae, massive jaw
- [What makes cheddar cheese taste so good?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/31/what-makes-cheddar-cheese-taste-so-good/) - Forbes looks into a year-long study hoping to determine exactly what it is that makes cheddar cheese taste like cheddar and not gouda or Swiss or some other kind of cheese. The secret is in the interactions of microbes, of course: To address the secrets of the flavor of Cheddar cheese, the study’s lead author,
- [SETI talked for 20 minutes with a whale.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/28/seti-talked-for-20-minutes-with-a-whale/) - Mashable has an alien communication story with an aquatic twist. SETI and the Alaska Whale Foundation practiced for first contact by spending 20 minutes "conversing" with a humpback whale named Twain: The researchers recorded the call used to engage Twain in "conversation" when they ran into a group of nine humpback whales near their research
- [Science Art: <i>Lynxes</i>, by Louis Sargent, 1909](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/24/science-art-lynxes-by-louis-sargent-1909/) - Two cats at dusk, growling in the snow. The nights have been long, but they're growing shorter. May you survive your own lonely wilderness and find warmth and companionship where you can. This Yuletide illustration is from The Wild Beasts of the World by T.C. and E.C. Jack, a three-volume set preserved in the Biodiversity
- [Science Art: <i>Punica Granatum</i>, 1829](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/31/science-art-punica-granatum-1829/) - This tasty-looking fruit is from a medical text - Medical Botany: or, Illustrations and Descriptions of the Medicinal Plants of the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Pharmacopoeias; Including a Popular and Scientific Description of Poisonous Plants, written by a doctor, John Stephenson, and a fellow of the Medico-Botanical Society, James Morss Churchill. The picture was painted
- [Blue Origin is back in the space business.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/24/blue-origin-is-back-in-the-space-business/) - Ars Technica reports on a rocket launch from Jeff Bezos' space company - the first in 15 months, after an engine failure destroyed a New Shepherd rocket. The new New Shepherd took off from West Texas, made it to the edge of space, then landed safely last Tuesday: Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, lofted
- [New hair to heal hearing](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/21/new-hair-to-heal-hearing/) - Harvard genetic researchers have struck on a novel way to restore hearing loss from damage and old age ... with gene therapy that regenerated hair cells in the inner ear: A research team led by Zheng-Yi Chen, an HMS associate professor of otolaryngology and associate scientist in the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories at Mass Eye and Ear,
- [Solving the mystery of a 2,000-year-old body](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/20/solving-the-mystery-of-a-2000-year-old-body/) - BBC reports on a very, very cold case that's been solved. A body found during roadwork, extending a highway between Cambridge and Huntington, England, has been conclusively identified as belonging to a Sarmatian nomad who came to the UK with the Roman Empire: Archaeologists discovered a complete, well-preserved skeleton of a man, they named Offord
- [Science Art: <i>Ancient Ritual White Jade Disk of Heaven...</i>, 1937](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/17/science-art-ancient-ritual-white-jade-disk-of-heaven-1937/) - This is an illustration from a 1937 edition of Natural History magazine, an article called "Chinese Design." This is a "Disk of Heaven," or bi, a slightly mysterious object that was both a symbol of social status and maybe kind of sort of a religious item, a symbolic gateway or portal to Heaven - you
- [Japanese high schooler discovers beetle species.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/15/japanese-high-schooler-discovers-beetle-species/) - The Japan Times covers a brand new (to us) prehistoric dung beetle that a high school student discovered while breaking rocks in class: During a geoscience class in September last year, Kota Yatagai, then a senior at Keio Senior High School in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, discovered the almost perfectly preserved fossil in his rock.
- [What will it mean to bring extinct animals back?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/13/what-will-it-mean-to-bring-extinct-animals-back/) - Defector, mostly a sports-and-social-commentary outlet, asks a scientific question: We're now at a point, genetics-wise, where we're ready to make de-extinction a real thing. But if reconstructed species are only imprecise genetic replicas of the original species, why would we be doing that?: When Thomas Gilbert, a genomics researcher at the University of Copenhagen, sat
- [Science Art: <i>Ryan 262 Manta Ray: Program Status Report cover</i>, 1975](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/10/science-art-ryan-262-manta-ray-program-status-report-1975/) - This is the cover of a report on the Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical "Navy Mini-Drone (STARS)," otherwise known as the Manta Ray. It was a fiberglass remote-controlled drone; STARS stood for "Ship Tactical Airborne RPV" (for "Remotely Piloted Vehicle"). The image came from the Robert Hersey Collection hosted by the San Diego Air and Space Museum
- [Probiotics to treat long covid?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/09/probiotics-to-treat-long-covid/) - I know, I know, but this is a double-blind study with around 400 hundred subjects published in The Lancet. It's a little more technical than I like to get with these science-feed posts, but the gist of it is that a treatment that boosts the presence of certain elements in patients' gut biome succeeded in
- [That planet is too big.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/05/that-planet-is-too-big/) - Ars Technica reports on a bafflingly huge exoplanet spotted by the Webb Space Telescope. It's the size of Neptune, but closely orbiting a star much smaller than ours - a red dwarf named LHS 3154. This means the guy is too big to have formed there in any way we understand: The researchers used radial
- [Cicadas are so loud, they cause fiberoptic-cable interference.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/03/cicadas-are-so-loud-they-cause-fiberoptic-cable-interference/) - Wired reveals a very strange insect-monitoring device called DAS, or "distributed acoustic sensing," normally used to track vibrations made by seismic shifts and volcanic eruptions. But Princeton geologists found that cicadas are so loud with their late-summer rattle calls that the vibrations actually affect the laser-light traveling inside fiberoptics: n the spring of 2021, Sarper
- [Science Art: <i>Exoplanets Poster</i>, Institute of Physics, 2023](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/03/science-art-exoplanets-poster-institute-of-physics-2023/) - This is a... well, it's pretty self-explanatory, really. Unlike most of the images collected here, it's got its own description printed right on it. These are alien planets, a classroom poster depicting three basic types of planets like those we've discovered orbiting around distant stars. The most interesting thing about this poster is that it's
- [Micro-napping champions: chinstrap penguins](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/12/01/micro-napping-champions-chinstrap-penguins/) - Yes, you read that correctly. Science News reports on an unusual distinction in the natural world. Chinstrap penguins manage to net a total of 11 hours of restful sleep every day, thanks to their capacity for taking a refreshing nap for just a few seconds, more than ten thousand times a day: Nearly a decade
- [Science Art: <i>Avro Canada VZ-9AV Avrocar</i>.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/26/science-art-avro-canada-vz-9av-avrocar/) - This is not a movie prop, but a working prototype of the Avrocar, a disc-shaped flying machine that graced the skies between 1959 and 1961. It's basically a giant fan sending a jet of air out of its rim to get lift and thrust, and should have been capable of flying saucer-style "impossible" maneuvers... but
- [App-driven gig-economy nurses.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/27/app-driving-gig-economy-nurses/) - The Markup looks at what it's like when you start hiring nurses the way you catch a ride from Uber: Gig nursing apps have become hugely popular with both nurses and investors, as an estimated 100,000 nurses have left the profession since 2020 and demand for their labor remains high. Clipboard and ShiftKey—a similar nursing
- [Faces appear as the Amazon gets low.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/25/faces-appear-as-the-amazon-gets-low/) - CNN had a report on the resurfacing of 2,000-year-old carved faces in the stony banks of a stretch of the Amazon River, which have peeked above the waterline due to a record-breaking drought: Some rock carvings had been sighted before but now there is a greater variety that will help researchers establish their origins, archaeologist
- [No other song today](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/24/no-other-song-today/) - Thinking I could get anything decent done in four days was probably overly optimistic... but there's something *mostly* done. More science to follow.
- [SONG: Fine Altar Stone](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/20/song-fine-altar-stone/) - SONG: "Fine Altar Stone". (available as .ogg here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on IFL Science, 25 Sep 2023, "The Stonehenge Altar Stone Didn’t Come From Where We Thought It Did," as used in the post Stonehenge's altar is not like the other stones. ABSTRACT: This was meant to be the October song, and the process
- [Science Art: <i>Turner +2: The Best CB Microphone in the World</i>, 1966.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/19/science-art-turner-2-the-best-cb-microphone-in-the-world-1966/) - This is an ad from the April 1966 "Tools and Test Measurement Issue" of Popular Electronics, which I found on archive.org. Lovely design on this mic. Rakish angle, sporty blue hue, chrome detailing. Probably a lot of horsepower ... or something.
- [AI is reading scrolls burned in Vesuvius.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/19/ai-is-reading-scrolls-burned-in-vesuvius/) - The Guardian looks back at a carbonized papyrus scorched by the lava that consumed Pompeii. University of Kentucky computer scientists have been able to decipher letters printed on the paper with the help of (hopefully not-hallucinating) archeological artificial intelligence: The discovery was announced on Thursday by Prof Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University
- [Exercise scientists: women hunted, men gathered](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/14/exercise-scientists-women-hunted-men-gathered/) - Scientific American upends the old idea that manly men evolved to hunt for meat for growing prehistoric families with physiological evidence that women - who are better endurance runners, on average - would probably make better endurance hunters, too: Mounting evidence from exercise science indicates that women are physiologically better suited than men to endurance
- [Robot warships hitting targets in the open sea.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/13/robot-warships-hitting-targets-in-the-open-sea/) - Popular Science reported on "ghost ships," a.k.a. USVs (Unmanned Sea Vehicles), passing their latest targeting tests on maneuvers in the Middle East: The tests, dubbed Exercise Digital Talon, took what essentially looked like a small speed boat fitted with a weapons system in open international waters in the Arabian Peninsula on Oct. 23. The ship,
- [Science Art: <i>Diagram illustrating the inherent conspicuousness of an eye-spot...</i>, Cott, 1942.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/13/science-art-diagram-illustrating-the-inherent-conspicuousness-of-an-eye-spot-cott-1942/) - An illustration showing how noticeable an eye actually is, from the text The Vertebrate Eye and Its Adaptive Radiation, which looks at eyes, eyes everywhere, all kinds of eyes. The book is by Gordon L. Wells, but the illustration here comes from Hugh B. Cott, who researched protective coloration. Which of course has to do
- [SONG: "Communications" (a penitential Slim Gaillard cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/07/song-communications-a-penitential-slim-gaillard-cover/) - SONG: "Communications" (a penitential Slim Gaillard cover). (available as .ogg here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This isn't based on any research. It's a cover of a genius jazz tune from 1947 by Slim Gaillard, which I recorded because I didn't get my October song done in time. ABSTRACT: I suppose I should start by saying I'm
- [Science Art: <i>Altitude and azimuth instrument</i>, 1876.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/05/science-art-altitude-and-azimuth-instrument-1876/) - How high? This device will tell you. It's from The great Centennial exhibition critically described and illustrated, by Phillip T. Sandhurst, which you can read on archive.org, but I found looking through the old Old Book Illustrations blog. I guess I'm nostalgic for the blog about nostalgia for books.
- [Roman glass became photonic crystal](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/04/roman-glass-became-photonic-crystal/) - Physics Magazine joins Tufts University researcher Giulia Guidetti who has studied a glass shard that was broken and buried shortly after 100 B.C.E. that over 2,000 years gained the iridescent sheen of butterflies' wings by becoming a naturally created nanomaterial: Its high magnesium and titanium content suggested that the principal ingredient, sodium-rich sand, came from
- [Hot Ice](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/11/02/hot-ice/) - Science Alert checks out "superionic ice," an exotic form of ice that stays solid at extremely hot temperatures and is probably floating around inside the cores of Uranus and Neptune - where it's responsible for giving them their very strange planetary magnetic fields: Superionic ice is strangely different, and yet it may be among the
- [Science Art: <i>Sea Sirens</i>, by A.A. Jansson, 1930.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/30/science-art-sea-sirens-by-a-a-jansson-1930/) - "The efforts made by oversober scientists to reduce such marvels to coldly reasonable origins have in a few specific cases been only too successful," wrote George Gaylord Simpson in 1930, following that with a warning: "Beware of disillusion, however, for the sirenians are also called 'sea-cows' (although, of course, they are really no sort of
- [Stone Age flip-flops](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/28/stone-age-flip-flops/) - PhysOrg reports on Witwatersrand researchers who've found tracks left by prehistoric footwear - a pair of flip-flop sandals that go back at least 75,000 years, making them 69,000 years older than the oldest known shoes of Europe: In South Africa, it was believed that before 2,000 years ago, people weren't wearing shoes. But trace fossils
- [Neolithic engineers](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/27/neolithic-engineers/) - The Guardian visits a huge, 5,000-year-old tomb complex on Scotland's Orkney Isles that reveals a surprisingly sophisticated level of engineering know-how: The tomb measures more than 15m in diameter and contains a stone structure accessed through a long passage of around seven metres. The excavation was headed by Dr Hugo Anderson-Whymark, senior curator of prehistory
- [Fossil antibiotics](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/27/fossil-antibiotics/) - Stat covers a medicine-making strategy right out of Jurassic Park, with a UPenn researcher named Cesar de la Fuente, who is looking for protein-chains called peptides in the fossilized remains of Neanderthals, giant sloths, mammoths, and other prehistoric creatures in order to discover chemicals that can be used to make medicines: His team uses robots
- [No song today](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/25/no-song-today-16/) - Once again, have a full instrumental track and melody, even, but the lyrics are not there. I now owe either two or three covers. One of them is just about ready.
- [Science Art: <i>821393 - Flying Machine - Wright Brothers</i>, May 22, 1906.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/23/science-art-821393-flying-machine-wright-brothers-may-22-1906/) - It's an airplane. Maybe the airplane. And this is how it looked when the U.S. Patent Office made it official. I found the illustration on Wikimedia, where it was uploaded from the National Archives and Records Administration, along with the rest of the application paperwork.
- [Hit the snooze button; your brain will thank you.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/20/hit-the-snooze-button-your-brain-will-thank-you/) - BBC's Science Focus recommends indulging in another few minutes of shut-eye, because Swedish research shows hitting the snooze button on your morning alarm can boost brain function: Of the 1,732 adults who participated, 69 per cent reported that they use the snooze function of their alarms. These snoozers tended to be younger people than non-snoozers.
- [Unlocking brain fog: is it serotonin?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/17/unlocking-brain-fog-is-it-serotonin/) - STAT reports on a new study that might be getting to the root of the long-covid brain fog, finding that the symptom appears to go hand-in-hand with a lack of free-floating serotonin in the body: A team led by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania concludes that when long Covid depletes peripheral serotonin — the
- [Science Art: <i>Two-Step Multi-Audi-Fone ad</i>, 1916.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/16/science-art-two-step-multi-audi-fone-ad-1916/) - This is an ad from, as Thomas Dolby put it, the Golden Age of wireless. More literally, it's from the October, 1916, issue of The Electrical Experimenter, a Hugo Gernsback publication, which you can flip through here, on archive.org. Don't forget: "You benefit from mentioning The Electrical Experimenter when writing to advertisers." Looking up the
- [Chinese programmer fined RMB 1 million for using a VPN.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/16/chinese-programmer-fined-rmb-1-million-for-using-a-vpn/) - The Guardian reports on a dramatic sentence for the crime of internet privacy: The programmer, surnamed Ma, was issued with a penalty notice by the public security bureau of Chengde, a city in Hebei province, on 18 August. The notice said Ma had used “unauthorised channels” to connect to international networks to work for a
- [An AI anesthesiologist to detect pain during surgery.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/15/an-ai-anesthesiologist-to-detect-pain-during-surgery/) - EurekAlert! shares the slightly unnerving announcement made at the annual Anesthesiology meeting about a new application for AI - monitoring pain levels in surgical patients by observing their facial expressions: Currently, subjective methods are used to assess pain, including the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) — where patients rate their own pain — and the Critical-Care
- [Samples from asteroid Bennu "an astrobiologist's dream"](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/13/samples-from-asteroid-bennu-an-astrobiologists-dream/) - Popular Science raves about the carbon, oxygen, and other life-sustaining material NASA scientists have found in samples retrieved from the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu: And now those pristine materials sit in an airtight vessel in a clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where researchers like University of Arizona planetary scientist Dante Lauretta are
- [Uruguay gets 98% of its power from renewable sources.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/09/uruguay-gets-98-of-its-power-from-renewable-sources/) - NPR had a piece on the little South American nation that's leading the way to a less polluted future, getting nearly all of its electricity from well-placed windmills and an economic system that makes it pay: Méndez Galain's plan was built around two simple facts about his country. First, while there wasn't a domestic supply
- [Science Art: <i>Cafeteria virion</i> by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics ViralZone.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/08/science-art-cafeteria-virion-by-the-swiss-institute-of-bioinformatics-viralzone/) - It looks like a D20 wrapped in iguana leather and filled with caramel and chocolate sprinkles. It's actually a rheavirus, also known as cafeteriavirus. It's in the Mimiviridae family, and is huge. In viral terms, of course. In our terms, it's pretty small - it's about 300 nm in diameter. It infects a kind of
- [SONG: The Scientist (a penitential Coldplay cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/22/song-the-scientist-a-pentinetial-coldplay-cover/) - SONG: "The Scientist (a penitential cover)". (available as .ogg here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This isn't based on research It's a cover of this vaguely scientific song by Coldplay. ABSTRACT: There is this grouping of artists - it's not really a school, and maybe only sort-of, kind-of a genre - who I think of as scorned
- [Ultrasound cleans "forever chemicals" from polluted groundwater.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/08/ultrasound-cleans-forever-chemicals-from-polluted-groundwater/) - Scientific Frontline reports on new Ohio State University research that shows sound waves can shake apart toxic PFAS, molecules so durable they previously earned the nickname "forever chemicals": Invented nearly a century ago, per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, also known as “forever chemicals,” were once widely used to create products such as cookware, waterproof clothing and
- [SONG: Clockwork of the Sky](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/24/song-clockwork-of-the-sky/) - SONG: "Clockwork of the Sky". (available as .wav here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on BBC, 8 Sep 2023, "Asteroid behaving unexpectedly after Nasa's deliberate Dart crash," as used in the post Space mission seems to have changed asteroid’s orbit. ABSTRACT: Had the house to myself today, which makes the recording process easier. Of course, it
- [SONG: Sandpaper Skin](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/23/song-sandpaper-skin/) - SONG: "Sandpaper Skin". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: PLOS One 19 Oct 2022, "Sharks are the preferred scraping surface for large pelagic fishes: Possible implications for parasite removal and fitness in a changing ocean," as used in the post “Sharks to tuna: fearsome predator, convenient backscratcher". ABSTRACT: This song was done early, because by the time it
- [AIs are in the hurricane-forecast business now.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/06/ais-are-in-the-hurricane-forecast-business-now/) - Ars Technica, in not so many words, is saying that AIs could be coming for the meteorologists next. But for now, they're helping the pros predict hurricanes accurately with greater speed: Weather forecasters describe the arrival of AI models with language that seems out of place in their forward-looking profession: “Sudden.” “Unexpected.” “It seemed to
- [Science Art: <i>Planetary Systems, with Five Opening Flaps</i>, from <i>Geographical Studies</i> by Levi Walter Yaggy, 1887.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/10/01/science-art-planetary-systems-with-five-opening-flaps-from-geographical-studies-by-levi-walter-yaggy-1887/) - I found this fascinating artifact in a wonderful article in Public Domain Review about Yaggy's maps, pop-ups, and 3D diagrams of the Earth's surface, habitats, and other contents of Geographical Studies ... which was not a book, but a box of charts, models, and maps like this one, with its five openable flaps. Turn the
- [Stonehenge's altar is not like the other stones.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/29/stonehenges-altar-is-not-like-the-other-stones/) - IFL Science takes a closer look at the massive stones of Stonehenge. Most of them seem to have been transported with great effort from a faraway quarry in Wales. But the monument's central stone may have come from farther away, in Scotland: Located on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, southwest England, Stonehenge is thought to have
- [Rejuvenating seaweed.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/27/rejuvenating-seaweed/) - Scientific Frontline waxes optimistic about Flinders University research into the youth-prolonging properties of washed-up Australian brown seaweed - specifically, as a source of collagens that can protect skin against the loss of both collagen and elastin: Professor [Wei] Zhang explains the Flinders team has found that extracts from SA’s brown seaweed not only stimulated the
- [Science Art: <i>Dopamine 3D spacefill</i>, by Jynto.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/24/science-art-dopamine-3d-spacefill-by-jynto/) - Alright, I know what you animals really want. You want that hit of this stuff - the good stuff. Social media, gambling, narcotics, sky diving - all comes down to putting this in your brain. I got the idea of posting this after finding a line diagram on Mastodon that just said, "Congratulations. You found
- ["Inverse vaccine" could treat autoimmune diseases.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/22/inverse-vaccine-could-treat-autoimmune-diseases/) - The University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering has announced that they've come up with a way to make a person's immune system forget a molecule - a process that's the reverse of a vaccine, which teaches an immune system to remember one molecule or microorganism, and that has the potential to eliminate disease
- [Cavity-killing breakthrough uses strep-fighting molecule.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/20/cavity-killing-breakthrough-uses-strep-fighting-molecule/) - SciTech Daily reports on scientists from Israel and China who have discovered a molecule nicknamed DIM that reduces biofilms that cause dental plaque by 90%. The molecule, if added to toothpaste or mouthwash, could drastically lower the number of cavities (and dental fillings) we all face: Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in collaboration
- [Science Art: <i>The beetle (</i>Byturus tomentosus<i>) living on raspberry</i>, from <i>Nordisk familjebok</i>, 1920](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/17/science-art-the-beetle-byturus-tomentosus-living-on-raspberry-from-nordisk-familjebok-1920/) - A raspberry beetle and its favorite fruit, from a very special category on Wikimedia Commons. We do love an encyclopedia.
- [There's a watery planet way out yonder.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/14/theres-a-watery-planet-way-out-yonder/) - Science Daily shares the latest James Webb Space Telescope discovery, of a large planet around a distant star whose chemical traces show a high likelihood that there's enough water on it to support life like ours - as well as a life-linked chemical called DMS: K2-18 b orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18 in the
- [Space mission seems to have changed asteroid's orbit.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/11/space-mission-seems-to-have-changed-asteroids-orbit/) - BBC is reporting on the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, which touched down on the asteroid Dimorphos (which orbits larger asteroid Didymos) earlier this year. The test was whether a similar ship could deflect a dangerous asteroid safely. The asteroid moved, but observations now show that the smaller asteroid is moving in a totally
- [Science Art: <i>Comparison of planets and stars (2017 update)</i>, by Dave Jarvis and Jcpag2012.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/11/science-art-comparison-of-planets-and-stars-2017-update-by-dave-jarvis-and-jcpag2012/) - This is another way of doing a Cosmic Zoom, comparing the sizes of astronomical things. If you've wondered how many Earths could fit inside Arcturus, well, here's one way to even start to imagine that. (The answer: an awful lot more than it would take to fill Sirius, that's for sure.) The image came from
- [Human(-ish) kidneys grown in pig embryos.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/08/human-ish-kidneys-grown-in-pig-embryos/) - Science News brings home the bacon for humans needing kidney transplants, with news of a Chinese research team that has successfully grown a "humanized" kidney (an organ made mostly of human cells) inside a pig embryo: Stem cell biologist Liangxue Lai, of the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health in China, and his team spent
- [A lot fewer emperor penguins next year. "Catastrophic breeding failure."](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/02/a-lot-fewer-emperor-penguins-next-year-catastrophic-breeding-failure/) - The British Antarctic Survey reports on one consequence of thinning sea ice after one of the warmest winters on record. Out of five known breeding colonies in the Belligshausen Sea, four experienced "catastrophic failures," with in all likelihood no chicks surviving at all: The scientists examined satellite images that showed the loss of sea ice
- [Lucid dreamers reveal waking brains.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/04/lucid-dreamers-reveal-waking-brains/) - Science News reports on a new method of exploring what happens to our brains when we sleep - by using self-trained lucid dreamers as guides behind the gates of Dreamland: “The special thing about lucid dreaming is that you can get even closer to dream content and in a much more controlled and systematic fashion,”
- [From plastic trash into sudsy cleansers.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/08/30/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 soap, um, soapy: “To me, plastic waste basically [is] aboveground crude oil,” says chemist Guoliang Liu of Viginia Tech in Blacksburg. “We don’t have to go deep into the ocean
- [Science Art: <i>From </i>Notes on Cephalopods from Northern California, 1967.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/09/03/science-art-from-notes-on-cephalopods-from-northern-california-1967/) - I thought this was a nautilus, but it might be a moon snail. It's a mollusk of some kind, with a gracefully curved shell and a complex, fleshy body, all rendered as simply as possible in pen and ink. On the page, it's a sort of textual decoration more than a scientific illustration. The monograph
- [Science Art: <i>ECHO 100' Satellite Inflation Tests</i>, 1958.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/08/28/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 and Video Library.
- [SONG: FAQs](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/08/23/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," as used in the post ChatGPT, the Fahrenheit 451 edition. ABSTRACT: This is one of those songs that I want someone else to sing - someone with a much more
- [Science Art: Information Display <i>front cover</i>, 1972](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/08/21/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 letters on a cathode-ray screen, and training fighter pilots with line drawings in a three-dimensional "virtual space." Like the arcade game BattleZone, if any of you are old enough to
- [ChatGPT, the Fahrenheit 451 edition](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/08/16/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 description or depiction of a sex act' - evidently completely unaware of the AI's proclivity to make things up about ... well, anything: . The ban attempts to comply with
- [Wanna watch the watchers?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/08/15/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 (formerly the Facebook Pixel) gathered people's sensitive information from everything from hospitals to tax-filing services. Now, they're teaming up with Consumer Reports to map out the next technology social media
- [Science Art: <i>2N930 NPN silicon planar transistor</i>, by Mister rf](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/08/13/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 it: 45V, 0.03A 300mW 3-Pin TO-18 The 2N930 is designed for small general purpose and amplifier applications The artist has a gallery of some other fantastic images - so much
- [Human coronavirus meds cure deadly cat disease.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/08/11/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), a disease that kills cats: “We have taken stock of 500 boxes of medication,” Christodoulos Pipis, the government’s veterinary services director, told the Guardian. “This is the first batch of
- [There's a bird flu epidemic in fur farms. (This is not great.)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/08/11/theres-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 from wild seagulls to Northern European fur farms: To date, 27 July 2023, 20 affected farms in four municipalities of Central and South Ostrobothnia have been identified ... with blue
- [Science Art: <i>The First Larva, or the first free-swimming stage of the lobster</i>, 1895.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/08/07/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 Heritage Library.
- [Twinkle loudly, little star](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/08/04/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 a phenomenon based in part on how the superhot gas on their surfaces move. But to do that, they've also figured out how those stellar surges and vibrations would sound:
- [Is this a mad scientist being busted? Something worse?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/31/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 filled with blood samples, equipment, nearly 1,000 mice, and 20 different infections agents, including covid, herpes, and HIV ... apparently owned by a Chinese national who isn't being exactly forthcoming
- [Science Art: <i>If Bodies fill the Same Angle, their Size is Proportional to their Distance</i>, 1898](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/30/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 my living room. But anyway, three very different objects of the same shape -- in this case, a silver dollar, a saucer, and a bicycle wheel -- will all fit
- [Theater of Nero discovered in Rome.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/29/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 Emperor Nero before 70 CE, but lost for centuries: The find was made close to St Peter's Square in the grounds of Palazzo della Rovere, the home of the Equestrian
- [Parrot-heads, celebrate: New isopod discovered in Florida Keys named for you-know-who.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/27/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 his lost shaker of salt: The roughly three-millimeter-long isopod is one of only 15 species from the genus Gnathia currently known in the region. The newly discovered species, Gnathia jimmybuffetti,
- [Science Art: <i>Armstrong Through the Years - LLRV-3</i> by NASA Graphics/Kirstin Sharrer](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/24/science-art-armstrong-through-the-years-llrv-3-by-nasa-graphics-kirstin-sharrer/) - The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle-3 was an experimental Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) vehicle - a fancy hovercraft - that the Apollo astronauts used to practice the lunar landing. This is part of a NASA collection called "Armstrong Through the Years," so although it's not captioned, I have to assume this is a picture of
- [Bone jewelry means humans were in the Americas *before* the Bering Land Bridge.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/19/bone-jewelry-means-humans-were-in-the-americas-before-the-bering-land-bridge/) - IFLScience reports on some stylish, retro bangles coming from a Brazilian designer that are taking the world by storm ... because they were made from giant sloth bones about 25,000 years ago, long before humans could have traveled on foot through what is now the Aleutians: The artifacts were discovered at the Santa Elina rock
- [Science Art: <i>Osprey in Flight</i>, by Enrique Patino, 2011](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/16/science-art-osprey-in-flight-by-enrique-patino-2011/) - The osprey is also known as the fish hawk, and as Pandion haliaetus, a name that comes from two parts: King Pandion II, the eighth king of Athens and grandfather of Theseus, and ἁλιάετος haliáetos, meaning "sea-eagle." The word "osprey" has been around so long, no one really knows where it came from - it
- [Ivory Lady was a prehistoric warrior queen (and maybe a warrior witch queen, too).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/14/ivory-lady-was-a-prehistoric-warrior-queen-and-maybe-a-warrior-witch-queen-too/) - CNN reports on a Spanish discovery that a 5,000-year-old skeleton buried with an elephant tusk, an ostrich egg, an ivory comb and two daggers - one ivory and the other amber - is not, as previously assumed, a young man ready for combat. A new molecular study has thrown gender assumptions out the window by
- [Science Art: <i>Binary Operations - Multiplication Mod 16</i>, by Inductiveload.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/10/science-art-binary-operations-multiplication-mod-16-by-inductiveload/) - This is a diagram of a times table. As the drawing's description on Wikimedia Commons reads: Binary ring diagram to illustrate operators on binary numbers. The least significant bit (LSB) is the innermost ring. Black signifies 0, white signifies 1. X is the number along the top, Y is the number on the left, Q
- [A human-like ape might have decorated the graves of its dead 330,000 years ago.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/10/a-human-like-ape-might-have-decorated-the-graves-of-its-dead-330000-years-ago/) - Science News reports on a controversy over Homo naledi, a human-like ape from 160,000 years before the first Homo sapiens, who might have been burying its dead and decorating their gravesites hundreds of millennia before the first unmistakably human graves: H. naledi, which lived in southern Africa between roughly 335,000 and 236,000 years ago, also
- [Astronomers might finally have seen the universe's first stars.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/07/astronomers-might-finally-have-seen-the-universes-first-stars/) - Scientific American reports on a James Webb Space Telescope discovery, allowing scientists the first possible glimpses of the very first stars ever to shine in our universe: It is hunting for signs of the first stars to switch on in the universe, so-called Population III stars, gigantic balls purely made of hydrogen and helium that
- [AI trained on AI tends to collapse (like most cannibalizing systems do).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/05/ai-trained-on-ai-tends-to-collapse-like-most-cannibalizing-systems-do/) - Venture Beat, a tech investing magazine, weighs in on research that looks directly at the problems that arise when AI is used to generate web content, which is then gathered up and used to train the next generation of AI. The results of the practice (which currently seems practically inevitable) are pretty disastrous: “Over time,
- [Cooking with gas increases cancer risk.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/04/cooking-with-gas-increases-cancer-risk/) - I hate to read it, but NPR reported on a Stanford study that found gas stoves increase levels of benzene in the home - a chemical that brings with it a noticeable increase in risk of cancer: They found both natural gas and propane stoves "emitted detectable and repeatable levels of benzene that in some
- [Science Art: <i>100 years of international meteorological collaboration</i>, by Karl Oskar Blase, 1973.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/02/science-art-100-years-of-international-meteorological-collaboration-by-karl-oskar-blase-1973/) - 30 pfennigs could get you a lot of weather back in 1973 in West Germany. It commemorates a century of teaming up to watch the weather. The artist, Karl Oskar Blase, has a bit more in the way of fine art cred than a lot of the illustrators featured here. He was a museum curator,
- [Women hunted, back in the hunter-gatherer days.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/07/02/women-hunted-back-in-the-hunter-gatherer-days/) - PhysOrg has a study that defies the conventional idea of "man the hunter, woman the gatherer" with evidence that, in more than three-quarters of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, women hunt alongside men: [Abigail Anderson of Seattle Pacific University, US, and colleagues] analyzed data from the past 100 years on 63 foraging societies around the world, including
- [AI is eating the web. Not as in coding, but as in its economy.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/27/ai-is-eating-the-web-not-as-in-coding-but-as-in-its-economy/) - The Verge has one of the more interesting pieces (to me) about AI that I've seen lately, reporting less on "what do these content-making machines mean to us content-makers, aieee!" and more on how these content-making machines are already radically changing the way the web's biggest companies do business - and it's only the start:
- [Science Art: <i>Outdated drawing of a torosaurus</i>, 1905](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/25/science-art-outdated-drawing-of-a-torosaurus-1905/) - I was looking these particular dinosaurs up because I recently came across a news story about the world's largest dinosaur skull being displayed somewhere new - a just-opened museum in Denmark. The name "torosaurus" means "perforated lizard” because it's got this giant frill-bone with big holes in it, which were probably covered by skin. This
- [SONG: Content Feeds](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/24/song-content-feeds/) - SONG: "Content Feeds". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: The Markup, 1 May 2023, "The Very Hungry Algorithm: Bedtime with ChatGPT," as used in the post “How do you feel when the AI starts reading your young children their bedtime stories?" ABSTRACT: This is another attempt to create a song in a genre I think is real but
- [Science Art: <i>Habitus images of </i>Chimairacoris lakshmiae, 2015.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/05/science-art-habitus-images-of-chimairacoris-lakshmiae-2015/) - This is a plant bug. That's the technical term - it's part of that group of insects called "true bugs," the family Miridae; plant bugs are the subfamily Phylinae. This one, Chimairacoris lakshimae, was only identified in 2015, living inside galls - that is, little rounded warts or swellings - on the leaf margins of
- [The smarter the brain, the longer it takes to solve a hard problem.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/03/the-smarter-the-brain-the-longer-it-takes-to-solve-a-hard-problem/) - The Berlin Institute of Health has a new metric for intelligence. It's not speed at solving problems, but the opposite. Higher intelligence means simple problems get solved quickly, but more complicated problems actually take smarter thinkers longer to suss out, because there are more avenues to approach them, and more implications for the intelligent brain
- [More Chinese astronauts for China's space station.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/06/02/more-chinese-astronauts-for-chinas-space-station/) - Reuters reports that a couple of days ago, the Shenzhou-16, or "Divine Vessel-16," a spaceship mounted on a Long March-2F rocket, sent a new crew of three astronauts to the Chinese Tiangong, or "Sky Palace," space station in the fifth such mission since 2021: The astronauts on Shenzhou-16 will replace the three-member crew of the
- [ChatGPT flunks Martin Gardner's old brainteasers.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/31/chatgpt-flunks-martin-gardners-old-brainteasers/) - If you're a longtime Scientific American reader, or just a geek of a certain age, you'll remember Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" puzzle column. (It got taken over by Douglas Hofstadter at one point and became, via anagrams, "Metamagical Themas.") For the most part, they're pretty funny ... if you've got a sense of humor that
- [Science Art: <i>Intercepting Well, Prospect Park, Brooklyn</i>, by R.S. Bross, 1882.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/28/science-art-intercepting-well-prospect-park-brooklyn-by-r-s-bross-1882/) - This is an illustration of a public waterwork taken from the pages of A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating to the hydrology, hydrodynamics, and practical construction of water works, in North America, a text by John Thomas Fanning (a name that I think British people of a certain age might find very
- [Out of Africa, yes, but all over Africa and not all at once.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/28/out-of-africa-yes-but-all-over-africa-and-not-all-at-once/) - New York Times rewrites human prehistory with a genetic study that replaces the tree of life - a diagram of human origins with one trunk growing out of one spot in the continent before sending out different branches around the world - with something a lot more like a grass prairie of life. A new
- [SONG: In the Years Before A/C](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/27/song-in-the-years-before-a-c/) - SONG: "In the Years Before A/C". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: National Park Service, 1 May 2023, "National Park archeologists find remains of an underwater hospital and cemetery at Dry Tortugas," as used in the post “Sunken cemetery, hospital found off the Dry Tortugas." ABSTRACT: I cannot write songs like Brian Sella, but then again I don't
- [No song today.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/24/no-song-today-15/) - I have rough drafts of music tracks and written lyrics... but have not yet brought the two together. More soon, along with a penitential cover.
- [Science Art: <i>Painted Bunting</i>, by John James Audubon, 1841](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/21/science-art-painted-bunting-by-john-james-audubon-1841/) - These are painted buntings, "1.2.3. males in different states of plumage and 4. female" in the branches of a chickasaw wild plum, as displayed in The birds of America : from drawings made in the United States and their territories, an Audubon book from the middle of the 19th century. You can find painted buntings
- [Sunken cemetery, hospital found off the Dry Tortugas.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/20/sunken-cemetery-hospital-found-off-the-dry-tortugas/) - They used to be above water, but the National Park Service reports that divers surveying a sunken island off Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas have found the ruins of a quarantine hospital and graveyard: In August 2022, park cultural resources staff, assisted by members of the National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center, the Southeast
- [U.S. Marshals use Twitter partner to scope out abortion-rights protestors.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/17/u-s-marshals-use-twitter-partner-to-scope-out-abortion-rights-protestors/) - The Intercept has found that Dataminr, an "official partner" of Twitter, has been collecting information on abortion protests for federal law enforcement by paying close attention to social media (not just Twitter), using collected posts to determine exactly when and where protests were about to take place, and how large they would be: Internal emails
- [The internet isn't all bots. It's about *half* bots.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/17/the-internet-isnt-all-bots-its-about-half-bots/) - Security Magazine evaluates (using Imperva's Bad Bot Report) just how much internet traffic comes from humans, and how much is automatically generated machines. The latest results aren't looking so good for human communication: A new report reveals that in 2022, 47.4% of all internet traffic came from bots, a 5.1% increase over the previous year.
- [Science Art: <i>Causerie sur la Peche Fluviale en Chine</i>, 1909.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/15/science-art-causerie-sur-la-peche-fluviale-en-chine-1909/) - Do two sampans make a catamaran? Looks like they did for this Chinese fisherman at the dawn of the last century, angling on the river near Shanghai. This image came from Pol Korrigan, but I found it in the Freshwater and Marine Image Bank of the University of Washington Library. If you search for Korrigan's
- [Science Art: <i>The Engineer's Sketch-Book, 1508 & 1509</i>.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/07/science-art-the-engineers-sketch-book-1508-1509/) - Two machines, or parts of machines. These are a "Four-Plunger Valve" and "A starter valve" from The engineer's sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices, appliances, contrivances and details : employed in the design and construction of machinery for every purpose : classified and arranged for reference for the use of engineers, mechanical draughtsmen, managers, mechanics, inventors,
- [Big ol' brontotheres.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/13/big-ol-brontotheres/) - Science News reports on new discoveries shedding light on how prehistoric mammals grew so dang big, evolutionarily, once the dinosaurs cleared out: Brontotheres were among the first mammals to grow to enormous size — their name comes from Greek words for “thunder” and “beast.” But while more than half of the nearly 60 known brontothere
- [China makes first ChatGPT arrest - for manufacturing fake news.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/09/china-makes-first-chatgpt-arrest-for-manufacturing-fake-news/) - Vice's Motherboard covers what is probably the first-ever AI-related arrest, by Chinese officials who accuse a man of using the software to mass-produce fake news: The man, who is referred to by the surname Hong, used ChatGPT to write an article that claimed that nine people had died in a local train accident on April
- [An octopus will say its name in stripes.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/03/an-octopus-will-say-its-name-in-stripes/) - Ars Technica gets a first glimpse at the language of cephalopods, with the discovery that each octopus (which can change the pattern of its skin at will) has its own unique pattern of stripes that says, "This is me": The UC Berkeley researchers studying the lesser Pacific striped octopus (also called the zebra octopus, Octopus
- [Voyager 2 gets a slight reprieve - until 2026, at least.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/05/01/voyager-2-gets-a-slight-reprieve-until-2026-at-least/) - NPR reports on NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory finding a way to keep the plucky space probe going in the outer limits of the solar system for another few years by tapping some reserve power from a safety device: With Voyager 2's power supply dwindling, NASA was about to shut down one of its five science
- [Science Art: <i>Implantatet placeras under huden bakom örat...,</i> 2008.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/30/science-art-implantatet-placeras-under-huden-bakom-orat-2008/) - This image, by Wikimedia Commons user Seslami~commonswiki, shows an implantable electronic device that allows some people to hear, or to hear better. What we're seeing here, according to the description there (translated from Swedish by Google), is: The implant is placed under the skin behind the ear. The electrode wire is placed in the cochlea
- [Engineering bacteria to take on cancer.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/30/engineering-bacteria-to-take-on-cancer/) - Eric Topol, on Ground Truths, does a dive into the history of our understanding of what bacteria has to do with cancer - from the old dogma that "cancer tumors are sterile" to research this April that bacteria can be used to elicit a T-cell response that eliminates tumor cells: Akin to my recent post
- [Science Art: <i>Skull of</i> Trinocromerum willistoni,  Dorothea Franzen,1944.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/23/science-art-skull-of-trinocromerum-willistoni-dorothea-franzen1944/) - This is the head of a plesiosaur from Kansas, back in the day when Kansas was an inland sea. Or a picture from back in the day when the U.S. was still in World War II, and The University of Kansas Science Bulletin was digging up skulls of prehistoric marine creatures and giving them new
- [SONG: Secret Dragons](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/22/song-secret-dragons/) - SONG: "Secret Dragons". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: The Guardian 2 March 2023, "‘Like a little dragon’: new gecko species discovered on rugged Queensland island," as used in the post “Dragon discovered: A new gecko species found on Australian island" ABSTRACT: Phyllurus fimbriatus is a charismatic little guy, and I'm sure absolutely terrifying for any creature less
- [Volcanic bacteria can eat CO2. Lots of it, and fast.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/21/volcanic-bacteria-can-eat-co2-lots-of-it-and-fast/) - The Guardian introduces us to a new group of cyanobacteria that live in volcanic hot springs in Italy and America's Rocky Mountains and that feast on carbon dioxide -- offering the potential to eat up greenhouse gases in the atmosphere: The new microbe, a cyanobacterium, was discovered in September in volcanic seeps near the Italian
- [Brain-reading electrodes in a free-ranging octopus.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/20/brain-reading-electrodes-in-a-free-ranging-octopus/) - Ars Technica reports on an underwater electronic neurological breakthrough. A group of researchers from Naples, Okinawa, and further afield who have used implanted recording electrodes to monitor three captive but free-moving octopuses, and found some very interesting things about the way they think: Using recording electrodes, the researchers found a type of brain wave never
- [Australia's first sauropod skull.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/19/australias-first-sauropod-skull/) - Scientific Frontline reports on a Diamantinasaurus skeleton that's chalked up a few Australian firsts after being discovered in Queensland: Lead researcher and paleontologist Dr Stephen Poropat, from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said ‘Ann’ is the first sauropod dinosaur found in Australia to include most of the skull, and also the first Diamantinasaurus
- [Science Art: From <i>Four Roses des Vents</i>, by Vincenzo Coronelli.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/16/science-art-fromfour-roses-des-vents-by-vincenzo-coronelli/) - This is one of four compass roses created by Vincenzo Coronelli, a 17th-century cartographer. I found them all on Wikimedia Commons, which got them from the French Bibliotheque Nationale. Coronelli was a Franciscan friar from Venice who made atlases and encyclopedias, learning the art of woodcuts at age 10 and, at age 16, publishing the
- [A Long Covid hypothesis: acids and bases.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/16/a-long-covid-hypothesis-acids-and-bases/) - Frontiers In Immunology has published a hypothesis - which is basically a call for more research - put out by two Long Covid sufferers who noticed something interesting about their own bodies that seems like it might explain all the 200-plus symptoms linked to the condition. What they first found, using a home blood-lactate meter,
- [Dragon discovered: A new gecko species found on Australian island](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/14/dragon-discovered-a-new-gecko-species-found-on-australian-island/) - The Guardian reveals Phyllurus fimbriatus, a charismatic, 15cm (6-inch) reptile otherwise known as the the Scawfell Island leaf-tailed gecko, which has never before been scientifically identified: Assoc Prof Conrad Hoskin, a terrestrial ecologist at James Cook University, came across the lizard during a four-day survey of the island, in “deep bouldery habitat covered in fig
- [Here's a Mars habitat, ready for a year's occupancy.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/13/heres-a-mars-habitat-ready-for-a-years-occupancy/) - PhysOrg reports on NASA's Mars Dune Alpha, a 3D-printed home for researchers ready to spend a year simulating a mission on Mars: The facility, created for three planned experiments called the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA), is located at the US space agency's massive research base in Houston, Texas. Four volunteers will begin
- [Science Art: <i>Male Wood Duck</i>, by Abbott H. Thayer, 1904.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/09/science-art-male-wood-duck-by-abbott-h-thayer-1904/) - This is half of one color plate from a book intended to show how "showy" coloration can actually make some creatures harder to spot in their natural habitats. This is a male wood duck, as sketched in color by Abbott H. Thayer. He explains: These paintings show one of the very common situations in which
- [The last leg of the longest butterfly migration has been mapped at last.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/12/the-last-leg-of-the-longest-butterfly-migration-has-been-mapped-at-last/) - Science News brings tidings from Central Africa, where painted lady butterflies born in Europe spend their winters in the longest migration of any butterfly: Pinpointing exactly where painted lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui) overwinter and breed was the last unknown piece of their roughly 15,000-kilometer migration, says Gerard Talavera, an entomologist and evolutionary biologist at the
- [Baseball hitters are getting more home runs, thanks to climate change.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/09/baseball-hitters-are-getting-more-home-runs-thanks-to-climate-change/) - Science reports on some unexpected consequences of a slightly warmer planet. In the statistics-heavy game of baseball, hitters have been averaging more home runs than ever for a lot of reasons - but one of them is warmer air creating less friction on the ball: Because warmer air is less dense and exerts less drag
- [Not that you'd want to kiss them, but <i>T. rex</i> actually had lips.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/04/not-that-youd-want-to-kiss-them-but-t-rex-actually-had-lips/) - AP News reports on research into the fearful mouth of the scariest of flesh-eating dinosaurs which found that - despite the public image of Tyrannosaurus rex as being a snaggle-toothed fang beast - the big fellas actually had faces more like today's monitor lizards, with their teeth mostly invisible most of the time: Some thought
- [Science Art: <i>Loess Sediments Thickness</i>, by Przemysław Mroczek, 2020.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/02/science-art-loess-sediments-thickness-by-przemyslaw-mroczek-2020/) - This map shows where silt was laid down untold ages ago. According to its brief description on Wikimedia Commons, it depicts: Loess sediments distribution and its thickness in western part of the Nałeczów Plateau according to Mroczek and Rodzik (2015) Loess is a fine silt usually deposited by wind or the meltwater of a glacier.
- [Any hormonal birth control increases your breast cancer risk.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/04/03/any-hormonal-birth-control-increases-your-breast-cancer-risk/) - The University of Oxford has unfortunate news for anyone on the pill, or implant, or hormone-releasing IUDs. A new anaysis from the Oxford Population Health’s Cancer Epidemiology Unit has found that all hormonal contraceptives come with an increased risk of breast cancer: The researchers analysed data from 9,498 women who developed invasive breast cancer between
- [SONG: Whispering Secrets to Me](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/24/song-whispering-secrets-to-me/) - SONG: "Whispering Secrets to Me". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Defector 15 Nov 2022, "Turtles Have Been Vocalizing All This Time. Why Did We Not Listen?," as used in the post “Turtles have voices that we hadn’t heard till now." ABSTRACT: OK, there are two things I feel like I need to get out of the way
- [Elemental music from a spectroscope.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/31/elemental-music-from-a-spectroscope/) - Ars Technica digs the research of Indiana University grad student W. Walker Smith, who has combined his interests in music and chemistry to create a "data sonification project" - in other words, a way to convert a spectroscope reading quantities of different elements into a musical instrument playing different notes and timbres: All the elements
- [Science Art: <i>Crew-5’s Nighttime Splashdown</i>, by NASA/Keegan Barber, 2023](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/26/science-art-crew-5s-nighttime-splashdown-by-nasa-keegan-barber-2023/) - SpaceX Dragon Endurance returns to Earth on the night of March 11, 2023. Specifically, it's just after 9:00 p.m. in the waters off Tampa, Florida. As described in NASA's image feature: "During the 156.5 days they spent aboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 68, Crew-5 participated in several spacewalks to prepare the
- [Americans die young - and are dying younger than ever, compared to the rest of the world.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/25/americans-die-young-and-are-dying-younger-than-ever-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-world/) - NPR looks at a subtle, slow-motion health crisis facing America. Compared to every other industrialized nation, across every age group, Americans die younger ... and we're dying more and more young with every passing year: Just before Christmas, federal health officials confirmed life expectancy in America had dropped for a nearly unprecedented second year in
- [SONG: "Giant Isopods Have Stolen My Gameboy" (a penitential Werk cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/24/song-giant-isopods-have-stolen-my-gameboy-a-penitential-werk-cover/) - SONG: "Giant Isopods Have Stolen My Gameboy". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This has no source in scientific research; it's a penitential cover of a song by a band named Werk from an album called Songs About Giant Isopods. You can still hear the song here, on Soundcloud. ABSTRACT: I feel like I owe a lot of
- [SONG: The Elephant](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/24/song-the-elephant/) - SONG: "The Elephant". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: BBC 28 Feb 2023, "Kerala: India temple replaces elephant with robot for rituals," as used in the post “Kerala temple introduces a robot ritual elephant." ABSTRACT: I suppose this song grew out of the penitential cover I was working on from before I missed last month's song. At least,
- [Kids of same-sex parents are... pretty normal, according to an international study.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/22/kids-of-same-sex-parents-are-pretty-normal-according-to-an-international-study/) - The Guardian reports on a geographically broad study - a study of studies from many different countries - that looked at same-sex couples and found that their children are pretty much like children anywhere else, raised by anyone else: The latest study, published in the journal BMJ Global Health by researchers in the US and
- [<i>Nature</i>'s endorsement didn't help Biden - it only hurt <i>Nature</i> (and scientists in general).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/22/natures-endorsement-didnt-help-biden-it-only-hurt-nature-and-scientists-in-general/) - Nature honestly (and slightly brutally) examines its own shortcomings as a political advocate in a study that found the scientific journal's 2020 endorsement of Joe Biden didn't really bring in any votes. Intstead, it caused some readers to lose confidence in Nature and in US scientists generally: In a preregistered experiment conducted in late July
- [Science Art: <i>A Fossil Flower (</i>Cycadeoidea ingens<i>)</i>, 1924.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/19/science-art-a-fossil-flower-cycadeoidea-ingens-1924/) - This is a photograph of a model from the Field Museum of Natural History, representing a cycad flower reconstructed from a fossil. The fossil came from the Cycad National Monument, established by President Harding in the Black Hills of Dakota, and shows the primordial flowering structure of a plant that's far older than the "true"
- [Martian soil is nice for rice.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/17/martian-soil-is-nice-for-rice/) - Science News reports on a presentation at the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by researcher Abhilash Ramachandran, who found that rice - one of our planet's most significant food sources - can find all the nutrients it needs to thrive in the red soil of Mars... as long as we find a way to
- [Science Art: <i>ISS Aug 2005</i>, by NASA.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/12/science-art-iss-aug-2005-by-nasa/) - The Space Shuttle Discovery shot this photo of the International Space Station flying high over the Caspian Sea during the STS-114 Return to Flight mission. The shuttle had been docked with ISS and then disconnected, ready to return home. Click! I found the photo in a collection of Wikimedia Commons Featured Images, but it was
- [No sex, please. Not menopausal, just busy! (Research says.)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/11/no-sex-please-not-menopausal-just-busy-research-says/) - The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked (I'm tempted to say "longingly") at the sex lives of middle-aged women, and found the main factor influencing women's sex lives wasn't menopause, but lifestyle. In other words, these women just have too much else going on to get in the mood for intimacy: The study
- [Cute, smiling mini-sphinx found in Egypt.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/08/cute-smiling-mini-sphinx-found-in-egypt/) - Riddles are funny! BBC reports on the discovery at the Hathor Temple in southern Egypt of a small sphinx with an engaging grin that might have been modeled on the Emperor Claudius: The limestone sphinx with its "smiley face and two dimples" is thought to represent Roman Emperor Claudius. ... The artefacts were found inside
- [SONG: Heavy In My Head](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2016/02/07/song-heavy-in-my-head/) - SONG: "Heavy In My Head." ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on "Anxiety can impact people's walking direction," Science Daily, 19 Jan. 2016, as used in the post "Nervous people walk to the left." ABSTRACT: Yes, this song is late. I'm not entirely sure why - I had the music *basically* down by the second week of
- [Lake Huron reveals 19th-century shipwreck.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/07/lake-huron-reveals-19th-century-shipwreck/) - Ars Technica celebrates an underwater discovery: the surprisingly well-preserved wreck of the schooner barge Ironton, which went down in 1898 after colliding with the Great Lakes freighter Ohio in a stretch of Lake Huron known as "Shipwreck Alley." The sunken remains have just been identified in the dark waters of NOAA's Thunder Bay National Marine
- [SONG: Everything Appears to be in Order](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2016/05/23/song-everything-appears-to-be-in-order/) - SONG: "Everything Appears to be in Order". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: "AI Pioneer ROSS Intelligence Lands Its First Big Law Clients," The American Lawyer, 6 May 2016, as used in the post First firm to hire a virtual attorney. It’ll be handling bankruptcies…. ABSTRACT: There's a SoundFont drum set on here, but everything else is either
- [SONG: A Pseudo-Satellite](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/24/song-a-pseudo-satellite/) - SONG: "A Pseudo-Satellite". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: CNN 5 May 2022, "This solar-powered plane could stay in the air for months," as used in the post Solar plane can do the job of a satellite without going into space.. ABSTRACT: Well, this is the May song - the one that was all done but the lyrics
- [Science Art: <i>Britannia Co.'s Patent Screwing Machine</i>, 1890.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/05/science-art-britannia-co-s-patent-screwing-machine-1890/) - "Screws at one single cut," the ad boasts. This is an ad from the front of The Engineer's Sketch-Book of Mechanical Movements, by Thomas W. Barber - full title: The engineer's sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices, appliances, contrivances and details : employed in the design and construction of machinery for every purpose : classified and
- [Solar panels increase crop yields, insulate reservoirs, and can help farmers.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/05/solar-panels-increase-crop-yields-insulate-reservoirs-and-can-help-farmers/) - PNAS reports on some unanticipated consequences of solar farming - but things that banks of solar panels that are unexpectedly good, not bad: To generate as much energy as a conventional 1-gigawatt power station, an array of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels needs to cover about 80 square kilometers of land. Unsurprisingly, solar development faces increasingly
- [Kerala temple introduces a robot ritual elephant.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/01/kerala-temple-introduces-a-robot-ritual-elephant/) - BBC reports on a mechanical elephant that is replacing a flesh-and-blood elephant that previously conducted rituals in a temple in Kerala, India: The initiative by authorities at Irinjadappilly Sree Krishna Temple in Thrissur district is part of their pledge to stop using live animals for any festivities. ... Chained, saddled and decorated, elephants play an
- [How a ballerina spins, as a neurophysical phenomenon.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/03/01/how-a-ballerina-spins-as-a-neurophysical-phenomenon/) - The journal Human Movement Science carries research from Swiss sports scientists who have used ballet dancers to figure out how it can be possible for a human being to keep spinning on one leg without keeling over. The key is in keeping a visual reference point: Abstract In dance, performing multiple rotations around the longitudinal
- [Science Art: Evibacus princeps, 2019](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/26/science-art-evibacus-princeps-2019/) - It's a wickle baby slipper lobster! That color came from it being prepared on a slide so it could be examined under a microscope. The legs and antenna are all its own. Evibacus princeps also gets called a "shield fan lobster." You can find it (and a lot more) in the Smithsonian National Museum of
- [No song today.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/24/no-song-today-14/) - Another penitential cover will be forthcoming. I'm a tired man.
- [An AI fighter plane has taken off, engaged a simulated enemy and landed without a human pilot's help.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/22/an-ai-fighter-plane-has-taken-off-engaged-a-simulated-enemy-and-landed-without-a-human-pilots-help/) - DARPA reports on the Air Combat Evolution program's newest breakthrough, which took a regular F-16 fighter jet, equipped it with an Artificial Intelligence program capable of taking the controls, and let the AI take off, engage with a virtual enemy, and land safely, all without a human pilot doing anything: In early December 2022, ACE
- [Science Art: Mimodactylus<i> in life</i>, 2019.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/19/science-art-mimodactylus-in-life-2019/) - This is a painting of Mimodactylus libanensis soaring over what Nature (where it was first published) called "Afro-Arabia," a continent that existed many millions of years ago. Fossils of this flying creature were discovered in what is now Lebanon. The name Mimodactylus seems like it might have something to do with wings or fingers (dactyls)
- [Australian whales looking for mates have given up singing and taken up fighting.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/16/australian-whales-looking-for-mates-have-given-up-singing-and-taken-up-fighting/) - EurekAlert shares a University of Queensland study that shows a turn to violence among courting whales along Australia's eastern seaboard. Whales seeking mates are giving up courtship songs and instead starting to fight potential competitors: Associate Professor Rebecca Dunlop from The University of Queensland’s School of Biological Sciences led research analysing almost two decades of
- [NASA astronaut finally ready to spend more than a year in space.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/16/nasa-astronaut-finally-ready-to-spend-more-than-a-year-in-space/) - Ars Technica reports on a long-awaited milestone. After many not-quite-that-long missions, a NASA astronaut is on the way to finally spend more than a full year living in space: When Mark Vande Hei launched to the space station in April 2021, he was planning for a six-month mission. But again, the Russians shuffled the schedule
- [Science Art: <i>Test Apparatus</i>, 1960](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/12/science-art-test-apparatus-1960/) - A test apparatus, as used for the article "Modification of Force Feed Lubricators" in the 1960-05 edition of Lubrication Engineering. The idea was to study why the same oils in the same engines in similar locations had to be replaced at different rates. So they lined up a bunch of reservoirs attached to a single
- [We can get back to the night sky. But it will take work.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/11/we-can-get-back-to-the-night-sky-but-it-will-take-work/) - Ars Technica reports on the ongoing blotting out of the stars at night, with artificial light pollution doubling in the last 10 years alone. There are ways, however, to bring the stars back to the sky we (and plenty of migrating animals) see at night: Migratory animals, including birds and insects, are drawn away from
- [Vikings brought animals to England, radioactive analysis shows.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/07/vikings-brought-animals-to-england-radioactive-analysis-shows/) - Science News looks at a Viking burial site in England where animals were buried alongside humans, and finds that radioactive traces show these critters traveled to Great Britain aboard Viking ships: In the 1990s, researchers unearthed the cremated remains of a human adult and child as well as of a dog, horse and probable pig
- [Science Art: <i>Deceleration of Mars Science Laboratory in Martian Atmosphere</i>, 2011](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/05/science-art-deceleration-of-mars-science-laboratory-in-martian-atmosphere-2011/) - An image from NASA/JPL-Caltech depicting a capsule starting to slow down in the Martian atmosphere. All we see is the outer structure, which seems mostly to be made of metal. But inside... The rover (Curiosity) and descent stage of the spacecraft are inside the aeroshell consisting of the backshell and heat shield. This friction with
- [Researchers: one police stop makes a person less likely to vote.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/03/researchers-one-police-stop-makes-a-person-less-likely-to-vote/) - Bolts magazine has an article by one of the researchers published in American Political Science Review who found that police interactions directly correlate with lower voter turnout, no matter who or why: Our study compared the voter turnout of Hillsborough motorists who were stopped by police shortly before and after each election. Drawing on information
- [The gap between rich and poor is growing faster in the U.S. than Europe.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/02/01/the-gap-between-rich-and-poor-is-growing-faster-in-the-u-s-than-europe/) - Researchers from Imperial College London and the Paris School of Economics have looked across the pond at 50 years of data and found that America, rather than being the country of dreams, is a place where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer: The researchers drew on new economic data from which they
- [Kids are wearing toxic make-up](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/31/kids-are-wearing-toxic-make-up/) - The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health has released an alarming study that's found levels of carcinogens and other toxic materials, including lead and hormone-disrupting chemicals, in cosmetics made for children: Children’s makeup and body products (CMBPs) are widely marketed to children throughout the US; however, little is known about how and why
- [Science Art: <i>DNA Double Helix</i>, by the National Human Genome Research Institute](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/29/science-art-dna-double-helix-by-the-national-human-genome-research-institute/) - An image of the machine that builds our bodies, bit by bit. From the National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, located at www.genome.gov - though I found it in the NIH Image Gallery on Flickr.
- [Study: ChatGPT could earn an MBA from Wharton](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/23/study-chatgpt-could-earn-an-mba-from-wharton/) - A professor at the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania - probably America's most highly regarded business school - has found that, based on the artificial intelligence bot's performance in one of the program's core classes, ChatGPT could earn an MBA there with pretty good grades (pdf): ABSTRACT: OpenAI’s Chat GPT3
- [Get ready for some small modular nuclear plants.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/22/get-ready-for-some-small-modular-nuclear-plants/) - AP News reports on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approving the first design for a new kind of nuclear power plant that's smaller and less expensive to build that traditional diesel plants - and should make it easier for American power companies to get away from fossil fuels: It means that companies seeking to build
- [Science Art: <i>Just Missed Him</i>, by G.E. Lodge, 1898.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/22/science-art-just-missed-him-by-g-e-lodge-1898/) - I wasn't sure if this really counted as a scientific illustration, despite finding it in the Biodiversity Heritage Library, since most of the other plates in this book are really about hunting rabbits. But it is definitely a natural history. The title page kind of encapsulates what I mean: The Rabbit by James Edmund Harting,
- [New invention won't let you LOL without, you know, laughing out loud.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/19/new-invention-wont-let-you-lol/) - Vice reports on the LOL Verifier, a device that won't let you type out "LOL" in a message unless you've actually just laughed out loud: [Brian] Moore, an artist who likes to play with technology to make a point, told Motherboard in a phone call that he had long been thinking about the plight of
- [Despite their public stance, Exxon's internal science team had a clear view on climate change.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/17/despite-their-public-stance-exxons-internal-science-team-had-a-clear-view-on-climate-change/) - Ars Technica looks at the way Exxon executives decided to bury their own company's very accurate findings on petroleum and climate: Exxon's scientific climate work was shut down a long time ago. But the new paper relies on the work of two science historians (Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes), who dug through old documents and
- [Science Art: <i>Corynactis Viritis </i> (et al), Phillip Henry Gosse, 1860.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/15/science-art-corynactis-viritis-et-al-phillip-henry-gosse-1860/) - These are sea anemones, from History of the British Sea-Anemones and Corals by Phillip Henry Gosse. They are, according to the caption below: 1-5 Corynactis Viritis, 6. Bologera Eques, 7. Zoanthus Sulcatus, 8. Z. Alderi, 9-10. Zoanthus Coucnii, 11. Aureliania Augusta, 12. A. Meteocera, 13. Capnea Sanguinea. I found the image in the digital collection
- [Anesthesiologists issue painful pot warning in new guidelines.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/12/anesthesiologists-issue-painful-pot-warning-in-new-guidelines/) - MedPage Today shares a painful finding from the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (ASRA Pain Medicine), who have issued guidelines for pre-operative treatment based on findings that people who use cannabis are likely to feel more pain after surgery: Cannabis is the most commonly used recreational drug in the U.S. and the
- [Webb snaps Milky Way-like galaxies taking shape long, long ago.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/09/webb-snaps-milky-way-like-galaxies-taking-shape-long-long-ago/) - PhysOrg looks back (via the James Webb Space Telescope) to when the universe was a quarter of its current age, and has been able to see young galaxies stretching out into shapes like our own Milky Way: In a Hubble image, one galaxy, EGS-23205, is little more than a disk-shaped smudge, but in the corresponding
- [Science Art: <i>Experimental Electricity Course</i>, 1916.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/08/science-art-experimental-electricity-course-1916/) - This is how you advertise a science book. At least, it was how Hugo Gernsback did in the pages of The Electrical Experimenter in September 1916. Is that figure in the middle Hephaestus or is it Zeus? Either way, by reading this course, you're bound to get that shirtless, lightning-wielding, machine-operating guy's power. Just imagine!
- [Nebraska researcher identifies the first known virus-eating organism.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/04/nebraska-researcher-identifies-the-first-known-virus-eating-organism/) - EurekAlert presents the findings of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s John DeLong, who has found the first known virovore - a microorganism that feeds on viruses: DeLong and his colleagues have found that a species of Halteria —microscopic ciliates that populate freshwater worldwide — can eat huge numbers of infectious chloroviruses that share their aquatic habitat.
- [Science Art: <i>Papillons</i>, from <i>Larousse Universe</i>, 1922](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2023/01/01/science-art-papillons-from-larousse-universe-1922/) - Thanks to an unexpected gift from an old friend, I was just reading an article in the print edition of Scientific American about the Sora people of eastern India, who have a unique culture that's in danger of being forgotten completely, as more of their children convert to Christianity or mainstream Hinduism. One of their
- [Motorcycle rallies are a boon ... for people waiting for organ donors.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/31/motorcycle-rallies-are-a-boon-for-people-waiting-for-organ-donors/) - MedPage Today maps the correlation between riding fast and free and donating your young organs to people who need them: Compared with the 4 weeks before and after rallies, there was an estimated 21% more organ donors per day during the rallies (incidence rate ratio [IRR] 1.21, 95% CI 1.09-1.35, P=0.001), as well as 26%
- [Female snakes have two clitorises.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/29/female-snakes-have-two-clitorises/) - The Guardian reveals research into the private lives of lady snakes, which has found that those things human scientists thought might be scent glands or underdeveloped penises were actually twin clitorises, or "hemiclitores": Male snakes and lizards are known to have hemipenes – a pair of penises which are everted outside the body during reproduction.
- [Turtles have voices that we hadn't heard till now.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/27/turtles-have-voices-that-we-hadnt-heard-till-now/) - Defector (not just a sports blog) reports on a zoological discovery - that turtles have been vocalizing all along, but we've only realized they had voices in the last couple of years. And not just as a sex thing: In October, a group of researchers that included Ferrara published a paper in Nature Communications finding
- [Science Art: <i>Science by Santa: Remember bad kids get coal, Good kids get Uranium....</i>,](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/25/science-art-science-by-santa-remember-bad-kids-get-coal-good-kids-get-uranium/) - Uranium, which produces 3 million times more energy and 10 million times less waste! I honestly have no idea if this PSA is real or a sarcastic reproduction. It could easily have gone with this actual 1950s chemistry set that contained real uranium for your budding young experimenter. May all your Christmases be bright, right?
- [SONG: 14.8 Million](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/24/song-14-8-million/) - SONG: "14.8 Million". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Nature 14 Dec 2022, "Missing data mean we’ll probably never know how many people died of COVID," as used in the post “More people died of COVID-19 than we know. Or ever will know. Because data is missing.". ABSTRACT: This is, shall we say, one the more "experimental mode"
- [Dinosaurs had songs. Not so much roaring as something more melodic.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/23/dinosaurs-had-songs-not-so-much-roaring-as-something-more-melodic/) - BBC reports on new research reconstructing the sounds of the dinosaurs, the honks, hoots, chirps, and vibrating grunts that the giant creatures used to communicate millions of years ago: Some dinosaurs had greatly elongated necks – up to 16m (52ft) long in the largest sauropods – which would have likely altered the sounds they produced
- [Science Art: <i>Elephant Seals of Guadaloupe Island</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/20/science-art-elephant-seals-of-guadaloupe-island/) - This is a likeness of the elephant seals of Baja California, Mexico, as displayed in 1933 in the newly opened Hall of Ocean Life in the American Museum. The seals were at this point already considered threatened, or almost extinct - the author of the article this image came from was on the 1911 Albatross
- [Science Art: <i>Snoopy Hitches Ride to Space Aboard</i> Artemis I, November 2022](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/18/science-art-snoopy-hitches-ride-to-space-aboard-artemis-i-november-2022/) - This is a NASA-released image of a very important piece of space technology. That small, color-corrected orange thing is a tiny plush Snoopy doll used to measure relative weightlessness in the crew cabin. I'd kind of like to see Snoopy's descendants featured in more "hard" science fiction like The Expanse or The Martian, alerting space
- [More people died of COVID-19 than we know. Or ever will know. Because data is missing.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/15/more-people-died-of-covid-19-than-we-know-or-ever-will-know-because-data-is-missing/) - Nature reports on the gaps in information that mean the official counts of people who died as a result of COVID-19 are much, much lower than the real numbers: The [Nature and WHO] data suggest that during 2020 and 2021, excess mortality was some 2.7 times greater than the official toll, at between 13.2 million
- [Millions of years ago, when Earth was ruled by giant... crabs?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/15/millions-of-years-ago-when-earth-was-ruled-by-giant-crabs/) - EurekAlert reveals new evidence of an age long before the dinosaurs, a primeval world 470 million years ago when the world was ruled by giant swimming arthropods. Like, the same family as shrimp, lobsters, and crabs: Early evidence from the site at Taichoute, once undersea but now a desert, records numerous large “free-swimming” arthropods. More
- [What do you do when your neurological-implant company goes under?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/13/what-do-you-do-when-your-neurological-implant-company-goes-under/) - Nature asks a question that doesn't have an easy answer. Medical implants - especially newer ones that interface directly with your brain - are designed for the long term, to give as close to a lifetime of service as possible. But they're made, mostly, by tech startups. And those companies are, more and more often,
- [Science Art: <i>Mauna Loa Northeast Rift Zone Eruption - November 28, 2022</i>, Civil Air Patrol](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/11/science-art-mauna-loa-northeast-rift-zone-eruption-november-28-2022-civil-air-patrol/) - Rivers of lava glow a burning orange, sending white plumes up from a black stone landscape. This is a photograph of Hawaii - a place usually seen as a sort of paradise on Earth - and not a painting of Pandemonium rising up from the primal Chaos around the Lake of Fire in Paradise Lost.
- [Paleontology drama: Scientist accused of faking asteroid-death data to scoop colleague.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/10/paleontology-drama-scientist-accused-of-faking-asteroid-death-data-to-scoop-colleague/) - Science is not a publication normally given to interpersonal conflict. But now it's covering the story of the weird competition between Robert DePalma and Melanie During, who suspects DePalma made up data to publish an article on the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs (it seems to have struck in spring in the Northern Hemisphere) before
- [Something to be thankful for: Some nearly extinct species are quietly springing back.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/23/something-to-be-thankful-for-some-nearly-extinct-species-are-quietly-springing-back/) - Science News celebrates a potential (and fragile) recovery - that might have far-reaching implications - with observations that several species of harlequin frogs, thought to have gone extinct in the 1980s, still have a breeding population: For [Michigan State University conservation biologist Kyle] Jaynes, the path to uncovering how many harlequin frogs have returned from
- [Twitter's collapse could wipe clean the historical record - of the last 16 years' major moments, at least.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/29/twitters-collapse-could-wipe-clean-the-historical-record-of-the-last-decade-at-least/) - MIT Technology Review takes a serious look at the ramifications of having public discourse in private hands, especially when it comes to a written record of turning points in human history. If the platform goes down, it's not just the steady flood of socializing that goes away - but a whole library of historical experiences
- [Ancient Egyptian ladies' tattoos were meant to protect them during childbirth.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/16/ancient-egyptian-ladies-tattoos-were-meant-to-protect-them-during-childbirth/) - Phys.org decodes the messages left in the skin of mummies unearthed in the 1920s - ancient Egyptian women who had themselves permanently marked with signs meant to inspire a complication-free childbirth: In their paper published in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Marie-Lys Arnette and Anne Austin, describe the tattoos and outline their ideas regarding why
- [Greenland is melting faster than we thought, and the sea is rising in response.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/21/greenland-is-melting-faster-than-we-thought-and-the-sea-is-rising-in-response/) - Science News reveals the discovery of ice flows off Greenland's melting that had been hidden until now. Researchers say the amount of sea-level rise due to the melting ice could be six times greater than we'd previously estimated: “It’s not something that we expected,” says Shfaqat Abbas Khan, a glaciologist at the Technical University of
- [Science Art: <i>Scabrotrophon Species</i>, Roland Houart, 2003.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/04/science-art-scabrotrophon-species-roland-houart-2003/) - These are seashells - murexes from the deep waters off Vanuatu called Scabrotrophon inspiratum. Belgian researcher Roland Houart wrote about them (and as far as I can tell photographed them) in The Nautilus journal, Vol. 117, No. 3, published in 2003. I like murexes because they're so symmetrical on the one hand and so baroque
- [Science Art: <i>Space Colony Interior</i> by Rick Guidice, c. 1975.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/13/science-art-space-colony-interior-by-rick-guidice-c-1975/) - This is part of a presentation created by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill - one of three "summer studies" he carried out in the 1970s on potential space colony designs for NASA's Ames Research Center. Curving walls, the blackness of space, but lots of greenery and smiling faces. It seems to be the interior of a
- [California will be making its own affordable insulin.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/14/california-will-be-making-its-own-affordable-insulin/) - On the heels of Eli Lilly taking a stock hit (when a fake "verified" account on Twitter made it seem like the pharma giant would reverse its policies and give insulin away for free), NBC News is carrying the story of California partnering with the pharmaceutical nonprofit Civica Rx to produce insulin for wayyyy less
- [Oldest full sentence ever found is a warning against beard lice.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/05/oldest-full-sentence-ever-found-is-a-warning-against-beard-lice/) - USA Today (among other outlets) celebrated the discovery of an inscription in the oldest known alphabet - a 3,700-year-old Canaanite ivory comb engraved with 17 letters spelling out a wish to keep lice out of your beard: The sentence contains 17 letters that read: "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and
- [Good friendships make a healthier gut biome (in monkeys, at least).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/12/02/good-friendships-make-a-healthier-gut-biome-in-monkeys-at-least/) - Phys.org passes along research led by Dr. Katerina Johnson of Oxford and Dr. Karli Watson of UC Boulder, who found that the more social a monkey is, the healthier its gut biome is - which can affect everything from neurological well-being to the ability to resist infections: The scientists focused on a single social group
- [Using egg whites to scoop up microplastics.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/11/using-egg-whites-to-scoop-up-microplastics/) - Phys.org reports on Princeton Engineering researchers who have found a way to turn egg whites into an aerogel that can then be used to filter lethal microplastic pollution from the oceans and our drinking water: "I was sitting there, staring at the bread in my sandwich," said [materials scientist Craig] Arnold. "And I thought to
- [Amputation 31,000 years ago, among the prehistoric artists of Borneo.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/10/amputation-31000-years-ago-among-the-prehistoric-artists-of-borneo/) - Science magazine recently covered the tale archaeologists uncovered about one of the earliest known settlers of Borneo, a young hunter-gatherer who had an injured foot amputated ... thousands of years before the invention of modern antibiotics and anaesthesia: The find traces to early 2020, when a team of Australian and Indonesian scientists excavated the floor
- [Silk for Teflon. Non-stick silk. Silk without friction.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/07/silk-for-teflon-non-stick-silk-silk-without-friction/) - The National Science Foundation puts a spotlight on Tufts University, where researchers have taken proteins from the cocoons of silk moths and used them to create a new water-repellent non-stick surface: More recently, scientists have learned to break down the fibers to their basic protein element — silk fibroin — and reconstitute it into gels,
- [Science Art: <i>Balkåkra Ritual Object</i>, Olof Sörling, 1917.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/06/science-art-balkakra-ritual-object-olof-sorling-1917/) - This is a drum. Or a gong. Or maybe a throne. Or a model of the universe with little solar disks around the edge. It was found in a bog near Balkåkra, Sweden, in 1847, but was made sometime during the Bronze Age, more than 3.500 years ago. It consists of 10 pieces of cast
- [Butterfly wing-patterns come from ancient DNA, switched around by junk.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/28/butterfly-wing-patterns-come-from-ancient-dna/) - The National Science Foundation follows researchers taking a second look at "junk" DNA - the genes that don't seem to do anything and instead just sit in a genome like leftovers in a fridge. Apparently, this "noncoding regulatory DNA" controls how the basic, shared, off-the-rack butterfly wing-pattern expresses itself in hundreds of intricately different ways
- [New evidence hints that fungal infections may be related to cancerous tumors.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/18/new-dna-evidence-hints-that-fungal-infections-may-be-related-to-cancerous-tumors/) - The Scientist looks at two studies that indicate (not prove, but suggest) there may be a link between rare fungi and cancerous tumors: One group, led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), reports detecting fungal DNA or cells—typically at low abundance—in 35 different
- ["BOAT" gamma burst shines a light brighter than any seen in 50 years.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/04/boat-gamma-burst-shines-a-light-brighter-than-any-seen-in-50-years/) - Science News says the BOAT (for "brightest of all time") has shed new light on a galaxy very, very far away ... and even affected atoms in our atmosphere: This new burst, officially named GRB 221009A, was probably triggered by a supernova giving birth to a black hole in a galaxy about 2 billion light-years
- [Sharks to tuna: fearsome predator, convenient backscratcher.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/03/sharks-to-tuna-fearsome-predator-convenient-backscratcher/) - PLOS One has revealed a strange secret of the sea, in which researchers have observed tuna and other pelagic (free-swimming) teleosts (bony fishes) intentionally rubbing against the sandpapery skin of swimming sharks - apparently to scratch their itches and get rid of annoying (and health-draining) parasites: These records span three ocean basins and, to the
- [A bee swarm can generate 8 times more electricity than a storm cloud.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/02/a-bee-swarm-can-generate-8-times-more-electricity-than-a-storm-cloud/) - New Scientist reveals an accidental discovery that happened when a passing swarm of bees got close to a weather station on a clear day - and the sensors noted a jump in atmospheric electricity: The team deployed additional electric field monitors in combination with video cameras to measure the electric field and swarm density, and
- [India has built an all-solar village.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/01/india-has-built-an-all-solar-village/) - Reuters reports on Modhera, Gujarat, the first 24/7, all-solar village built in India for ordinary folks to live without a local power plant: The project in Modhera, financed by the federal and provincial government at nearly $10 million, involved setting up over 1,300 rooftop panels on residential and government buildings that were connected to a
- [A mother's diet can affect children's - and grandchildren's - behavior.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/31/a-mothers-diet-can-affect-childrens-and-grandchildrens-behavior/) - The Scientist reports on mice fed a high-fat diet, whose children and grandchildren still felt the effects in social behavior and overall health: High-fat diets have previously been shown to alter the gut microbiome of mice, and of their immediate offspring. In a 2016 study, some of the authors of the current paper showed that
- [Thanksgiving Theremin: "La Vie En Rose," Clara Rockmore and Nadia Reisenberg](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/25/thanksgiving-theremin-la-vie-en-rose-clara-rockmore-and-nadia-reisenberg/) - This is from the 2017 Bridge Records release of Dvořák, Ravel, Gershwin & Others: Chamber Works, the "lost Clara Rockmore theremin album." Rockmore, of course, was the first and probably greatest theremin virtuoso.
- [Science Art: <i>MAGIC telescopes detected the highest-energy gamma rays from a Gamma Ray Burst...</i>, 2019.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/27/science-art-magic-telescopes-detected-the-highest-energy-gamma-rays-from-a-gamma-ray-burst-2019/) - This is an illustration of MAGIC telescopes capturing images of very intense gamma rays. "MAGIC" refers to the twin Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes in the Canary Islands. The burst was, at the time, a most intense energy source in the visible universe. Gamma rays themselves are invisible, but these were so intense,
- [Science Art: <I>Lunar Lander, Surveyor</I>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/30/science-art-lunar-lander-surveyor/) - This is one of the first American spacecraft to land on the moon. We sent machines there before we sent people. From the Smithsonian Open Access Collection description: The Surveyor series was designed to carry out soft landings on the Moon and provide data about its surface and possible atmosphere. These were the first U.S.
- [An end to nightmares](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/28/an-end-to-nightmares/) - Science News reveals a new therapy based on memory exercises that shows promise in totally doing away with nightmare disorder: Frequent, terrifying dreams disturb sleep and even affect well-being in waking life. The go-to nightmare disorder treatment is imagery rehearsal therapy, or IRT. In this treatment, patients reimagine nightmares with a positive spin, mentally rehearsing
- [SONG: Good People Grow](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/25/song-good-people-grow/) - SONG: "Good People Grow". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Science 29 Sep 2022, "This lagoon is effectively a person, says Spanish law that’s attempting to save it," as used in the post “Legally, this Spanish lagoon is now a person, with all the rights a person has. ABSTRACT: A day and a half late, but I think
- [Science Art: <i>Flower of </i>Polygonum persicarium<i> distorted by Utricle smut</i> and following figures, by  J.E. Sowerby, 1872.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/24/science-art-flower-of-polygonum-persicarium-distorted-by-utricle-smut-by-je-sowerby1872/) - This is a bunch of smut. Mostly, it's smut in the genus Ustilago growing on plants in the same genus as knotweed and buckwheat. The long flower in the middle is Polygonum hydropiper, otherwise known as Persicaria hydropiper, or water pepper, marshpepper knotweed, or (and I'm not lying) arse smart. It's edible and has served
- [Robot honeybees can steer hives to safer flowers.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/21/robot-honeybees-can-steer-hives-to-safer-flowers/) - MIT Technology Review offers a strange solution to a serious problem. They've got robot bees who can dance inside a bee hive to direct workers to pesticide-free flower patches: After working in the field of swarm robotics for several years—using nature to inspire robots—[Thomas Schmickl, leader of the Artificial Life Lab at Austria's University of
- [Probiotics are curing sick coral reefs.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/20/probiotics-are-curing-sick-coral-reefs/) - University of Florida (go gator research!) is looking into a treatment that could help stop the loss of coral, which is nice because coral reefs help stop the loss of Florida due to beach erosion. They're using probiotics. Just like you would use it to restore a healthy gut biome, a dose of "good bacteria"
- [Thanksgiving Theremin: "Ecuatorial" by Edgar Varese](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/11/24/thanksgiving-theremin-ecuatorial-by-edgar-varese/) - This is a piece written (by a pupil of Claude Debussy's) for woodwind, percussion, bass vocal and two theremin cellos - an instrument similar to a theremin, and invented by Leo Teremin, but built like a cello with a neck and bow. Most of the theremin cellos ever made were built for performances of this
- [Sleep-deprived people are more selfish and lonely.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/18/sleep-deprived-people-are-more-selfish-and-lonely/) - As a habitual night-owl, it pains me to consider this Scientific American interview with UC Berkeley neuroscientist Eti Ben Simon, whose research has shown that people who don't get at least seven hours of uninterrupted sleep are less generous and less friendly. Every year when standard time switches to daylight savings, charities note a 10
- [Drone photos reveal ancient Mesopotamian island suburbs.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/17/drone-photos-reveal-ancient-mesopotamian-island-suburbs/) - The discovery, as Science News explains, is rewriting the evolution of the first cities. Instead of gradually growing inside walled enclosures around a temple, the Mesopotamian cities included culturally distinct settlements - basically, suburbs from 3,000 BCE - connected by bridges: Remote-sensing data, mostly gathered by a specially equipped drone, indicate that a vast urban
- [Science Art: <i>"Get Squid Facts" street art</i>, Philadelphia, 2022.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/16/science-art-get-squid-facts-street-art-philadelphia-2022/) - A friend of mine clued me into this project. It really works and I encourage you to try it. Did you know cephalopods have been on Earth for longer than trees? That Hawaiian bobtail squid glow because they keep a pouch filled with bioluminescent bacteria? It's all delightful. Watch for the squid. Photos by Antony
- [Otters as big as lions, there were. As big as grizzly bears.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/14/otters-as-big-as-lions-there-were-as-big-as-grizzly-bears/) - Atlas Obscura introduces us to Enhydriodon omoensis, a newly classified prehistoric otter that roamed the Omo river valley of Ethiopia, hunting its prey and weighing more than 400 pounds with jaws strong enough to crush bone: While the study calls the otter “lion-sized,” paleontologist Margaret Lewis of Stockton University in New Jersey, who first analyzed
- [NASA moved an asteroid.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/11/nasa-moved-an-asteroid/) - NASA reports that the DART mission was a success. For the first time ever, human beings have changed the course of a celestial object: Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft's kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the
- [Science Art: <i>Reducing Apparatus</i>, in "Phoney Patent Offizz," <i>The Electrical Experimenter</i>, April 1917.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/09/science-art-reducing-apparatus-in-phoney-patent-offizz-the-electrical-experimenter-april-1917/) - This is nerd humor from the dawn of the electric age. The "Phoney Patent Offizz" was apparently a regular column in Hugo Gernsback's The Electrical Experimenter, a pop-science magazine. They offered readers THREE DOLLARS for the best patent. In this case, an unscrupulous personal trainer is using his fat-burning exercise machine to supply an early
- [The fishers are back, in Washington at least.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/07/the-fishers-are-back-in-washington-at-least/) - The first time I heard about fishers was when I was discussing a little-known Florida cryptid, the "cracker dog-killer," with a friend from Vermont. They seemed like they could be related - stealthy creatures like slender, fast-moving wolverines. Fishers, unlike dog-killers, are well-known to science, as Pekania pennanti. And according to Science News, they've just
- [Legally, this Spanish lagoon is now a person, with all the rights a person has.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/05/legally-this-spanish-lagoon-is-now-a-person-with-all-the-rights-a-person-has/) - Science magazine reports on a bit of Indigenous philosophy that's become a legal strategy for environmental protection. After nearly 640,000 citizens signed a petition supporting the idea, the Spanish senate has passed a law declaring Mar Menor, Europe's largest lagoon and an important breeding ground fan mussels and other endangered sea life, a person under
- [In case you ever wondered, there are 20 quadrillion ants in the world. And that makes them important.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/03/in-case-you-ever-wondered-there-are-20-quadrillion-ants-in-the-world-and-that-makes-them-important/) - Reuters reports on a painstaking headcount that proves that for every one of the nearly 8 billion humans on Earth, there are 2.5 million ants: "Ants certainly play a very central role in almost every terrestrial ecosystem," said entomologist Patrick Schultheiss of the University of Würzburg in Germany and the University of Hong Kong, co-lead
- [Science Art: <i>Pigtailed Baboon</i>, 1811.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/02/science-art-pigtailed-baboon-1811/) - According to the accompanying text, this illustration depicts a baboon species "easily distinguished by its tail, which is four inches long, slender, and exactly like a pig's." After some more physical description, the writer adds, "Though full of vivacity, it has none of that impudent petulance peculiar to the other baboons; but is gentle, tractable,
- [Mammal ancestors survived a mass extinction - but got killed off by drought.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/10/01/mammal-ancestors-survived-a-mass-extinction-but-got-killed-off-by-drought/) - Live Science considers the fate of the shovel lizard Lystrosaurus, a plant-eating creature from 251 million years ago who survived the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, but then was wiped out by a massively changing climate: The researchers first found the fossils 11 years ago in the desert Karoo region of South Africa. During an excavation, they
- [Gas flares don't burn off as much methane as they should - to the tune of 3 million cars' worth of pollution.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/30/gas-flares-dont-burn-off-as-much-methane-as-they-should-to-the-tune-of-3-million-cars-worth-of-pollution/) - Science News looks gas flares, the open flames used to burn off leaking natural gas and to convert methane to CO2 directly at oil fields. They find that they're less effective than promised, and that the difference between what they do burn and what they should be burning is the same as if 3 million
- [Science Art: <i>Bunsen burner flame types</i>, by Arthur Jan Fijałkowski (WarX).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/26/science-art-bunsen-burner-flame-types-by-arthur-jan-fijalkowski-warx/) - The flame from a Bunsen burner (a standard piece of chemistry equipment; you might have used one in high school) can change color and height depending on how much air flows into the jet of fuel. These flames show: air valve closed air valve nearly fully closed air valve semi-opened air valve maximally opened I
- [SONG: False Social Reality](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/24/song-false-social-reality/) - SONG: "False Social Reality". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Nature Communications 23 Aug 2022, "Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half," as used in the post “False social reality”: More people care about climate change than you think. A LOT more.. ABSTRACT: Technically this song is a day late,
- [Boys (and men) are more socially isolated than girls (and women), study finds.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/23/boys-and-men-are-more-socially-isolated-than-girls-and-women-study-finds/) - PsyPost reports on a study of social isolation - "the objective state of having limited social relationships or contact with others" - that found the problem grows worse as children age out of adolescence, but that boys start out worse off than girls: This research used data from two longitudinal studies, including the Add Health,
- [Humans domesticated animals way earlier than we thought - about 13,000 years ago at least.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/21/humans-domesticated-animals-way-earlier-than-we-thought-about-13000-years-ago-at-least/) - Science News reports on the discovery of charred dung in Syria that has rewritten history, pushing back the date of the oldest domesticated animals by 2,000 years: “We know today that dung fuel is a valuable resource, but it hasn’t really been documented prior to the Neolithic,” says Alexia Smith, an archaeobotanist at the University
- [Comets from the Milky Way's other arms helped form Earth's continents.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/19/comets-from-the-milky-ways-other-arms-helped-form-earths-continents/) - Science News winds back the astronomical clock to the early days of Planet Earth, when waves of comet collisions seem to have slammed the planet's solid crust into shape in a regularly repeating cycle. Geologists think comets are responsible because our solar system's journey through our galaxy's arms lines up with the formation of solid
- [U.S. Senate is doing something to try to clean up space junk.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/18/u-s-senate-is-doing-something-to-try-to-clean-up-space-junk/) - The Payload newsletter reports on a new law being debated by American legislators. The ORBITS act is intended to create new technologies for ADR - active debris removal - from near-Earth orbit: The debris problem: 100M+ individual pieces of debris are in Earth orbit right now, ranging from flecks of dust and paint to spent
- [Science Art: <i>New Zealand's South Island</i>, by Samantha Cristoforetti, 2022.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/18/science-art-new-zealands-south-island-by-samantha-cristoforetti-2022/) - Here's a picture of a distinctive bit of geography. There are hobbits down there, and members of Split Enz and The Chills, and some of Taika Waititi's relatives too. Here's how the photographer describes her image: "Like Italy, New Zealand's distinct shape & features are usually easy to spot from space. But this mission it's
- [Looking at the long covid "micro-clot" hypothesis.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/17/looking-at-the-long-covid-micro-clot-hypothesis/) - Nature investigates the idea that the various symptoms of long covid - which can include cardiac trouble, neurological problems, muscle pain, and general fatigue - might possibly be due to tiny blood clots lodging into different tissues throughout the body: Now some scientists, and an increasing number of people with the condition, have been lining
- [Genetic finding shows how modern humans grew more brain cells than Neanderthals.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/13/genetic-finding-shows-how-modern-humans-grew-more-brain-cells-than-neanderthals/) - Science magazine reveals the single gene change that gave Homo sapiens sapiens the edge in brain matter over Homo sapiens neanderthalensis: [Wieland Huttner, a Max Planck Institute neurobiologist,] and his team set out to find genetic differences between Neanderthals and modern humans, especially in cells that give rise to neurons of the neocortex. This region
- [Science Art: <i>Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP): GAF's Gift to Women</i>, 1967.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/11/science-art-polyvinylpyrrolidone-pvp-gafs-gift-to-women-1967/) - This is an ad for a chemical that seemed like a miracle in the 60s (at least to this marketing department), but is one of those things to which people nowadays develop chemical sensitivities. It's also in some disinfectants (which you might use if you break out in a rash), as a lubricant in eye
- ["False social reality": More people care about climate change than you think. A LOT more.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/09/false-social-reality-more-people-care-about-climate-change-than-you-think-a-lot-more/) - Nature looks at a "false social reality" that shapes our government policy - a persistent, mistaken belief across the population that underestimates support for climate-change policy by nearly half: Pluralistic ignorance—a shared misperception of how others think or behave—poses a challenge to collective action on problems like climate change. Using a representative sample of Americans
- [Ultracool dwarf star has a Goldilocks planet.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/08/ultracool-dwarf-star-has-a-goldilocks-planet/) - Space.com reports on the discovery of two intriguing planets found orbiting an ultracool star - including one world that falls within the life-sustaining Goldilocks zone: The inner planet of the system, designated LP 890-9b, is around 30% larger than Earth and rapidly orbits the dwarf star in just 2.7 Earth days. The second planet, called
- [Sunken megaliths revealed by Spanish drought.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/06/sunken-megaliths-revealed-by-spanish-drought/) - The Guardian reports on a crisis for Spanish farmers and water utilities that has turned into a boon for archaeologists - and tourists - as plummeting reservoir levels reveal an 11th-century church and a megalith complex that was built in 5000 BCE: After a prolonged dry spell, Spain’s reservoirs – which supply water for cities
- [Private space company eyes mission to seek life on Venus.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/04/private-space-company-eyes-mission-to-seek-life-on-venus/) - Vice reports on Rocket Lab's plans to use privately funded spacecraft, supported by a research team at MIT, to explore the famously inhospitable surface of Venus for signs of life: After a five-month cruise to Venus, Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft will drop off a small instrument that will descend for several minutes through the planet’s
- [Webb telescope spots CO2 in an exoplanet's atmosphere.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/01/webb-telescope-spots-co2-in-an-exo-planets-atmosphere/) - Science News has a report from space that's not as cool as finding an oxygen-rich alien planet, but almost. It's a planet that the James Webb Space Telescope discovered has an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide: The planet, dubbed WASP-39b, is huge and puffy. It’s a bit wider than Jupiter and about as massive as
- [Science Art: <i>Anglosuchus</i>, by James Erxleben, c. 1877.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/09/04/science-art-anglosuchus-by-james-erxleben-c-1877/) - These are the skulls of two English crocodiles. They were English before the first Anglo-Saxons arrived on that island's shores. Of course, they also went extinct before the first humans stood up and winked at each other. These skulls represent two species from "an extinct genus of pholidosaurid mesoeucrocodylian" (in other words, crocodile ancestors, or
- [Reptiles evolve to conquer climate change, again and again (when they didn't all die).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/26/reptiles-evolve-to-conquer-climate-change-again-and-again-when-they-didnt-all-die/) - Jerusalem Post covers research by Harvard University, University of Alberta, and North Carolina Museum of Natural History that reveals the long history of reptiles, who have reacted to past climate-change events more than 200 million years ago by evolving way quicker than usual when most species around them were going extinct: Between the Middle Permian
- [SONG: Octopus Gloves](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/24/song-octopus-gloves/) - SONG: "Octopus Gloves". (OGG version) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Science News 13 July 2022, "This octopus-inspired glove helps humans grip slippery objects," as used in the post Octopus gloves. They grab things better.. ABSTRACT: I think this song sounds better than most. I hope it does. I knew this month I was going to do something
- [There are two waters, once it gets cold.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/26/there-are-two-waters-once-it-gets-cold/) - Researchers at the University of Birmingham have found that ordinary water becomes ice when it gets really cold (which we all already knew) but also can become a second, denser liquid form (which is a bit of a surprise): A new kind of ‘phase transition’ in water was first proposed 30 years ago in a
- [No song today (or two days ago)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/25/no-song-today-or-two-days-ago/) - I sometimes work the polls during an election and Tuesday was the 23rd, and I hadn't finished a song by the 22nd. I've nearly got a penitential cover for the last missed deadline, and now I owe another.
- [Science Art: Bellia arenaria, from <i>The Annals and magazine of natural history</i>, Series 2, Vol. 7, #37, 1850.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/21/science-art-bellia-arenaria-from-the-annals-and-magazine-of-natural-history-series-2-vol-7-37-1850/) - This is an illustration of a sea creature that, at the time, was (not exactly) new to science. It was new to British science when C. Spence Bate wrote about it in "On a new genus and several new species of British Crustacea" but nowadays, we call these critters Haustorius arenarius .. the name given
- [Airship hangar awaits new zeppelin revolution.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/21/airship-hangar-awaits-new-zeppelin-revolution/) - BBC is waiting patiently for Google co-founder Sergey Brin to create another world-changing revolution. They're hanging out in an enormous hangar, the Goodyear Airdock in Akron, Ohio, and looking forward to a new generation of giants in the sky: "Flying an airship is unlike flying any other aircraft because it’s lighter than air and floats,
- [Bees of the sea: crustacean pollinators](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/19/bees-of-the-sea-crustacean-pollinators/) - Scientific American introduces us to the bees of the sea, newly observed tiny crustaceans that pollinate seaweed like bees do flowers on land: For the red seaweed Gracilaria gracilis, which grows in scraggly clumps, this is a particular problem. Its male gametes, or spermatia, lack flexible flagella to propel them through the water. “Without the
- [Science Art: <i>Page 219</i> from <i>The engineer's sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices, appliances, contrivances and details...</i>, 1890](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/28/science-art-page-219-from-the-engineers-sketch-book-of-mechanical-movements-devices-appliances-contrivances-and-details-1890/) - This is a page of assorted parts - gizmos, "contrivances," what-have-yous - for doing things in machines. It's from a catalog of such bits and pieces from 1890 called The engineer's sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices, appliances, contrivances and details : employed in the design and construction of machinery for every purpose : classified and
- [Science Art: <i>Woodhouse & Rawson Electrical Lighting & Apparatus ad</i>, 1890](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/14/science-art-woodhouse-rawson-electrical-lighting-apparatus-ad-1890/) - Advertisements from the 1800s are usually visually striking, but this one is really something else - from the loopy lettering to the drama of the scene depicted in fields of shadow and dark, swirling water. Will the ship make it? Can the lighthouse maintain its struggle against the forces of night and the unseen? This
- [Exploring alien planets (and Earth) by balloon](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/11/exploring-alien-planets-and-earth-by-balloon/) - Science News looks at the recent breakthroughs in planetary research using an often-overlooked kind of vehicle, a lighter-than-air balloon, as a research platform in alien skies: “Venus is the sister planet of Earth, but it’s the evil twin sister,” says David Mimoun, a planetary scientist at the University of Toulouse in France. “We don’t know
- [Maybe we'll be able to answer our phones again after all. A cybersecurity expert is hopeful.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/10/maybe-well-be-able-to-answer-our-phones-again-after-all-a-cybersecurity-expert-is-hopeful/) - We in the Guild are not quite ready to break out the chilled sparkling cider and start dialing random numbers to celebrate... but Scientific American has us cautiously optimistic about using our phones as phones once again. They spoke with Adam Doupé, a cybersecurity expert at Arizona State University, about the FCC's recent ruling that
- [Science Art: <i>Photo de Proxima du Centaure, l’étoile la plus proche du Soleil...</i>, Etienne Klein, 2022.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/07/science-art-photo-de-proxima-du-centaure-letoile-la-plus-proche-du-soleil-etienne-klein-2022/) - Maybe you saw this image on Twitter with a blurb like: Photo de Proxima du Centaure, l’étoile la plus proche du Soleil, située à 4,2 année-lumière de nous. Elle a été prise par le JWST. Ce niveau de détails… Un nouveau monde se dévoile jour après jour. Photo of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to
- [Mind-reading helmet used to detect porn in China.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/06/mind-reading-helmet-used-to-detect-porn-in-china/) - Maybe a half-step beyond "I know it when I see it." PC Gamer repeats reports of some strange technological applications allegedly being tested in China, in the form of a helmet that detects the brainwave patterns associated with viewing pornography: Porn has been illegal in China since the People's Republic was formed in 1949, so
- [Transplant breakthrough: A system for keeping the organs alive in a pig that has died.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/05/transplant-breakthrough-a-system-for-keeping-the-organs-alive-in-a-pig-that-has-died/) - Science News is talking about a new "cellular life support" system that could change the way we do organ transplants by keeping organs alive in a body that has died: In earlier work, scientists built a machine they named BrainEx, which kept aspects of cellular life chugging along in decapitated, oxygen-deprived pig brains.... The new
- [Mammoth hunt pushes first North American settlers back by a few millennia.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/08/02/mammoth-hunt-pushes-first-north-american-settlers-back-by-a-few-millennia/) - PhysOrg looks at the remains of what UT Austin researchers have determined was a 37,000-year-old mammoth hunt in New Mexico, a place where scientists didn't think humans existed until tens of thousands of years later: The researchers revealed a wealth of evidence rarely found in one place. It includes fossils with blunt-force fractures, bone flake
- [Science Art: <i>Holothuria tubulosa</i> (<i>Sjogurka stor ugglan</i>, a sea cucumber) from <i>Nordisk Familjebok</i>, 1919.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/31/science-art-holothuria-tubulosa-sjogurka-stor-ugglan-a-sea-cucumber-from-nordisk-familjebok-1919/) - The sea cucumber doesn't look like much until you really look at it. They're complicated little creatures. They have complicated little parts. In this case, they are labeled as: a - Tentacles, b - Cloaca, c - Ambulacral feet on the ventral side, d - Papillae on the back. This diagram came from the classic
- ["Necrobotic" spiders grab things more precisely than machine fingers.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/30/necrobotic-spiders-grab-things-more-precisely-than-machine-fingers/) - Rice University robotics engineers are playing with dead things - spiders, to be precise - and say they've come up with a breakthrough in precision picker-uppers by using spider corpses as machine components: “It happens to be the case that the spider, after it’s deceased, is the perfect architecture for small scale, naturally derived grippers,”
- [Saving the beach with some stick-and-palm-frond engineering.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/26/saving-the-beach-with-some-stick-and-palm-frond-engineering/) - Reuters reports from Senegal on a new anti-erosion project that uses dirt-cheap, pollution-free materials to defend an island from Atlantic swells that threaten to wash the land away: "The ocean was so far away that we used to hear it without seeing it," said Angele Diatta, head of the women's association in Diogue Diola village
- [Science Art: <i>20alpha-Dihydroprogesterone 3D spacefill</i>, by Jynto, 2011.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/24/science-art-20alpha-dihydroprogesterone-3d-spacefill-by-jynto-2011/) - Progesterone is a hormone released by ovaries. It's made from cholesterol, which might seem odd. It's a key component in birth-control pills and in hormone replacement therapy (where it lowers the cancer risk that comes with just taking straight estrogen). This molecule here, 20α-Dihydroprogesterone (also known as 20α-hydroxyprogesterone), comes from progesterone in the body and
- [Social media makes people unhappy... but it doesn't have to.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/20/social-media-makes-people-unhappy-but-it-doesnt-have-to/) - Scientific American takes a look at our online habits and finds we're not making ourselves happy. The technology makes us lose track of time, disrupts sleep, lowers our sense of satisfaction, and increases our tendency to get into conflicts, research proves. But, according to this interview with University of Washington computer scientist Amanda Baughan, it
- [Magic mirror brings the Buddha's enlightenment... when the light hits it just right.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/19/magic-mirror-brings-the-buddhas-enlightenment-when-the-light-hits-it-just-right/) - CNN reports on an unexpected discovery in the Cincinnati Art Museum's East Asian collection, where an unremarkable-looking bronze mirror was just revealed to reflect a hidden image of Amida Buddha when struck by the right kind of light: The item in storage in Cincinnati, Ohio, was smaller than the ones held in museums in Tokyo,
- [Science Art: Cetorhinus maximus, by Greg Skomal](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/17/science-art-cetorhinus-maximus-by-greg-skomal/) - Basking sharks are really big. As fish go, only whale sharks get bigger, and only then sometimes. And both of them eat plankton, not sailors. They've got nothing to prove. This photo from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was Wikimedia Commons' "Photo of the Day" for 6 May 2014.
- [Octopus gloves. They grab things better.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/17/octopus-gloves-they-grab-things-better/) - Science News reports on gloves that are especially good at picking slippery things up and sticking to 'em thanks to "rapidly switchable" materials inspired by octopus tentacles: “Being able to grasp things underwater could be good for search and rescue, it could be good for archaeology, [and] could be good for marine biology,” says mechanical
- [The orange-blossom odor of mosquito-borne diseases... actually attracts mosquitoes.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/12/the-orange-blossom-odor-of-mosquito-borne-diseases-actually-attracts-mosquitoes/) - Science News takes a long whiff of a chemical that smells like oranges and flowers that's given off by people (and other mammals) infected with dengue and Zika. The chemical seems to be given off by a skin bacteria that flourishes on people with those infections - and it appears to attract more mosquitoes to
- [Science Art: <i>Fig 61,</i> A Voyage in Space, "Fragments from the Rings Falling into the Sun," 1915.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/10/science-art-fig-61-a-voyage-in-space-fragments-from-the-rings-falling-into-the-sun-1915/) - This is an illustration of a defunct theory. The idea being put forward explains sunspots as the impacts of meteors, which come from the rings of Saturn but are knocked out at regular intervals by the Leonid meteor shower. This illustration originally ran in Illustrated London News, but was reprinted (enthusiastically) by Oxford professor H.H.
- [Little arms: T. rex didn't invent them, and they didn't come out of nowhere.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/10/little-arms-t-rex-didnt-invent-them-and-they-didnt-come-out-of-nowhere/) - Science News looks at a newly discovered, large-headed carnivorous dinosaur that, like T. rex, had surprisingly small forelimbs. But these independently evolved little arms were apparently kind of muscular: Meraxes gigas, named for a dragon in George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” book series, lived between 100 million and 90 million
- [Antibiotic-resistant bacteria discovered in Antarctica. The question is: Will they stay there?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/05/antibiotic-resistant-bacteria-discovered-in-antarctica-the-question-is-will-they-stay-there/) - Reuters enlightens a pandemic-weary world with news of a discovery of new life in the icy wastes of Antarctica. Unfortunately, the Chilean scientists study the novel bacteria say they're genetically resistant to antibiotics and could easily spread that DNA to germs on other continents as the ice continues to melt: Andres Marcoleta, a researcher from
- [Science Art: <i>The galactic habitable zone of the Milky Way, as predicted by Lineweaver et al (2004)</i>, NASA/Caltech 2013.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/07/03/science-art-the-galactic-habitable-zone-of-the-milky-way-as-predicted-by-lineweaver-et-al-2004-nasa-caltech-2013/) - Solar systems have a "goldilocks zone" where planets capable of sustaining life forms similar to ours can form. Well, galaxies might also have a goldilocks zone where habitable solar systems can form, too. Not too hot, not too cold, not too near the spinning void at the center of the galaxy and not too far
- [Octopus brains and human brains have "jumping genes" in common.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/30/octopus-brains-and-human-brains-have-jumping-genes-in-common/) - Science Daily reports on an Italian study that found something in common between human brains and the brains of two different species of the unusually intelligent invertebrate the octopus: he neural and cognitive complexity of these animals could originate from a molecular analogy with the human brain, as discovered by a research paper recently published
- [Self-driving, cabless semis are coming to U.S. roads.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/27/self-driving-cabless-semis-are-coming-to-u-s-roads/) - TechCrunch rides along with Einride, a Swedish electric drone-trucking startup that's bringing "self-driving pods" to U.S. public roads this year in partnership with GE Appliances: Einride’s pods are built without a front cabin for a human safety operator, which the company says required approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA) in order to
- [Science Art: <i>Fig 2.1: Powder Rocket Projectile</i>, 1956.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/26/science-art-fig-2-1-powder-rocket-projectile-1956/) - This is one of the first illustrations in V. I. Feodosiev's and G. B. Siniarev's Introduction to Rocketry, an English translation of a Russian text from 1956 done by the US Air Force's Foreign Technology Division. It's a document from the dawn of the Space Race, in other words, when rockets were more about launching
- [The largest plant in the world stretches over 180 km and is 4,500 years old. And fish like it.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/25/the-largest-plant-in-the-world-stretches-over-180-km-and-is-4500-years-old-and-fish-like-it/) - The University of Western Australia has singled out a seagrass, Poseidonia australis, in the waters of Shark Bay, Western Australia, as the world's largest plant: UWA student researcher Jane Edgeloe, lead author of the study, said the team sampled seagrass shoots from across Shark Bay’s variable environments and generated a ‘fingerprint’ using 18,000 genetic markers.
- [Polar bears without sea ice (a story of hope).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/22/polar-bears-without-sea-ice-a-story-of-hope/) - Nature reports on polar bears who appear to be adapting to climate change by altering their hunting strategies to survive in a world without sea ice: Researchers identified the genetically distinct sub-population living in the fjords of southeast Greenland, which is surrounded by mountains and an ice sheet to the west, and ocean to the
- [Science Art: <i>Crabs</i> (figures 212-216, <i>Natuurlyke Historie</i>, page 256, 1782.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/19/science-art-crabs-figures-212-216-natuurlyke-historie-page-256-1782/) - A collection of crustaceans from a book by Amsterdam-based publisher Louis Renard on East Indian sea creatures. The illustrations were apparently done by Samuel Fallours, an artist employed by the Dutch East India Company. The Utrecht University Library will let you look through the whole book, or you can just flip through the pretty pictures
- [Dolphins use corals and sponges as medicine - to treat their skin.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/19/dolphins-use-corals-and-sponges-as-medicine-to-treat-their-skin/) - Science magazine takes a deep dive on the medical lives of dolphins, who appear to be intentionally using corals and other stuff growing on the reef as antibiotic treatments for itchy skin: Enter Angela Ziltener, a wildlife biologist with the University of Zürich and the conservation nonprofit Dolphin Watch Alliance. Since 2009, Ziltener has scuba
- [Exhaustion (or distraction) as a language-learning tool.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/15/exhaustion-or-distraction-as-a-language-learning-tool/) - Kids acquire languages better than adults do - everyone knows that. But Scientific American looks at researchers with Ghent University's Eleonore Smalle who went just a little deeper to find that adults who overtire their brains learn languages the way little kids do: For a recent study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, a
- [Chicken and rice go together - all the way to the origins of domestic fowl in grain fields.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/13/chicken-and-rice-go-together-all-the-way-to-the-origins-of-domestic-fowl-in-grain-fields/) - Science News discusses two new studies that place the origins of domestic chickens in one specific place - Southeast Asia - and much more recently than we thought, and much more connected to the cultivation of rice: This poultry tale begins surprisingly recently in rice fields planted by Southeast Asian farmers around 3,500 years ago,
- [Science Art: <i>Bole cross section of common hazel</i> (Corylus avellana), by Annika Karusion, 2011](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/12/science-art-bole-cross-section-of-common-hazel-corylus-avellana-by-annika-karusion-2011/) - This is a microscope's view of a plant's stem, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as part of the Estonian Science Photo Competition of 2011, which I can only assume was the forerunner of the European Science Photo Competitions of later years - for which it's used to illustrate the "microscopy" category.
- [Sick of high crime? Support welfare. New study shows a dramatic link.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/07/sick-of-high-crime-support-welfare-new-study-shows-a-dramatic-link/) - EurekAlert! posts a peer-reviewed study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics that shows a "quite dramatic" correlation between the removal of welfare and an increase in crime rates - which winds up being more expensive for all of us: Using data from the Social Security Administration and the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System researchers
- [Science Art: <i>Artist's concept of the fastest rotating star (VFTS 102)</i>, by NASA/ESA and G. Bacon (STScI).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/06/science-art-artists-concept-of-the-fastest-rotating-star-vfts-102-by-nasa-esa-and-g-bacon-stsci/) - This is a star spinning at 2 million kilometers per hour - so fast, it has made itself into its own twirling skirt, its own hula hoop, its own dervish robe. As the European Space Agency says: Centrifugal force from this dizzying spin rate has flattened the star into an oblate shape, and spun off
- [The brain is not a blank slate. Here's how it shapes what you see, what you don't see, and what you think you know.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/02/the-brain-is-not-a-blank-slate-heres-how-it-shapes-what-you-see-what-you-dont-see-and-what-you-think-you-know/) - Scientific American looks at looking at. That is, the magazine - through an essay by systems neuroscientist György Buzsáki - surveys how it is that the human mind detects the world around us and, rather than simply conveying everything we perceive all at once, actually builds an purposefully incomplete image of the world based on
- [The first animal communities are way, way older than you might think. (And weirder, too.)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/06/01/the-first-animal-communities-are-way-way-older-than-you-might-think-and-weirder-too/) - They had strange, branching forms, says Popular Science as they look over fossils from Newfoundland. And they took off centuries before the so-called "Cambrian explosion" when paleontologists used to think animal life suddenly became the complicated many-shaped menagerie of critters that eventually became crickets or cuckoos or coyotes. They evolved into wildly different forms, the
- [Science Art: <i>Title Page,</i> The Auk, <i>Vol. XXXI</i>, 1914.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/29/science-art-title-page-the-auk-vol-xxxi-1914/) - The American Ornithologists' Union published a journal called The Auk in 1914, with articles in it like "A Plea for the Conservation of the Eider," and "The Fallacy of the Tendency Toward Ultraminute Distinctions." The first thing you see, though, is this handsome individual, with colony in the background, welcoming you to the collected 1914
- [Voyager 1, the world's most faraway space probe, is sending back weird signals.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/30/voyager-1-the-worlds-most-faraway-space-probe-is-sending-back-weird-signals/) - Space.com is calling the mysterious set of signals a "telemetry issue," and experts say it shouldn't be surprising that an interstellar ship launched 45 years ago would start getting a little confused about where it is and which way it's heading: "A mystery like this is sort of par for the course at this stage
- [Reading the DNA from Pompeii](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/29/reading-the-dna-from-pompeii/) - BBC reports on a study reassembling the genome of a man and woman preserved for centuries under the ash of Pompeii, and what the ancient DNA can teach us today: The two people were first discovered in 1933, in what Pompeii archaeologists have called Casa del Fabbro, or The Craftsman's House. They were slumped in
- ["Looty": using NFTs to steal back looted African artworks, digitally.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/25/looty-using-nfts-to-steal-back-looted-african-artworks-digitally/) - Reuters describes the Looty Project as one man's crusade to finance new artists in Nigeria and Benin by selling NFTs minted from 3D images of looted artifacts displayed in European museums: "Imagine a world where these items were never looted," [Chidi] Nwaubani told Reuters in an interview. "We're just trying to reimagine that world and
- [No song today.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/24/no-song-today-13/) - I have a great musical track, a hummed melody, a couple ideas about pseudosatellites and diddly-squat words. More when I can get some words, and then a penitential cover.
- [Science Art: <i>Power spectrum of Siemens star with 1024 line pairs per image height</i>, by Bautsch, 2012.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/22/science-art-power-spectrum-of-siemens-star-with-1024-line-pairs-per-image-height-by-bautsch-2012/) - This is a Siemens star, a pattern used to calibrate optical equipment - to see how well the lens (or raster, or driver, or whatever) can see. Although actually, this graphic is not merely the Siemens star. As described in the (German) book in which it appears, Digital Imaging Methods, this is a power density
- [It feels less evil the second time around.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/20/it-feels-less-evil-the-second-time-around/) - The Journal of Experimental Psychology defines something I think we've all had a feeling about - that the more you encounter a bad deed (or hear it described in, say, a televised courtroom conflict) the less "bad" it seems. The University of North Carolina researchers studying this unfortunate human tendency have called it the moral
- [Laugh, quantum computer, laugh... in IBM's gum tree.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/16/laugh-quantum-computer-laugh-in-ibms-gum-tree/) - Popular Science discusses what could be IBM's quantum breakthrough - a quantum processor named "Kookaburra" that's set to start computing in 2025: Last year, IBM debuted a 127-qubit computing chip and a structure called the IBM Quantum System Two, intended to house components like the chandelier cryostat, wiring, and electronics for these bigger chips down
- [Science Art: <i>"Ballon à col sinueux employé par M. Pasteur dans ses expériences contre la génération spontanée"</i>, 1873.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/16/science-art-ballon-a-col-sinueux-employe-par-m-pasteur-dans-ses-experiences-contre-la-generation-spontanee-1873/) - This is some laboratory glassware used in Pasteur's experiments, as illustrated in Les merveilles de l'industrie, an 1873 science book that has a marvelous gallery on Flickr. It's a "sinuous-neck flask employed by M. Pasteur in his experiments against spontaneous generation" - in other words, a device used to prove that germs did things, that
- [Bats mimic buzzing hornets to scare predators away.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/12/bats-mimic-buzzing-hornets-to-scare-predators-away/) - Science magazine reveals the first known case of a mammal mimicking insect noises, in a study that found greater mouse-eared bats imitate stinging insect buzzes to keep owls and other potential predators away: Danilo Russo... [a]n ecologist at the University of Naples Federico II... was conducting fieldwork in southeastern Italy more than 2 decades ago
- [Pop-song paradox: What it takes to be a one-hit wonder is the opposite of what it takes to have a long career.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/11/pop-song-paradox-what-it-takes-to-be-a-one-hit-wonder-is-the-opposite-of-what-it-takes-to-have-a-long-career/) - Science News examines the science of the Top 40, with a survey of the charts that found what goes into that first, breakthrough hit is the opposite of what makes for an ongoing musical career: Artists with more variety in their catalog have a better chance to land repeat hits, says Justin Berg, a social
- [Science Art: Cover, <i>Introduction to Transistors & Transistor Projects</i>, 1972.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/08/science-art-cover-introduction-to-transistors-transistor-projects-1972/) - This is... well, let me just quote the preface: This book is intended to show the electronics experimenter how the transistor was developed, how it is manufactured, and how it works. The heart of the book is the description of transistor operation, for the experimenter who masters these fundamentals is well on the way to
- [Solar plane can do the job of a satellite without going into space.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/08/solar-plane-can-do-the-job-of-a-satellite-without-going-into-space/) - CNN is covering the Skydweller, a plane powered by more than 17,000 solar panels, enabling it to stay aloft for month, doing the same work a satellite would do at a slightly lower altitude and much lower cost: "A pseudo-satellite is an aircraft that stays aloft, let's say, indefinitely," says Skydweller's CEO, Robert Miller. "That
- [Got allergic asthma? Congratulations - you've also got some COVID-19 protection.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/05/got-allergic-asthma-congratulations-youve-also-got-some-covid-19-protection/) - Science News looks at interleukin-13, an immune-system protein linked with allergies that make it hard to breathe - and make it hard for the SARS-CoV-2 virus to gain a foothold in your lungs: But it wasn’t clear how IL-13 was protecting people with allergic asthma from SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. To find out,
- [Science Art: <i>Lycidae, Plate XVIII</i>, Edw.  A. Smith, 1879](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/05/01/science-art-lycidae-plate-xviii-edw-a-smith-1879/) - These are beetles, mostly from southern Asia except the last one, Dexoris, which is from Sierra Leone. These specific beetles became British (perhaps posthumously) and were recorded in Illustrations of typical specimens of Coleoptera in the collection of the British museum. Part 1. Lycidae by Charles O. Waterhouse. The illustrations in this book are all
- [Smallpox vaccine got a boost ... from skin bacteria.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/30/smallpox-vaccine-got-a-boost-from-skin-bacteria/) - The-Scientist explores a strange interaction that helped eliminate smallpox without us even noticing. The vaccine that helped eliminate this killer got an extra boost from local skin bacteria that got scraped in with the shot and bolstered the host's immune response: In the study, the researchers vaccinated three groups of mice with the vaccinia virus
- [Camera lens based on a trilobite's eye keeps objects in focus near and far.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/29/camera-lens-based-on-a-trilobites-eye-keeps-objects-in-focus-near-and-far/) - Science News looks at the world through the eyes of Dalmanitina socialis, a creature extinct for 400 million years who could focus on objects as close as 3 centimeters and as far as 2 kilometers at the same time thanks to an eye with a very strange internal structure: “In optics, there was a problem,”
- [Science Art: <i>Blast Engine</i>, 1870s.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/24/science-art-blast-engine-1870s/) - This was one of the attractions in the Machinery Hall of the Great Centennial Exhibition of 1876, a blast engine made by the I.P. Morris Company. Why a blast engine? To make Bessemer steel. It was... ..designed to meet the wants of American Furnace Managers, certain requirements having been laid down as a standard which
- [SONG: Like Lava Made of Water](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/24/song-like-lava-made-of-water/) - SONG: "Like Lava Made of Water". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Science 17 Apr 2022, "Icy Volcanos on Pluto Could Be Sign of Underground Ocean," as used in the post Pluto might have an underground ocean, if those icy volcanoes are any indication. ABSTRACT: This is yet another song where I started with a chord progression, oh,
- [Brain scans show even a mild covid case can shrink your brain - as many of us are finding out.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/20/brain-scans-show-even-a-mild-covid-case-can-shrink-your-brain-as-many-of-us-are-finding-out/) - National Geographic takes a broad look at neurological studies done at labs around the world that show that even the "mild flu" version of COVID-19 can cause brain fog, memory loss, and physical changes to your brain equal to a decade of aging, including literally shrinking your brain: The United States remains the world's worst
- [Inca sacrifices were given ayahuasca in their final hours.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/19/inca-sacrifices-were-given-ayahuasca-in-their-final-hours/) - IFL Science (among other outlets) is reporting on studies published in Nature and the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports that looked at the mummified remains of children sacrificed in an Inca ritual and found that they had been given doses of coca leaves and the potent psychedelic brew ayahuasca in their final hours: Thought to
- [Science Art: <i>Pénaud's first sketch of an amphibian aeroplane</i>, 1873](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/17/science-art-penauds-first-sketch-of-an-amphibian-aeroplane-1873/) - CW: Ends in despair. French aviation pioneer Alphonse Pénaud designed this, with engineer Paul Gauchot, as an aeroplane that could land on water or on land. That was quite an ambition in the decades before the Wright Brothers (or Gustave Whitehead or Alberto Santos-Dumont). But probably the oddest thing about his designs was something we
- [Pluto might have an underground ocean, if those icy volcanoes are any indication.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/17/pluto-might-have-an-underground-ocean-if-those-icy-volcanoes-are-any-indication/) - Science magazine reports on new conclusions from the New Horizon spacecraft's 2015 observations of ice volcanoes on Pluto, and what they could mean for the interior structure of the cold dwarf planet: A 1000-kilometer stretch of terrain on Pluto is dominated by volcanic domes and structures that would have formed recently from flowing water-ice lava,
- [There's more than one speed of sound on Mars.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/14/theres-more-than-one-speed-of-sound-on-mars/) - Science News describes one of the odd issues facing our robotic exploration of the Red Planet, because sound waves travel differently in the thin atmosphere of Mars. Not just a different speed overall, but high-pitched sounds travel faster than low-pitched ones: “The wind is the sound of science for us,” says astrophysicist Baptiste Chide of
- [Science Art: Irisosaurus yimenensis <i>life restoration</i>, by Ang Li.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/10/science-art-irisosaurus-yimenensis-life-restoration-by-ang-li/) - Irisosaurus yimenensis is a dinosaur discovered in 2020 in Yunnan, China, within the Fengjiahe Formation - a layer of sediment and fossils laid down in the Early Jurassic period, between 174 and 201 million years ago. I suppose I should mention that the Wikimedia Commons page for this image has a note on it that
- [A 3,000-year-old skull surgery in Alabama](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/07/a-3000-year-old-skull-surgery-in-alabama/) - Science News checks out the evidence for the oldest known skull surgery in America, a forehead-opening operation that took place between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago in what is now known as the Little Bear Creek Site, a seashell covered burial mound in Alabama: Damage around the man’s oval skull opening indicates that someone scraped
- [Want your research cited by other scientists? Give your paper a funny title.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/11/want-your-research-cited-by-other-scientists-give-your-paper-a-funny-title/) - Nature reveals one of the weird truths about the way we do science. Publishing research is sometimes referred to as "the academic conversation," and analysis proves that if you want to be part of that conversation, it helps if you've got something to say ... but also, if you can say it in a funny
- [There's radioactive material *everywhere*. Here's who's trying to clean up clinics and food processing plants..](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/08/theres-radioactive-material-everywhere-heres-whos-trying-to-clean-up-clinics-and-food-processing-plants/) - Scientific American introduces us to the RadSecure program, which aims to keep the radioactive isotopes in use all around us from getting too close for comfort (or good health): Radioactive material is not always bad in a black-and-white way: it can be a useful tool. The gamma rays emitted by cesium and cobalt can kill
- [FedEx is testing a drone with a 27-foot wingspan for "middle mile" delivery.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/05/fedex-is-testing-a-drone-with-a-27-foot-wingspan-for-middle-mile-delivery/) - Popular Science explains the 9.000-pound flying robots made by the drone company Elroy Air aren't meant to get your packages to your door. They're just flying them most of the way there: The drone in question is called the Chaparral, which Elroy took the wraps off of earlier this year. ... The Chaparral isn’t small:
- [Science Art: <i>Culpeper's Microscope</i>, 1797.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/03/science-art-culpepers-microscope-1797/) - This is a single microscope from a page of microscopes in the 1797 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which I found on archive.org. This particular one is a compound microscope. It's mostly brass (or, as the encyclopedia puts it, "a large external brafs body, A, B, C, D, fupported upon three fcrolls"), but has a
- [Spotting the farthest star: Earendel.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/04/02/spotting-the-farthest-star-earendel/) - Science Daily shares news from NASA/Goddard that Hubble, the space telescope supposedly surpassed by the new Webb telescope, has now identified the farthest star (and thus longest-ago light) ever seen: Scientists use the word "redshift" because as the universe expands, light from distant objects is stretched or "shifted" to longer, redder wavelengths as it travels
- [Rural people have a better sense of direction.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/31/rural-people-have-a-better-sense-of-direction/) - Lancaster University researchers have studied folks who grew up in the country, in the suburbs, and in the city by analyzing their movements in a specially designed video game, and found that those with a rural background are better at spatial navigation, while city kids did better with grids: The study, published in Nature, involved
- [Science Art: <i>CSIRO’s ASKAP telescope continues to detect new FRBs...</i>, 2020](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/27/science-art-csiros-askap-telescope-continues-to-detect-new-frbs-2020/) - This is an image of a thing that happens that is both very fast and also invisible. The colorful blocks are representations of "fast radio bursts" (FRBs) which are sudden surges of radio waves that come from outside our galaxy, so from unimaginably far distances away. These have been detected by a telescope called the
- [SONG: Lost Aromas (A Rose)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/24/song-lost-aromas-a-rose/) - SONG: "Lost Aromas (A Rose)". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Discover 25 Jan 2022, "Smells Are Going Extinct, So Researchers Are Working to Preserve Them," as used in the post 'On the extinction of smells, and the attempt to preserve an aroma.' ABSTRACT: Wanted this one simple. This is simple. Four tracks: a strummed ukulele, the same
- [Big Dog is being outrun - by an emu-inspired BirdBot](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/22/big-dog-is-being-outrun-by-an-emu-inspired-birdbot/) - Science reports on a Human Frontier Science Program project that is creating a more stable, more self-controlled walking robot by basing its motion on emus rather than using the "active control" that lets robots walk like big dogs: ABSTRACT: Designers of legged robots are challenged with creating mechanisms that allow energy-efficient locomotion with robust and
- [Science Art: <i>Lysiopetalum Cavernarum, Etc.</i>, Emerton & Packard, del., 1888.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/20/science-art-lysiopetalum-cavernarum-etc-emerton-packard-del-1888/) - This is a collection of bits and pieces (including "male genital armature" in 1s and 1t) of Pseudotremia cavernarum, the cave millipede. Yes, the researchers got up close and personal with them in Wyandotte Cave in Indiana. The image is Plate VI from The Cave Fauna of North America, with remarks on the anatomy of
- [The earliest North Americans were hanging out hunting horses in the Yukon 24,000 years ago.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/19/the-earliest-north-americans-were-hanging-out-hunting-horses-in-the-yukon-24000-years-ago/) - Hakai Magazine (via Smithsonian) shares some discoveries from the Bluefish Caves in the northern Yukon, where archaeologists have unearthed clues to a whole human society that flourished 11,000 years earlier than when the "first" humans were supposed to have arrived in North America: One example of this ongoing rectification is the work being done by
- [On the extinction of smells, and the attempt to preserve an aroma.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/17/on-the-extinction-of-smells-and-the-attempt-to-preserve-an-aroma/) - Discover reports on the growing field of "scent researchers" who are attempting to bring back smells that have long since gone away, and to record the smells we've got around today that might go extinct as well: “When we think about what aspects of culture we consider legacy, we think in very material terms,” says
- [We discovered a new kind of tarantula. It lives inside bamboo.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/16/we-discovered-a-new-kind-of-tarantula-it-lives-inside-bamboo/) - Science News has unfortunate news for arachnophobes who like relaxing in bamboo furniture. For the first time in more than a century, a new species of tarantula has been discovered in Asia, and it prefers to make its home inside bamboo stems: Taksinus bambus, as the spider is officially known, “is the world’s first tarantula
- [Science Art: <i>Yearly Potato Production</i>, from <i>Natural History Magazine</i>, March 1947.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/13/science-art-yearly-potato-production-from-natural-history-magazine-march-1947/) - In 1947, Natural History Magazine took a deep dive into potatoes - where they came from and where they're going ... and growing. The story "Saga of the Earth Nut" was written by American Natural History Museum curator emeritus Clark Wissler, so you know it had to be good. It's even got maps! And photographs
- [Russia's war reaches into space, leaving an American astronaut potentially stranded.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/12/russias-war-reaches-into-space-leaving-an-american-astronaut-potentially-stranded/) - ABC News reports on an unintended consequence of the war in Ukraine that's creating a tricky situation far overhead. American astronaut Mark Vande Hei, currently serving aboard the I.S.S., is supposed to catch a ride down to Kazakhstan with two Russian cosmonauts in three weeks. But now, due to sanctions, Russia is saying the American
- [Venus of Willendorf actually not of Willdendorf - she's Italian!](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/11/venus-of-willendorf-actually-not-of-willdendorf-shes-italian/) - Archaeology Today has the news - heartwrenching to Austrians, joyous to Italians - that one of the world's most famous figurines, the round-bodied Venus of Willendorf, was actually carved of rock from northern Italy. Specifically, she seems to made from oolitic limestone (that is, the remains of primordial coral reefs) from around Lake Garda in
- [Science Art: <i>Meda Songs</i>, 1851](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/06/science-art-meda-songs-1851/) - This is a chromolithograph by James Ackerman made of a watercolor by Seth Eastman who was copying an Ojibwe music board - a birchwood slab somebody picked up in the Northern Great Lakes region around 1820. I'm not sure what a "music board" is. As far as I can tell, this seems to be a
- [Prehistoric pigment points to archaic brain trust.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/03/prehistoric-pigment-points-to-archaic-brain-trust/) - Nature reports on the discovery of an unusually advanced settlement in East Asia. Around 40,000 years ago, when Denisovans, Neanderthals, and the very first Homo sapiens were replacing older human ancestors, a group of early humans in Xiamabei were processing ochre - a pigment used for ritual makeup and symbolic painting - and were refining
- ["Difficult" bacteria has chainmail to protect it from antibiotics.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/03/01/difficult-bacteria-has-chainmail-to-protect-it-from-antibiotics/) - Science News reveals the secret that makes Clostridium difficile infections so tough to treat - an outer barrier called "the S layer" that protects the gut bacteria like molecular chainmail: Using X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy, structural microbiologist Paula Salgado of Newcastle University in England and colleagues zeroed in on the main protein that makes
- [Science Art: <i>The Hubble Space Telescope is lifted into the workstands...</i>, 1990](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/27/science-art-the-hubble-space-telescope-is-lifted-into-the-workstands-1990/) - There's a new space telescope getting ready to do its thing now, but here's a look back to when the last one was brand new. It's a NASA image hosted by the San Diego Air and Space Museum. Their description: The Hubble Space Telescope is lifted into the workstands in the VPF as work begins
- [Somebody's rocket is about to crash into the moon. We're not really sure whose.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/25/somebodys-rocket-is-about-to-crash-into-the-moon-were-not-really-sure-whose/) - Space.com introduces a new wrinkle in the growing space-junk problem. There's so much stuff flying around us, we're no longer sure where it came from or how long it's been there. We do know that somebody's old rocket is about to slam into the dark side of the moon: First thought to be the upper
- [SONG: Remember Your Hands](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/24/song-remember-your-hands/) - SONG: "Remember Your Hands". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Science News 31 Jan 2022, "A new device helps frogs regrow working legs after an amputation," as used in the post 'Drug device spurs lost limbs to regrow… in frogs, at least.' ABSTRACT: This is one of those songs where I didn't feel hurried at the end, but
- [Science Art: United Aircraft Display Transmssion Generator ad, 1964.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/20/science-art-united-aircraft-display-transmission-generator-ad-1964/) - An ad from the first issue of the Journal of the Society for Informational Display. This machine could receive up to 26 teletype messages of 145 characters each (so longer than pre-2017 tweets), and convert any six of them to alphanumeric characters that could then be sent to "remote television receivers." So you could put
- ["Mega-casting" will replace lots of little car parts with one big piece of metal.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/20/mega-casting-will-replace-lots-of-little-car-parts-with-one-big-piece-of-metal/) - Popular Science shares Volvo's vision for the next generation of automobile manufacture. Not only are they using electric motors, but they're putting together the vehicles with a process they're calling "mega-casting" to mold large portions of their cars without needing any factory workers to weld or assemble the bits and pieces together: One example part
- [Chimpanzees use insects as medicine.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/17/chimpanzees-use-insects-as-medicine/) - New Scientist has a different kind of drug story, about primatologists in Gabon who have spotted chimpanzees rubbing their wounds with winged insects - apparently using the bugs for self-medication, although they're not sure why: In November 2019, Alessandra Mascaro, who works on the Ozouga Chimpanzee Project at Loango National Park, watched and filmed a
- [Drug device spurs lost limbs to regrow... in frogs, at least.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/15/drug-device-spurs-lost-limbs-to-regrow-in-frogs-at-least/) - Science News covers a device that coaxes amphibians' cells to remember how to regrow amputated arms and legs: “The cells of the frog already know how to make frog legs,” having done so when the animal was a developing embryo, says Michael Levin, a developmental biologist at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. “Our goal is
- [Science Art: <i>La Mouche des cerises (</i>Rhagoletis cerasi<i>), d'après une ancienne encyclopédie suédoise</i>, 1920](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/13/science-art-la-mouche-des-cerises-rhagoletis-cerasi-dapres-une-ancienne-encyclopedie-suedoise-1920/) - This is a European cherry fruit fly, one of those creatures whose names say exactly what they are: a fruit fly that lives on cherries in Europe. The image came from the 1920 edition of Nordisk Familjebok, a long-running Swedish encyclopedia. This edition is also called the "Uggleupplagan," which to an English speaker almost seems
- [Fossil-eating sponges found on the Arctic seabed.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/12/fossil-eating-sponges-found-on-the-arctic-seabed/) - The U.K.'s National History Museum celebrates the unexpected discovery of Arctic sponges that feed on 3,000-year-old fossils: The fossilised remains of an ancient ecosystem have provided an unlikely food source for the marine life, providing sustenance in an area of the ocean where vital nutrients are hard to come by. The co-author of the first
- [Duct tape for your guts.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/07/duct-tape-for-your-guts/) - New Scientist reveals a new kind of medical material created by MIT researcher Xuanhe Zhao- a sticky-on-one-side wound dressing that can treat gut injuries by sealing up wet, flexible gastrointestinal openings (from injuries or surgeries) like duct tape: Zhao and his colleagues designed their dressing to work like duct tape, which is only sticky on
- [Science Art: <i>Water-voles</i>, 1911.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/06/science-art-water-voles-1911/) - This is a pair of water-voles looking ready for a Wind in the Willows-style adventure, only without any waistcoats or trousers. They're featured in a chapter on "The Rabbit" in British Land Mammals and Their Habits, by Alexander Nicol Simpson, a guide to the cuter critters of the U.K. published in 1911, and preserved on
- [Satellites spot the biggest methane sources. (They're not cows.)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/06/satellites-spot-the-biggest-methane-sources-theyre-not-cows/) - New Scientist looks down from on high with Europe's Tropomi satellite and finds clusters of climate-altering methane "super emitters" - places where the greenhouse gas is leaking out from petroleum facilities in the Turkmenistan, Russia, and the U.S.: These ultra-emitters were spotted pumping out more than 25 tonnes of methane an hour. That’s “a heck
- [The guy who took down North Korea's internet.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/03/the-guy-who-took-down-north-koreas-internet/) - Wired recently ran a fun story about one man making a difference - a cybersecurity guy named P4x, who noticed that state-sponsored North Korean hackers were trying to break into his (and a bunch of other security folks') stuff, got fed up that no Western governments were doing anything about it, so he took it
- [These recycled lithium-ion batteries are outperforming new ones.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/02/02/these-recycled-lithium-ion-batteries-are-outperforming-new-ones/) - IEEE Spectrum reports on a research team that has created a new method for recycling the environmentally risky chemicals used in lithium-ion batteries - the kind of batteries used in cellphones, laptops, and electric cars. The technique, surprisingly, produces batteries that are actually more efficient than those made from newly-mined lithium: "In general, people's impression
- [Programming computers to find Antarctic meteorites.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/30/programming-computers-to-find-antarctic-meteorites/) - Science magazine explains how that big southerly continent has become the best place to find meteorites, and how those ancient fallen rocks offer priceless clues to the history of the solar system. The trouble is finding them in all that ice. That's where machine learning comes in, locating the best places to consistently find the
- [Science Art: <i>5c The Sciences single</i>, U.S. Postal Service, 1963.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/30/science-art-5c-the-sciences-single-u-s-postal-service-1963/) - An image of science in the abstract, the spirit of science as imagined at the dawn of the Space Age, from the National Postal Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institutions. From the description page there: This Science Issue stamp honors the sciences and commemorates the centennial of the founding of the National Academy of Sciences.
- [Something in space is getting really bright three times an hour.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/28/something-in-space-is-getting-really-bright-three-times-an-hour/) - Science Daily reports on a deep space mystery that the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research is trying to figure out - namely, what this thing is that, for one minute in every 20, is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky: Astrophysicist Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker, from the Curtin University node of the
- [Little green lights could save sharks and turtles while keeping fisheries in business.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/27/little-green-lights-could-save-sharks-and-turtles-while-keeping-fisheries-in-business/) - Science magazine reports on one of those simple fixes that could make everything a little bit better if only everyone would sign on. Scientists have found that by attaching green LEDs to fishing nets, we could reduce "bycatch" (that is, trapping the wrong kinds of sea creatures in fishing nets) without cutting back on the
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- [SONG: In Pompeii](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/24/song-in-pompeii/) - SONG: "In Pompeii". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Scientific American 6 Dec 2021, "Pompeii’s Ruins to Be Reconstructed by Robot," as used in the post 'A robot will be rebuilding Pompeii from fragments.' ABSTRACT: This song, weirdly, was sort of finished before it was done, and then nearly wasn't finished at all. What had happened was that
- [Science Art: <i>Randel's Improved Combination Press</i>, 1860](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/23/science-art-randels-improved-combination-press-1860/) - From Scientific American, December 1, 1860, an issue that also has a patent by Abraham Lincoln for lifting riverboats over obstacles, and a note on getting leather from snake skins. It was a busy time for the industrial engineer. This combination press was not for making publications, but for shaping cotton or other materials into
- [Quantum particles are affected by gravity fields they never touch.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/23/quantum-particles-are-affected-by-gravity-fields-they-never-touch/) - Science News has more mysteries from the subatomic realm, with the discovery that electrons and other quantum particles can be moved by forces they never actually come into contact with, including magnetic fields and, now, gravitational fields: Usually, to feel the influence of a magnetic field, a particle would have to pass through it. But
- [Multiple sclerosis is triggered by the mononucleosis virus - they proved it.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/20/multiple-sclerosis-is-triggered-by-the-mononucleosis-virus-they-proved-it/) - Scientific American hails a breakthrough in fighting MS with the definitive discovery that the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes mononucleosis and which 95% of American adults carry, is indeed the trigger for developing multiple sclerosis: esearchers at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School turned to what they call “an
- [Self-driving tractor ready for remote-control farming.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/19/self-driving-tractor-ready-for-remote-control-farming/) - CNet reports on John Deere's invention of an autonomous robot tractor you can control with your smartphone: "It takes a while to get comfortable because ... first of all, you're just kind of amazed just watching it," said [Minnessota farmer Doug] Nimz, who on a windy October afternoon described himself as "very, very interested" but
- [The first hybrid humans ever bred was a kunga.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/17/the-first-hybrid-humans-ever-bred-is-a-kunga/) - Science News takes us back 4,500 years to ancient Syria, where domesticated donkeys and wild asses called "hemippes" were bred together for war - as the earliest know hybrid: Horses didn’t appear in this region of Asia until 4,000 years ago, centuries after their domestication in Russia. But dozens of equine skeletons were excavated in
- [Science Art: <i>Section of a Comet's Path</i>, 1933](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/16/science-art-section-of-a-comets-path-1933/) - This illustration, from Natural History Magazine, shows the way the comet of 1843 (or Comet 1843, if you prefer) reached its closest point to the sun, perihelion, over 10 hours - and the way the solar wind blew its tail away from the sun at every point of the 12-million-kilometer journey.
- [Rare "exquisitely carved" Roman-era figure found along British railway route.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/14/rare-exquisitely-carved-roman-era-figure-found-along-british-railway-route/) - The Guardian shares archaeological treasure - the discovery of a 2,000-year-old wooden statue unearthed in the massive dig along the 150-mile HS2 rail project: The 67cm-tall figure is carved from a single piece of wood. Archaeologists said its preservation was “incredible” given its age and material, but the lack of oxygen in the ditch helped
- [Cannabis chemicals block covid virus (in the lab, at least).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/12/cannabis-chemicals-block-covid-virus-in-the-lab-at-least/) - Researchers publishing in the Journal of Natural Products have basically opened the door to pot being the next ivermectin with a finding that orally active extracts of Cannabis sativa block the covid virus from reproducing in living cells: ABSTRACT: As a complement to vaccines, small-molecule therapeutic agents are needed to treat or prevent infections by
- [Science Art: <i>Magdalenian engraving of bison</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/09/science-art-magdalenian-engraving-of-bison/) - This is a drawing of a drawing, a likeness of a bison engraved on cave floor at Niaux. The likeness is part of the Wellcome Collection, but the original is where it's been for around 14,000 years, in a cavern in the foothills of the Pyrenees near Foix, France in a steep-sided valley formed by
- [People are having less sex.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/07/people-are-having-less-sex/) - Scientific American interviews two Indiana University researchers, Debby Herbenick and Tsung-chieh (Jane) Fu, who've found that folks of all ages are getting a little less busy than they used to back in swingin' 2009: The decreases “aren’t trivial,” as the authors wrote in the study, published on November 19 in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Between
- [Thinking through what the Great Green Wall will do.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/04/thinking-through-what-the-great-green-wall-will-do/) - Science News looks at the long-term implications of the "Great Green Wall," a proposed belt of tree-plantings intended to block the southward spread of the Sahara Desert. The project, if completed, has implications not just for countries to the south, but for North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the rest of the world: By 2030, the
- [Science Art: <i>Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Lifts Off!</i>, by NASA/Joel Kowsky, 7 Dec 2021](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/02/science-art-laser-communications-relay-demonstration-lifts-off-by-nasa-joel-kowsky-7-dec-2021/) - This is another unusual perspective of a space vessel in flight, though slightly less rare than the top-down image posted here on 28 November. We're looking up at a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, taking off from Cape Canaveral to put a Department of Defense Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) in orbit. That's a
- [A robot will be rebuilding Pompeii from fragments](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2022/01/01/a-robot-will-be-rebuilding-pompeii-from-fragments/) - Scientific American reports on a project using autonomous robots to reassemble the smallest fragments of the ruins of Pompeii: Their project—dubbed RePAIR (Reconstructing the Past: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics meet Cultural Heritage)—melds robotics, AI and archaeology in an attempt to reconstruct architectural features of Pompeii that would otherwise remain incomplete, because they’re either too complex
- [Studying lizard lungs to build replacement human lungs.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/29/studying-lizard-lungs-to-build-replacement-human-lungs/) - Princeton researchers are looking at the fast-growing lungs of ordinary, common lizards called brown anoles to find way to quickly create replacement lungs for humans in need of transplants: Whereas human lungs develop over months and years into baroque tree-like structures, the anole lung develops in just a few days into crude lobes covered with
- [Pendants marketed as "Anti 5G" are actually radioactive.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/28/pendants-marketed-as-anti-5g-are-actually-radioactive/) - Ars Technica takes us to the technological front of the culture war with a truly absurd story about "quantum pendants" that supposedly neutralize 5G radio waves with negative ions. The pendants do generate ions ... to a level that they're actually dangerously radioactive over prolonged exposure: These kinds of "negative ion" products can be found
- [Science Art: Comet observations from <i>Libra astronomica, y philosophica</i> by Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora, 1690.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/27/science-art-comet-observations-from-libra-astronomica-y-philosophica-by-carlos-de-siguenza-y-gongora-1690/) - I can't make out exactly what this is illustrating. My Spanish is barely good enough to tell, in section 309 of Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora's Libra astronomica, y philosophica (on page 145, which I found on archive.org), that we're talking about objects that move around the sun (Sol, A) or more likely points that
- [SONG: Fast Blue Optical Transients](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/24/song-fast-blue-optical-transients/) - SONG: "Fast Blue Optical Transients". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Science News 13 Dec 2021, "The cosmic ‘Cow’ may have produced a new neutron star or black hole," as used in the post 'Bright and really heavy: What “The Cow” caused in deep space.' ABSTRACT: I don't know if this is an experimental song or a pop
- ["Exquisitely preserved" dinosaur embryo discovered inside fossilized egg in museum storeroom.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/23/exquisitely-preserved-dinosaur-embryo-discovered-inside-fossilized-egg-in-museum-storeroom/) - New Scientist reports on the best-preserved dinosaur embryo ever discovered, inside a 70 million-year-old egg that had been stored in Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum in Nan’an, China, for more than a decade - until 2015, when someone noticed what looked like tiny bones stuwhen someone noticed what looked like tiny bones sticking out of
- [SONG: Deeper Than Love (a penitential Colleen Green cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/21/song-deeper-than-love-a-penitential-colleen-green-cover/) - SONG: "Deeper Than Love (a penitential Colleen Green cover)". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: There is no scientific source. This is a penitential cover of this Colleen Green song recorded for being late with an original song. ABSTRACT: I feel more self-conscious than usual posting this cover up, I think because ... well, I have no illusions
- [Science Art: <i>Auiomeris io, Dryocampa rubicunda</i> by Edna Libby Beutenmüller, 1918.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/19/science-art-auiomeris-io-dryocampa-rubicunda-by-edna-libby-beutenmuller-1918/) - Two moths, pictured in The Field Book of Insects by Frank E. Lutz. A. io, with the big roundels on its wings, is better known as the io moth. D. rubicunda is more commonly called the rosy maple moth. It's all pink and butter yellow, and is part of a group called the great silk
- [Bright and really heavy: What "The Cow" caused in deep space.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/17/bright-and-really-heavy-what-the-cow-caused-in-deep-space/) - Science News shares an explanation for an intense puzzle that's had astronomers searching for solutions since June 2018. Now, astrophysicist DJ Pasham and his team believe "The Cow" - a burst of light much brighter than a supernova - might have created a neutron star, or even a black hole: The burst’s official, random designation
- [SONG: Dear Winter.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2009/12/23/song-dear-winter/) - SONG: "Dear Winter" (To download: double right-click & "Save As") ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: "Humans Have Hidden Sensory System", LiveScience (via Yahoo! News), 8 Dec 2009, as used in the post "Skin sense." ABSTRACT: So, this is probably the geekiest thing I've ever done on here. Here's an axiom: The longer one puts off recording vocals,
- [Bacteria-killing copper fights superbug spread](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/15/bacteria-killing-copper-fights-superbug-spread/) - Australia's RMIT University is excited by the prospects of a surface that kills bacteria on its own, without any antiseptics being applied - a new form of copper that can eliminate even antibiotic-resistant germs 120 times faster than ordinary copper (which also kills germs on its own): Copper has long been used to fight different
- [Jet biofuel could change things.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/15/jet-biofuel-could-change-things/) - Scientific American explores a frontier of carbon-neutral industry - a way to make airplanes and helicopters fly without so many greenhouse gases in their exhaust: Two flying machines partially powered by unblended sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, performed successful test flights in France this fall. An Airbus A319neo plane and an Airbus H225 helicopter each
- [Science Art: <i>NASA's SpaceX Crew-4 Mission Patch</i>, by Alexandra Lindgren](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/12/science-art-nasas-spacex-crew-4-mission-patch-by-alexandra-lindgren/) - A dragonfly in space. Luck, and transformation. This is the symbol for a joint NASA/ESA mission to the ISS, with Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins on the NASA side, and Samantha Cristoforetti repping for ESA. She's been featured here before, getting her hair cut in zero-G for New Years 2015. [via NASA's Johnson
- [Using good scotch to make better electronics](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/09/using-good-scotch-to-make-better-electronics/) - Not by drinking it! Discover reveals how watching The Glenlivet whisky evaporates - and leaves an almost uniform stain, unlike splotchier drinks like coffee or wine - gave researchers the idea of using scotch to deposit uniform layers of conductive materials, creating an environmentally technique for manufacturing cutting-edge electronic components called memristors: [Jinsun Kim and
- [Great jumping pterosaurs!](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/09/great-jumping-pterosaurs/) - EurekAlert! shares the discovery that the world's largest-ever flying creature, Quetzalcoatlus, a pterosaur with a 40-foot wingspan, managed to take to the skies despite its impressive size by being an even more impressive leaper, jumping as high as 8 feet into the air before flapping its massive wings: The finding is part of the most
- [Grape seed extract extends mice lifespans (and health) by 9 percent.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/06/grape-seed-extract-extends-mice-lifespans-and-health-by-9-percent/) - New Scientist reports on a Nature Metabolism study that found a chemical found in grape seeds helped bodies weed out weaker "senescent" cells, leading to better overall health and longer lifespans overall: To find a substance that might destroy these cells, Qixia Xu at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai and colleagues
- [Science Art: <i>Heart of the Turbine</i>, by Lewis W. Hine, 1930.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/05/science-art-heart-of-the-turbine-by-lewis-w-hine-1930/) - A gelatin silver print of a man making a Westinghouse engine. I think this might be an AC generator, but I'm not sure - the notes for Hine's photo in the Smithsonian galleries didn't mention the machine, only the year the photo was made. Found in the Smithsonian Open Access collection.
- [Living robots - "xenobots" - can reproduce themselves.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/03/living-robots-xenobots-can-reproduce-themselves/) - Science News is not panicking at all about the prospect of robots that can replicate copies of themselves that can then replicate copies of themselves: “This is an incredibly exciting breakthrough,” for the field of biologically based robotics, says Kirstin Petersen, an electrical and computer engineer at Cornell University who studies groups of robots. ...
- [Gene Roddenberry's autograph in bacterial DNA sold as an NFT, displayed at Art Basel.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/12/02/gene-roddenberrys-autograph-in-bacterial-dna-sold-as-an-nft-displayed-at-art-basel/) - The Verge has one of the most potentially confusing science stories in a while. Gene Roddenberry's estate, they report, has rendered the Star Trek creator's autograph as DNA code inside a dormant bacteria, and then sold the germ - which could replicate itself whenever reawakened - as the first living Non-Fungible Token: Even though there
- [A particular body odor blocks aggression in men, but triggers aggression in women.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/30/a-particular-body-odor-blocks-aggression-in-men-but-triggers-aggression-in-women/) - Science Advances sniffs out something peculiar in a "body volatile" (an actively smelly chemical) called hexadecanal, or HEX, which - based on a test using an unfair video game - appears to make men who smell it less aggressive, but women who smell it more aggressive: Here, we tested whether hexadecanal (HEX), a human body
- [Science Art: <i>A Dragon Approaches</i>, ESA/NASA, 2021](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/28/science-art-a-dragon-approaches-esa-nasa-2021/) - This is a view of the Dragon spaceship Endurance from an angle most of us never get to see - above the nose cone, which is open to allow the ship to dock at the International Space Station. This was taken as Crew-3 crew members Kayla Barron, Raja Chari, and Tom Marshburn (from NASA), and
- [Samuel Hoffman plays Big Band... on the Theremin](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2007/11/24/samuel-hoffman-on-the-theremin/) - BECAUSE YOU ASKED FOR IT... Big band theremin. So soothing. So Golden Age of Radio. So heady with nostalgia and ether.
- [Thanksgiving Theremin: <i>Carolina talks Theremin - An overview for composers and music lovers</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2015/11/28/thanksgiving-theremin-carolina-talks-theremin-an-overview-for-composers-and-music-lovers/) - In which the virtuoso discusses the techniques, range and aesthetics of the instrument. And, you know, plays a little.
- [Thanksgiving Theremin: <i>Léon Boëllmann - Prière à Notre-Dame</i> by Lydia Kavina](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/26/thanksgiving-theremin-leon-boellmann-priere-a-notre-dame-by-lydia-kavina/) - An excerpt of a concert for theremin and organ, played at Moscow's Bogolubov Library on September 19, 2021, with Lydia Kavina on the Thereminvox and Maria Makarova on the organ.
- [Thanksgiving Theremin: Carolina Eyck, <i>Theremin Lesson 01: Pitch Field and Setup | Playing the Major Scale</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/25/thanksgiving-theremin-carolina-eyck-theremin-lesson-01-pitch-field-and-setup-playing-the-major-scale/) - Even if you don't have a theremin at home, watching the lesson is strangely fascinating. Bodies affecting the invisible fields.
- [SONG: Butterflies](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/24/song-butterflies/) - SONG: "Butterflies". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Discover, 3 Nov 21, "How Citizen Scientists Uncovered the Strange Behavior of ‘Vampire’ Butterflies," as used in the post "Indonesian citizen scientists discover VAMPIRE CANNIBAL BUTTERFLIES." ABSTRACT: The process for writing this felt a little like a remix. I took a loop - that harp arpeggio that starts this -
- [SONG: Rocks in the Sky](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/26/song-rocks-in-the-sky/) - SONG: "Rocks in the Sky". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: NASA Press Release, 16 Oct 21, "NASA, ULA Launch Lucy Mission to ‘Fossils’ of Planet Formation," as used in the post "Lucy is NASA’s mission to find “fossils” in space." ABSTRACT: This song is a couple days late, which sort of frustrates me because it was so
- [Science Art: <i>Papierformate 01 (fcm)</i>, by  Frank C. Müller](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/21/science-art-papierformate-01-fcm-by-frank-c-muller/) - This is a picture of paper sizes as compared to a human being who will presumably be reading or writing on them. It also has an oddly late-70s/early-80s postmodern art feel, as if it was a photo-collage mural by Gilbert & George. The bright colors, the little peephole in the middle of A7, the socks....
- [Eco-friendly glitter exists. There's hope for humanity after all.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/20/eco-friendly-glitter-exists-theres-hope-for-humanity-after-all/) - Science News shows a sparkle of optimism with a story on a green alternative to craft glitter, made fabulous from cellulose and plant dyes instead of microplastics: The inspiration to harness cellulose came from the African plant Pollia condensata, which produces bright, iridescent blue fruits called marble berries. Tiny patterns of cellulose fibers in the
- [Cannabis use in pregnancy affects the fetus' immune system... leading to anxiety and hyperactivity.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/18/cannabis-use-in-pregnancy-affects-the-fetus-immune-system-leading-to-anxiety-and-hyperactivity/) - Scientific American reports on a PNAS study that linked increased anxiety, hyperactivity and aggression in children to cannabis use by their parents during pregnancy. It's easy to imagine why stoner parents might lead to anxious babies after they're born, but the weird thing here is that the behavioral changes seem to be linked to immune-system
- [The Russians seem to have blown up one of their satellites, and the ISS is dodging the debris.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/15/the-russians-seem-to-have-blown-up-one-of-their-satellites-and-the-iss-is-dodging-the-debris/) - There's going to be more news on this shortly, but a a couple of Near-Earth Orbit tracking services are reporting on the Russian satellite Cosmos 1408, which appears to not be there any more. Instead, there's a cloud of smaller objects, some of which are on or near the orbital path of the International Space
- [Science Art: <i>Bosom Pad (U.S. patent 404881)</i>, 1888.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/14/science-art-bosom-pad-u-s-patent-404881-1888/) - This geometric shape might look like the kind of floral decoration old-time printers used to separate blocks of text, but no - it's from a patent. Specifically, the patent category of "Brassieres with stiffening or bust-forming inserts." Other illustrations in the patent application show that it's a disconcertingly perfect dome, like the roof of the
- [The new COVID19 pill works by creating mutations. This has some virologists worried.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/13/the-new-covid19-pill-works-by-creating-mutations-this-has-some-virologists-worried/) - Science covers the controversy around Merck's new antiviral pill, molnupiravir, which definitely interferes with viruses' ability to reproduce, which kills nearly all infections ... but just might maybe create a new, deadlier variant: Last month, Merck and Ridgeback officials announced results of a clinical trial that found giving the drug to COVID-19 patients early in
- [Riots spread like viruses spread like "fake news."](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2018/01/26/riots-spread-like-viruses-spread-like-fake-news/) - The American Council on Health and Social Science looks at the epidemiology of human behavior - and things we want to believe - by finding what riots, flu and "fake news" have in common: Both actions and ideas spread like a virus; you need both an infectious idea and a receptive audience. ... The metaphor
- [Science Art: <i>Philips H7 headlamp . Mo-cover filament polycrystals</i>, by Ivan.V.Nemtsev](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2016/06/19/science-art-philips-h7-headlamp-mo-cover-filament-polycrystals-by-ivan-v-nemtsev/) - This is the filament of a headlight - a halogen bulb you put in the front end of your car, one of these - as seen many times its proper size under an electron microscope. Tiny little light bulb makes great big light. You can see one of these for miles, right? Then think about
- [Science Art: <i>(Coleoptera: Lucanidae) </i>Mitophyllus macrocerus<i>, male, </i>by Des Helmore](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2019/08/17/science-art-coleoptera-lucanidae-mitophyllus-macrocerus-male-by-des-helmore/) - Click to embiggen vastly A beetle of character. From Wikimedia Commons.
- [Science Art: <i>Gryllus: Gryllus formosus, Gryllus hirtipes, Gryllus trifasciatus.</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/10/science-art-gryllus-gryllus-formosus-gryllus-hirtipes-gryllus-trifasciatus/) - Handsome field crickets. That's not a name for them, just me admiring them. Gryllus is a genus of field crickets. Once, they were all put in the same species, but then people started taking a closer look and realized, oh, these guys are different from those guys. (And actually, I suspect these guys have, since
- [Indonesian citizen scientists discover VAMPIRE CANNIBAL BUTTERFLIES](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/11/indonesian-citizen-scientists-discover-vampire-cannibal-butterflies/) - Discover magazine reveals a grisly bit of previously unknown insect behavior recorded by Yi-Kai Tea and his fellow citizen scientists on the island of Sulawesi, where they photographed innocuous-looking milkweed butterflies feeding on the bodily juices of caterpillars: This kind of butterfly vampirism was a wholly new observation, says Tea. He studies coral reef fish
- [James Webb Space Telescope ready for launch.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/11/james-webb-space-telescope-ready-for-launch/) - The BBC reports that, after overcoming plenty of obstacles, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is ready to get into orbit and start gazing at the universe in mid-December: Webb will be sent to orbit on an Ariane rocket from French Guiana. Engineers there began assembling the vehicle's various components over the weekend. The
- [Science Art: <i>Skull of </i>Dolichorhinus cornutus <i>(Osborn)</i>,](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/07/science-art-skull-of-dolichorhinus-cornutus-osborn/) - This is the skull of a creature with lots of scientific names, but in "Osteology of Dolichorhinus longiceps Douglass, with a review of the species of Dolichorhinus in the order of their publication," they called it Dolichorhinus cornutus. It was a brontothere, a creature something like a smallish rhino but with a somewhat different family
- [Change your voice, change your identity.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/07/change-your-voice-change-your-identity/) - Scientific American published an interview from sister publication Cerveau & Psycho with Jean Abitbol, a Paris-based ear, nose and throat physician, phoniatrician, and craniofacial surgeon. The central theme was that when something changes your voice, it changes the way you think about yourself: We see this very clearly when we operate on patients to change
- [Autonomous firefighting robots ready for duty.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/05/autonomous-firefighting-robots-ready-for-duty/) - Scientific American reports on a growing number of firefighters who don't have to worry about smoke inhalation or blistering heat - because they're self-steering robots, and they're getting cheaper to build every day: One of the most affordable automatons developed thus far was built by a group of university students using widely available off-the-shelf materials.
- [Barnacle glue saves lives.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/11/02/barnacle-glue-saves-lives/) - Science magazine offers a briefing on a paste modeled on barnacle glue that sticks to wet surfaces within 15 seconds - making it a perfect coagulant to stop bleeding wounds: The marine crustaceans can glom onto nearly anything—from ships to whales—thanks to an oil they secrete that primes surfaces by sweeping away contaminants, Wired reports.
- [Science Art: <i>Schematic Drawing Showing (Left) Normal Origin and Distribution of the Coronary Arteries...</i>, 1943.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/31/science-art-schematic-drawing-showing-left-normal-origin-and-distribution-of-the-coronary-arteries-1943/) - This diagram came from an article called "Anomalous Origin of Left Coronary Artery" by John C. Ruddock, a Naval Reserve Medical Corps commander, and Charles C. Stehly, a US Army Medical Corps captain, published in Vol. 41 of United States Naval Medical Bulletin. Ruddock and Stehly were trying to find out why a healthy-seeming 30-year-old
- [It's possible to recycle concrete, and this Swiss bridge proves it.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/29/its-possible-to-recycle-concrete-and-this-swiss-bridge-proves-it/) - Popular Science takes us over a bridge built inside a Fribourg, Switzerland, laboratory entirely out of re-used concrete - a thrifty construction technique that could help cut concrete's hefty contribution to greenhouse gasses: “The idea that the walls of a building could become a footbridge—to our knowledge, this is completely new,” says Corentin Fivet, an
- [Science Art: <i>Magpie on the Gallows</i>, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1568](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/24/science-art-magpie-on-the-gallows-pieter-bruegel-the-elder-1568/) - Oh, a beautiful Renaissance landscape by one of those Lowland masters, a naturalistic scene of people meeting merrily on a wooded path between the village center and some large, important houses. In the background, rolling hills and farmers' fields gradually fade into the misty distance. Lovely. But what's this thing in the middle with the
- [No song today](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/24/no-song-today-12/) - I've got a melody, I've got a subject, but the words aren't here yet. Mea maxima culpa. A song and two penitential covers shall arrive.
- [SciAm considers ways to make magic mushrooms, if not legal, at least less illegal.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/21/sciam-considers-ways-to-make-magic-mushrooms-if-not-legal-at-least-less-illegal/) - Scientific American commentator Mason Marks, a law professor, examines three roads to making psilocybin easier for researchers - and people who need clinical help - to work with without falling afoul of the law: Despite overwhelming evidence that psilocybin is misclassified, this barrier restricts research, stifles competition and innovation, and inhibits access. Amid a worsening
- [Lucy is NASA's mission to find "fossils" in space.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/20/lucy-is-nasas-mission-to-find-fossils-in-space/) - NASA has launched a probe named Lucy, after the Australopithecus fossil that rewrote the story of human origins. This Lucy's job is to check out asteroids for even more ancient traces, rewriting the story of how our planet came to be: NASA’s Lucy mission, the agency’s first to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, launched at 5:34 a.m.
- [African farmers use bee hives as elephant-proof fences.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/18/african-farmers-use-bee-hives-as-elephant-proof-fences/) - Scientific American looks at scientific Kenyans, who have taken advantage of one of the few things elephants are actually afraid of - stinging honeybees - to keep their fields safe from pillaging pachyderms: [Save The Elephants zoologist Lucy] King eventually realized what now seems obvious: for the bees to scare elephants, the insects must be
- [Science Art: <i>Caméleon</i>, Sébastien Le Clerc, 1676](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/17/science-art-cameleon-sebastien-le-clerc-1676/) - This is a chameleon seen inside and out in Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des animaux, by Claude Perrault, an early text on natural history with all kinds of exotic (read: non-European) critters illustrated and described in its pages. The book was originally published anonymously by the Académie des Sciences, Paris, in two volumes
- [Singapore robots patrol against "anti-social behavior."](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/13/singapore-robots-patrol-against-anti-social-behavior/) - Euronews.com reports on a new use for robots, to enforce social mores and good citizenship. Citizens seem less than pleased with the artificial politeness police, however: Called "Xavier," the robots are equipped with seven cameras that enable them to detect "undesirable social behaviour," for instance if you incorrectly park your bike, if you smoke in
- [China's moon mission found something interesting.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/12/chinas-moon-mission-found-something-interesting/) - Reuters reports that the Chinese moon mission brought back rock samples that were about a billion years younger than expected - meaning the molten early moon cooled much slower than we thought: Samples brought back from U.S. and Soviet missions were more than 2.9 billion years old. The samples acquired on China's Chang'e-5 mission late
- [Science Art: <i>The MASTIF, or Multiple Axis Space Test Inertia Facility</i>.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/10/science-art-the-mastif-or-multiple-axis-space-test-inertia-facility/) - Welcome to Cleveland, spaceman! This was a training device from what was the Lewis Research Center and is now the John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. It was located inside the Altitude Wind Tunnel and looks capable of doing some totally gnarly maneuvers. The MASTIF was designed to replicate an out-of-control tumbling spacecraft
- [Robot sailboat shoots video inside a major hurricane.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/08/robot-sailboat-shoots-video-inside-a-major-hurricane/) - NOAA accomplished a world first when category-4 Hurricane Sam raged across the middle Atlantic, by sending an automated vessel named Saildrone Explorer SD 1045 into the 50-foot waves and 120 mph winds in heart of the storm to film what it's really like: quipped with a specially designed “hurricane wing,” enabling it to operate in
- [SONG: Visibility](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2009/03/23/song-visibility/) - SONG: "Visibility" (To download: double right-click & "Save As") ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: "Strange fish has a see-through head", MSNBC/LiveScience, 23 Feb 2009, as used in the post "Barreleye, I can see inside your head." ABSTRACT: This is a song in the form of a conversation between the Barreleye (Macropinna microstoma, the narrator) and Robin (either
- [Planning for a funeral on Mars.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/06/planning-for-a-funeral-on-mars/) - Discover magazine discusses an unusual problem we haven't had to face yet. How will Mars colonists handle their first funerals in an environment where human bodies don't decompose they way they do on Earth?: On Earth, the main factor that affects decomposition is temperature, [Western Carolina University forensic anthropologist Nicholas] Passalacqua says. “Temperature is really
- [Science Art: <i>Blue Shark (</i>Carcharias glaucus<i>)</i>, 1904.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/03/science-art-blue-shark-carcharias-glaucus-1904/) - Reinhold Thiele painted this limber-looking blue shark for the book British Salt-Water Fishes. I found it on Wikimedia Commons, but they got it from University of Washington's Freshwater and Marine Image Bank, which seems like a wonderful collection of, you know, fish pictures. And boat pictures, net pictures, fishery pictures... you get the idea.
- [Volcanoes let dinosaurs happen - by changing the climate.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/10/01/volcanoes-let-dinosaurs-happen-by-changing-the-climate/) - Science News looks at a case of climate change from millions of years before humans existed - a series of volcanic eruptions that caused 2 million years of rainstorms, which paved the way for dinosaurs to rule the planet: Clues found in sediments buried deep beneath an ancient lake basin in China link the volcanic
- [Facebook's fake, troll-farm Christians.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/30/facebooks-fake-troll-farm-christians/) - MIT Review has one for the "strange days" file. An internal 2019 report leaked by a Facebook analyst found that 19 of the 20 most popular Christian groups on Facebook were actually run by troll-farms in Kosovo and Macedonia - which also targeted African Americans and Native Americans: Troll farms—professionalized groups that work in a
- [Science Art: <i>Triops longicaudatus</i>, by Steve Jurvetson, 2005](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/19/science-art-triops-longicaudatus-by-steve-jurvetson-2005/) - This is a triops, a three-eyed critter something like a trilobite (though it's not actually one of those at all). From the Wikimedia Commons description: This relic from the Devonian period has 140 legs, breathes through its feet, likes carrots, and its offspring can survive 20 years without water (the weather was a bit unstable
- [Science Art: <i>Phone Tester for Electric Circuits</i>, Patent No. 1,187,500; issued to G. B. Raymond.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/26/science-art-phone-tester-for-electric-circuits-patent-no-1187500-issued-to-g-b-raymond/) - These are not headphones, exactly. This is a thing made of telephone parts designed to help electrical tinkerers do better tinkering. It's from a page called "Latest Patents" in a tech magazine called The Electrical Experimenter from September 1915. (The facing page has a humorous "Phoney Patents" cartoon from the "Phoney Patent Offizz." This issue,
- [Footprints prove people were walking around America more than 20,000 years ago.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/25/footprints-prove-people-were-walking-around-america-more-than-20000-years-ago/) - Science presents hard evidence that humans really were in North America at the time of the last Ice Age, along with giant sloths and glyptodonts: Despite a plethora of archaeological research over the past century, the timing of human migration into the Americas is still far from resolved. In a study of exposed outcrops of
- [SONG: I Chant](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/24/song-i-chant/) - SONG: "I Chant". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Smithsonian, 23 Feb 2021, "Archaeologists in Egypt Discover Mummy With Gold Tongue," as used in the post "Mummified with a golden tongue, in order to speak sweetly in death.." ABSTRACT: This started as a palate cleanser. I was working with a friend on another musical project that sounded *nothing*
- [We might have just detected dark matter.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/22/we-might-have-just-detected-dark-matter/) - Science Daily goes deep beneath an Italian mountain range, where the XENON1T experiment got some strange results ... that might give us humans our first handle on what dark energy is and how to find it: Everything our eyes can see in the skies and in our everyday world -- from tiny moons to massive
- [Robots are waiting tables in Texas.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/17/robots-are-waiting-tables-in-texas/) - CNN Business reveals that robots, having basically taken over manufacturing jobs, are now moving into service industry positions, replacing wait staff at a Latin restaurant in Dallas: It was a "no-brainer," said Espartaco Borga, the owner of La Duni since 2001, who told CNN he's never seen the industry in such a dire situation. After
- [Strange, ancient Scottish balls.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/17/strange-ancient-scottish-balls/) - LiveScience (via ScienceAlert) is puzzling over two polished stone spheres found in a Neolithic site on the isle of Sanday in the Orkneys. The stones resemble similar finds across Scandinavia and Britain, but no one is actually sure what they were for. The best guess now is that polished stone spheres like these were some
- [Drilling for magma.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/16/drilling-for-magma/) - Science reports on an Icelandic project going to a whole new level - they're following the Krafla Volcano's path and digging beyond the Earth's crust into magma: In 2009, drillers trying to tap hot water for geothermal energy here accidentally pierced a hidden magma chamber. After an outpouring of steam and glass shards from quenched
- [Science Art: <i>Dlx3 deletion in osteoblast progenitors induce increased trabecular bone formation</i>, 2015.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/12/science-art-dlx3-deletion-in-osteoblast-progenitors-induce-increased-trabecular-bone-formation-2015/) - This is a picture of bones, the mineral density of bones, giving us a hint of their interior structures. From the NIH Image Gallery description: This image shows micro computed tomograophy (micro-CT) reconstructions of femurs of 9-week-old male of Dlx3+/+ (left half) and Dlx3Prx1-cKO (right half) mice. Images are mid-bone sagittal sections with gradient colors
- [Wooden flooring that generates electricity.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/10/wooden-flooring-that-generates-electricity/) - The Guardian reports on Swiss scientists who have taken ordinary wood floor planks, coated them with silicon and embedded nanocrystals, and then stepped on them to generate enough electricity to turn on a light bulb: The wood pieces become electrically charged owing to contact and separation when stepped on via a phenomenon called the triboelectric
- [Made-up sounds convey meaning across cultures.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/09/made-up-sounds-convey-meaning-across-cultures/) - Scientific American looks at babble and finds it comprehensible, thanks to language researchers who have learned that nonsense sounds imply the same concepts to listeners with different native languages: In 2015 language researchers challenged some English speakers to make up sounds representing various basic concepts (“sleep,” “child,” “meat,” “rock,” and more). When other English speakers
- [Mummified with a golden tongue, in order to speak sweetly in death.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/06/mummified-with-a-golden-tongue-in-order-to-speak-sweetly-in-death/) - Smithsonian Magazine reveal the probable history of a mummy found in the Egyptian temple of Taposiris Magna who was preserved with a tongue-shaped amulet made of gold foil in their mouth to help them speak in the afterlife: The team is unsure whether the mummy had a speech impediment in life and why exactly the
- [Science Art: <i>Exocomets Around Beta Pictoris - Artist View</i>, 2013.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/05/science-art-exocomets-around-beta-pictoris-artist-view-2013/) - This is a painting for NASA of the formation of a distant solar system, used to illustrate the article "Formation of the Solar System: Birth of Worlds." It's showing how clouds of dust and bits of solid matter - stuff that's not blazing like stars - coalesce around a sun and gradually lump themselves into
- ["Enteral ventilation" is a fancy way of saying "breathing through your butt." Which we can maybe do.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/09/03/enteral-ventilation-is-a-fancy-way-of-saying-breathing-through-your-butt-which-we-can-maybe-do/) - Massive Science is celebrating nether regions this September, and kicked off their observances with a report on actual research at Tokyo Medical and Dental University that may someday save human lives with a new way to get oxygen into people whose lungs aren't working... by sending it in through the back door: (And caution, the
- [Wave power is surging ahead.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/31/wave-power-is-surging-ahead/) - Scientific American reports on new advances made by a team of Portuguese researchers toward getting electricity from the endless motion of the ocean: Waves alone produce 32,000 terawatt-hours of natural energy per year—for reference, the entire world uses around 23,000 terawatt-hours annually. And there is also the power of currents, tides and thermal energy. But
- [Science Art: <i>Total Eclipse of the Sun (from a painting by Kranz)</i>, 1897](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/29/science-art-total-eclipse-of-the-sun-from-a-painting-by-kranz-1897/) - This is the frontispiece to A New Astronomy for Beginners, by David P. Todd, an 1897 textbook on the latest astronomical breakthroughs. The passage on page 298 about total eclipses says this painting is "by no means overdrawn" when it comes to "weird color effects" due to at atmosphere saturated with water vapor. I found
- [The world's largest shipping firm is putting $1.4 billion into sustainable engines.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/28/the-worlds-largest-shipping-firm-is-putting-1-4-billion-into-sustainable-engines/) - Quartz reports on a major move toward a cleaner, carbon-neutral future: The ships will be built by Hyundai Heavy Industries and are due to be delivered by 2024, each at a price tag of $175 million, 10%-15% above the average price for the ships used by the company. Their engines will run on e-methanol sourced
- [SONG: Curling at the Edges](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/24/song-curling-at-the-edges/) - SONG: "Curling at the Edges". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Science, 1 Aug 19, "The Milky Way is more warped than astronomers thought," as used in the post "Our galaxy is warped. Just a little." ABSTRACT: We live in an imperfect universe. I suppose this is the central fact of lo-fi as an aesthetic, the sense of
- [Science Art: <i>The Cricket Thermometer</i>, by Cleve Hallenbeck.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/23/science-art-the-cricket-thermometer-by-cleve-hallenbeck/) - From the June 1949 issue of Natural History, the magazine of the American Museum of Natural History (which is archived here) comes a handy reference guide for telling the temperature based on the number of cricket chirps you hear for two given cricket species, and a third - Mr. X, the mystery cricket. "Know the
- [One step closer to a laser-powered fusion reactor.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/20/one-step-closer-to-a-laser-powered-fusion-reactor/) - Science magazine celebrates a test result from the National Ignition Laboratory that brings us all one step closer to cheap, clean energy by using lasers to compress a "fuel capsule" hard enough that it began fusing its atoms together: Last week, a single laser shot sparked a fusion explosion from a peppercorn-size fuel capsule that
- [A magnetic helmet (that you can wear at home) just shrank a brain tumor.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/17/a-magnetic-helmet-that-you-can-wear-at-home-just-shrank-a-brain-tumor/) - Houston Methodist Neurological Institute is proud to share the results of the first human trial of a magnet helmet that generates an oscillating magnetic field that appears to have successfully shrunk a glioblastoma tumor by 31 percent: In a case study published in Frontiers in Oncology [David S.] Baskin and his colleagues detailed the journey
- [Google researchers created a time crystal inside a quantum computer.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/16/google-researchers-created-a-time-crystal-inside-a-quantum-computer/) - Quanta Magazine reports on the creation - using a cutting-edge quantum computer - of something very close to a perpetual-motion machine, a kind of matter that changes between phases without ever losing any energy: A novel phase of matter that physicists have strived to realize for many years, a time crystal is an object whose
- [Science Art: <i>ISS031-E-59517 (Libya: PAN-TRIPOLITANIA, CYRENAICA, G. SIDRA, ISS)</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/15/science-art-iss031-e-59517-libya-pan-tripolitania-cyrenaica-g-sidra-iss/) - This view of North Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, and the curvature of the Earth was taken by the ISS on May 19, 2012. The station was looking down from 218 nautical miles (404km) overhead. It's part of the "Pretty Pictures" collection on the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth website, run by NASA, the International
- [Our galaxy is warped. Just a little.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/11/our-galaxy-is-warped-just-a-little/) - Science reports that the Milky Way isn't quite as flat, edge-on, as we thought. It's got a slight but detectable S-curve, like a piece of warping plywood: To make the map, astronomers looked to its bright, pulsing stars called cepheids. These stars burn up to 10,000 times more brightly than the sun so they are
- [Science Art: <i>Flight Trajectory</i> by Walther Hermann Ryff, 1582.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/09/science-art-flight-trajectory-by-walther-hermann-ryff-1582/) - An illustration from a book the title of which begins Bawkunst Oder Architectur aller fürnemsten/ Nothwendigsten/ angehœrigen Mathematischen vnd Mechanischen Kuensten/ eygentlicher Bericht/ vnd verstændtliche Vnderrichtung/ zu rechtem Verstandt der Lehr Vitruuij/ in Drey fürnemme Buecher abgetheilet... which seems to translate to: "Architecture ('building-art') or architecture of all the most important / necessary / related
- [The Gulf Stream *might* be collapsing already.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/05/the-gulf-stream-might-be-collapsing-already/) - The Guardian, a British paper, opens itself to the possibility of a near-Arctic future England after looking at some cold, hard facts. The Gulf Stream, scientists warn, is showing some early signs of total collapse: The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the
- [Viable sperm sent on a postcard](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/06/viable-sperm-sent-on-a-postcard/) - New Scientist opens a new, fertile field of biological research with the discovery at Japan's University of Yamanashi that it's possible to freeze-dry viable sperm and stick it on paper to mail it to remote labs, rather than messing around with fragile vials of frozen samples: “Until now, sending mouse sperm to other researchers has
- [Bees on java.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/03/bees-on-java/) - Scientific American marvels at caffeinated bumblebees, and the researchers who give busy bees caffeine and sugar to make them more focused and efficient: [University of Greenwich ecologist Sarah] Arnold and her colleagues showed that feeding bumblebees caffeine while exposing them to a target floral scent encourages them to seek out that smell when they leave
- [SONG: Listening](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/23/song-listening/) - SONG: "Listening". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Scientific American, 13 July 21, "The Neuroscience of Taking Turns in a Conversation," as used in the post "The neurology of conversations, or how our brains know when it’s our turn to speak." ABSTRACT: This song sounds nothing like the Minutemen. I was listening to a lot of Minutemen, in
- [SONG: Science (a penitential cover)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/19/song-science-a-penitential-cover/) - SONG: "Science (a penitential cover)" ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This has no scientific source data; it's a penitential cover for being late for the April song. It was originally written and recorded by Monkey Swallows the Universe. ABSTRACT: The first decade of the 21st century was a good time for long band names. I mean, besides
- [Science Art: <i>Head of Falcon, Showing Beak, Nostril, Eye, and Ear...</i>, 1889](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/08/01/science-art-head-of-falcon-showing-beak-nostril-eye-and-ear-1889/) - From an impressive page of bird diagrams in the Rand, McNally & Co.'s Encyclopedia and Gazetteer. "Birds are in some ways the highest of vertebrate animals," they say. "They represent the climax of that passage from water to land which the backboned series illustrates."
- ["Willful" control of the brain's feel-good chemical.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/31/willful-control-of-the-brains-feel-good-chemical/) - Science Daily shows how UC-Davis researchers are teaching mice how to consciously control the dopamine in their brains, turning on the reward centers of their brain... in order to earn another reward from the scientists: Rather than only occurring when presented with pleasurable, or reward-based expectations, UC San Diego graduate student Conrad Foo led research
- [Why are these Patagonian lakes turning pink?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/31/why-are-these-patagonian-lakes-turning-pink/) - The only answer is "We don't really know," but as Reuters explains, that isn't really good news however you look at it: The lakes, located near an industrial park on the outskirts of the Argentine city of Trelew, sprawl across a dusty, desert-like plain and are largely undeveloped. Officials with the municipality of Trelew recently
- [Science Art: <i>Black and White Image From </i>Ingenuity<i>'s Third Flight</i>, April 2021.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/25/science-art-black-and-white-image-from-ingenuitys-third-flight-april-2021/) - This is a photo taken by the Mars helicopter Ingenuity's navigational camera. Although it doesn't say so in the NASA image gallery where I found the photo, I'm pretty sure this is the robot-chopper's own shadow on the Martian surface. Yes, it can fly in that thin, alien air. Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech.
- [Tomato plants have a kind of nervous system.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/21/tomato-plants-have-a-kind-of-nervous-system/) - New Scientist reports on research at the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil, where Gabriela Niemeyer Reissig and colleagues have found that tomatoes being eaten by insects send electrical warning signals to the rest of the plant: They studied small cherry tomato plants (tomatoes are a fruit, botanically speaking) by placing them inside Faraday cages,
- [A square meter of concrete can store the electricity of two AA batteries.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/21/a-square-meter-of-concrete-can-store-the-electricity-of-two-aa-batteries/) - Scientific American looks at a weird new power source, using probably the most common building material in the modern world as a kind of rechargeable battery: Experimental concrete batteries have only managed to hold a fraction of what a traditional battery does. But one team now reports in Buildings that it has developed a rechargeable
- [Science Art: <i>Car 5400, where are you?</i>, 1965.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/18/science-art-car-5400-where-are-you-1965/) - This is an advertisement in the back of the May/June 1965 issue of Information Display, the journal of the Society for Information Display. It's a technical magazine for computer science from the years before "personal computers" were a thing. This guy's tracking 125,000 train cars using his Control Data 210 Computer-Remote, and reading a screen
- [The neurology of conversations, or how our brains know when it's our turn to speak.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/16/the-neurology-of-conversations-or-how-our-brains-know-when-its-our-turn-to-speak/) - Scientific American turns to chatty songbirds to figure out how it is that our brains process cues telling us when to talk and when to listen to the person we're talking to: We have all found over the past year communicating over Zoom that disruptions of the timing of auditory cues—like those annoying delays caused
- [There's a new branch of psychology dedicated to the study of B.S.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/16/theres-a-new-branch-of-psychology-dedicated-to-the-study-of-b-s/) - PsyPost, reporting on a study in Psychological Reports, introduces us to the OBPS, a way to scientifically quantify the amount of useless, stupid nonsense we're exposed to in the workplace, educational facility, or any other institution. What do those initials stand for? It's the Organizational Bullshit Perception Scale, and it measures something we all recognize
- [These drones can be flying grenades.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/14/these-drones-can-be-flying-grenades/) - Popular Science reports on the U.S. Marine Corps' experimental flying explosive robots: What sets the Drone 40 apart from a host of other small drone designs is the long, vertical fuselage. Unlike most quadcopters, which are wider than they are all, the Drone 40 is alien in appearance. The shape of its body, and the
- [Icy expedition hopes to find Shackleton's <i>Endurance</i>.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/14/icy-expedition-hopes-to-find-shackletons-endurance/) - LiveScience looks to Antarctica, where a new expedition hopes to find Endurance, the ship which carried polar explorer Ernest Shackleton to the frozen south before sinking in 1915. The new researchers say the ship should be well-preserved in the freezing, dark, and oxygen-poor waters of the Weddell Sea: The Endurance22 expedition, slated to begin in
- [Science Art: Alvarezsaurus calvoi, <i>Reconstruction</i>, by Karkemish.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/11/science-art-alvarezsaurus-calvoi-reconstruction-by-karkemish/) - A cute little dinosaur, about the size of greyhound and just as much built for speed. Which is strange, because on the other end - the snout and teeth - it seems to have been built like an aardvark, for eating termites. How it did this with little forearms, and why it would make sense
- [Dinosaurs were already in decline before the asteroid.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/10/dinosaurs-were-already-in-decline-before-the-asteroid/) - Britain's University of Bristol has looked at a few million years of evidence and found that it points to a grim fact about the dinosaurs. Their population was already not doing so well for the 10 million years leading up to the big extinction event: Lead author, Fabien Condamine, a CNRS researcher from the Institut
- [People get more done working a four-day week.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/08/workers-get-more-done-working-a-four-day-week/) - An Icelandic thinktank, Alda, has published a report on two multiyear studies that indicate it really is better to work smarter, not harder - or not longer at least. Workers in a four-day workweek were just as productive as those working five days, had (of course) improved well-being, and had no effect on company revenue
- [Magic mushrooms make lasting changes to the brain (and that's a good thing).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/06/magic-mushrooms-make-lasting-changes-to-the-brain-and-thats-a-good-thing/) - Technology Networks reports on new Yale University research that apparently explains why psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, has a long-lasting antidepressant effect. The chemical seems to be creating new connections between neurons: Senior author Alex Kwan, associate professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, said in a press release, "We not only saw a 10%
- [Social media a threat to humanity, warn biologists, ecologists, and other unlikely experts.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/05/social-media-a-threat-to-humanity-biologists-ecologists-and-other-unlikely-experts-warn/) - Recode echoes a warning published in PNAS and signed by 17 researchers in fields as disparate as climate science, biology, and philosophy. They're convinced that the rapid rise of social media has such a strong effect on human beings - and the way we react to health threats, weather disasters, and other problems - that
- [Science Art: <i>Spectacled Caiman and a False Coral Snake</i> by Dorothea Maria Graff](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/04/science-art-spectacled-caiman-and-a-false-coral-snake-by-dorothea-maria-graff/) - An illustration of two reptiles, from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium II. These two creatures were painted sometime in the first decade of the 1700s by German illustrator Dorothea Maria Graff whose mother, Maria Sibylla Merian, was also well known as a painter, engraver, and naturalist. The two of them first traveled to Surinam in 1699, where
- [Using cows to end plastic pollution.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/07/03/using-cows-to-end-plastic-pollution/) - Inverse considers the environmental power of the cow, whose immense domestic population increases greenhouse gases (pardon me), but could also, new research proposes, be harnessed to literally digest plastic waste, breaking it down to biodegradable materials: "A huge microbial community lives in the rumen reticulum and is responsible for the digestion of food in the
- [Dragon man? Or Denisovan?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/30/dragon-man-or-denisovan/) - New Scientist looks at a possible new addition to the human family tree, an early human skull found in Harbin, China, and tentatively named Homo longi (from the Chinese long, meaning "dragon")... though it might belong to an early human we already know a little bit about: The Harbin cranium was discovered in mysterious circumstances
- [Virtual reality messes with time.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/29/virtual-reality-messes-with-time/) - Science Daily shares UC Santa Cruz research into the strange psychological effects of virtual reality, which literally lets your brain lose track of time in a way no other experience does: Grayson Mullen, who was a cognitive science undergraduate at the time, worked with Psychology Professor Nicolas Davidenko to design an experiment that tested how
- [Science Art: <i>Thumbless Bat</i>, 1857](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/27/science-art-thumbless-bat-from-the-biodiversity-heritage-library/) - This bat is probably misnamed, since its wings are hands and it has a digit in those wings it would recognize as a thumb, just a very small one that is "enclosed in the edge of the wing membrane," the sources say. (Its current scientific name, Furipterus horrens seems to mean something like "horrible and
- [SONG: Dream Agency](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/24/song-dream-agency/) - SONG: "Dream Agency". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Science, 11 June 21, "Are advertisers coming for your dreams?," as used in the post "Advertising in your dreams." ABSTRACT: It was pretty clear to me that this would be the subject of this month's song as soon as I read it. But there were about 23 different ways
- [Why haven't we found aliens? Maybe because the most common star type is lousy at sustaining life.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/24/why-havent-we-found-aliens-maybe-because-the-most-common-star-type-is-lousy-at-sustaining-life/) - Inverse looks at a potential answer to the puzzle of why, in a universe filled with so many stars, we haven't found any evidence of any life out there. It might be, says David Kipping of Columbia University, that red dwarfs, the most common kind of star, are just not that hospitable for any potential
- [Satellite trains face a legal challenge.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/23/satellite-trains-face-a-legal-challenge/) - Scientific American is looking up at the night sky and wondering if some new legal cases will keep the stars from being blotted out by brilliant chains of linked satellites: The California-based communications company Viasat, which operates a rival satellite Internet service, submitted a filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
- [Science Art: <i>ITER 3D plasma equilibrium with ripple contours (4071616631)</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/20/science-art-iter-3d-plasma-equilibrium-with-ripple-contours-4071616631/) - This image, from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, shows a fusion reaction contained by a force field. The magnetic fields force the plasma - the stuff being fused - into a donut shape, colored here to show the strength of the magnetism. As the lab explains: This figure shows the ITER plasma surface and toroidal
- [The world's most powerful magnet is heading to an experimental fusion reactor.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/19/the-worlds-most-powerful-magnet-is-heading-to-an-experimental-fusion-reactor/) - New Scientist reports on the latest equipment - a magnet stronger than any other - being sent from California to France for installation in ITER, the reactor that replicates the sun's power to remake atoms: The magnet, known as the central solenoid, is being shipped in parts and will be 18 metres tall, 4.2 metres
- [Advertising in your dreams](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/17/advertising-in-your-dreams/) - Science magazine covers the pushback from researchers who fear a new battleground for spam and advertisers inside our sleeping minds: This week, a group of 40 dream researchers has pushed back in an online letter, calling for the regulation of commercial dream manipulation. “Dream incubation advertising is not some fun gimmick, but a slippery slope
- [Betelgeuse burped.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/16/betelgeuse-burped/) - New Scientist explains that reason Betelgeuse recently appeared to dim in the sky was that it was expelling gas: Miguel Montargès at Sorbonne University in France and his colleagues may have got to the bottom of the mystery. They examined detailed images of Betelgeuse from the Very Large Telescope in Chile and found that the
- [Science Art: <i>Plate VI</i> from <i>Here, a number of broken gifts for the carpenters and lovers….</i>, by Lorenz Stöer, 1567.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/13/science-art-plate-vi-from-here-a-number-of-broken-gifts-for-the-carpenters-and-lovers-by-lorenz-stoer-1567/) - I've posted illustrations from this remarkable book of geometric studies before. This one looks, to this old gamer's eyes, like 1D4+1D20+1. (For non-gamers: It's the shape of the dice... though there is no spherical die, really, so the round one could only roll a 1.) I love the place-ness of these Geometria et Perspectiva engravings,
- [Archaeologists danced for six hours straight - for science.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/13/archaeologists-danced-for-six-hours-straight-for-science/) - Archaeology reports on University of Helsinki researchers who held a dance marathon to find out the truth about prehistoric relics: auditory archaeologist Riitta Rainio and artist Juha Valkeapää danced for six consecutive hours while wearing elk tooth ornaments sewn in rows on an apron, and then examined the microscopic wear marks left behind on the
- [A wooden satellite.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/10/a-wooden-satellite/) - The European Space Agency is prepping payloads for a Finnish-built satellite made of wood with aluminum rails for launching and meatal "selfie stick" for a camera: The mission was initiated by Jari Makinen, Finnish writer and broadcaster. He co-founded a company called Arctic Astronautics, which markets fully functional replicas of orbit-ready CubeSats for education, training
- [One vaccination against TB, diabetes, and MS?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/08/one-vaccination-against-tb-diabetes-and-ms/) - Science News reports on the BCG vaccine, short for Bacillus Calmette-Guérin. Originally, it was a treatment to prevent tuberculosis, but now it's showing promise for helping fight type 1 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, eczema, asthma, multiple sclerosis, and, of course, COVID-19: Almost as soon as BCG was introduced in the 1920s, researchers noticed a drop in
- [Science Art: <i>Cypress root system exposed 4 feet deep by wave action...</i>, 1915.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/06/science-art-cypress-root-system-exposed-4-feet-deep-by-wave-action-1915/) - Today, Folklore Twitter is celebrating #SwampSunday, so I thought I'd slip this stately scientific illustration into my queue. This is what's going on underneath that dark, tannin-dyed water where the cottonmouths slither and the gars float silently, waiting for prey. It's from a USDA bulletin called The Southern Cypress I found in the Biodiversity Heritage
- [Sending baby squid to the space station.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/03/sending-baby-squid-to-the-space-station/) - BBC reports on a NASA project that's transporting cute little cephalopods into orbit, launching 128 baby bobtail squid and 5,000 tardigrades to the International Space Station to see how space travel affects the way microbes and larger creatures interact: "Animals, including humans, rely on our microbes to maintain a healthy digestive and immune system. We
- [Today's batteries are better.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/06/02/todays-batteries-are-better/) - Ars Technica busts a long-running myth about batteries - that they're always five years away from any real improvement - with a look at how better batteries are already changing the way our tech works: A lot can be done—and a lot has been done—to make a better lithium-ion battery. In fact, gains in the
- [Science Art: <i>Circular Twilight Halo at Sunrise (Kreisförmiger Dämmerungsschein Bei Sonnenaufgang)</i> by Eduard Moritz Pechuël-Loesche, 1884](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/30/science-art-circular-twilight-halo-at-sunrise-kreisformiger-dammerungsschein-bei-sonnenaufgang-by-eduard-moritz-pechuel-loesche-1884/) - A soft and beautiful drawing of distant, unimaginable destruction. Eduard Moritz Pechuël-Loesche was a naturalist in Hereroland (now Namibia) when he painted this watercolor in late 1884, one of a series he did across Africa, Germany, and the Atlantic that were published in the book Untersuchungen uber Dämmerungserscheinungen zur Erklarung der nach dem Krakatau-ausbruch beobachteten
- [The world's oldest tattoo gear.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/29/the-worlds-oldest-tattoo-gear/) - Science News looks at some sharpened bones found at a site in Tennessee. They seem to be 3,600-year-old Native American tattoo tools: These pigment-stained bones are the world’s oldest known tattooing tools, say archaeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf of the Tennessee Division of Archaeology in Nashville and his colleagues. The find suggests that Native American tattoo traditions
- [Wormholes in space and time could be engineered.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/27/wormholes-in-space-and-time-could-be-engineered/) - Scientific American reports on new findings about wormholes. Theoretically, these black hole-related phenomena make a great part of science fiction, giving people the ability to instantaneously move across vast distances of space or even travel across time. In practice... well, that stuff seems like it might be possible: Einstein and Rosen discovered that, theoretically at
- [SONG: Lawns are the Enemy](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/24/song-lawns-are-the-enemy/) - SONG: "Lawns are the Enemy". ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Scientific American, 9 Apr 21, "Brood X Cicadas Could Cause a Bird Baby Boom," as used in the post "Brood X – the cicada boom we expect this summer – will boost birds. Temporarily….." ABSTRACT: This is last month's song, on time for this month. The music
- [Science Art: <i> Alternator by Ganz & Co</i>, 1905](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/23/science-art-alternator-by-ganz-co-1905/) - This is a Wechselstrommaschine, an alternator. The wheel goes around, and the spokes hit contacts - one set makes the electricity go in one direction and the other goes in the opposite direction. It alternates. That's how AC power - alternating current power - works. The image comes from Bibliothek allgemeinen und praktischen Wissens für
- [Wild bees do $1.5 billion-worth of pollinating for six crops alone.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/21/wild-bees-do-1-5-billion-worth-of-pollinating-for-six-crops-alone/) - Science News looks beyond the domesticated honeybee for unsung pollination heroes: the bumblebees, mason bees, carpenter bees and other native bees that do an enormous amount of crop support, measured in dollars and cents: Now an analysis of seven crops across North America shows that wild bees can play a role in crop pollination too,
- [Picture your hand writing a message, and this brain-implant computer will type it.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/19/picture-a-hand-writing-a-message-and-this-computer-will-type-it/) - I'll just copy the Science News headline here and say "Brain implants turn imagined handwriting into text on a screen": A 65-year-old man had two grids of tiny electrodes implanted on the surface of his brain. The electrodes read electrical activity in the part of the brain that controls hand and finger movements. Although the
- [Science Art: <i>Schematic illustration of skeleton of </i>Glyptotherium arizonae<i> (modified for </i>Glyptotherium<i> after Burrmeister and Hoffstetter)</i>, 1981.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/16/science-art-schematic-illustration-of-skeleton-of-glyptotherium-arizonae-modified-for-glyptotherium-after-burrmeister-and-hoffstetter-1981/) - The giant armadillo of Pleistocene-era Arizona, from David D. Gillette's Smithsonian publication, Glyptodonts of North America, found on archive.org. Based on their teeth and joints, it seemed like these big guys ate soft vegetables near large bodies of water in low, flat areas of what used to be tropical North America. As the abstract put
- [Really old poop yields really new microbes - and new medical treatments.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/14/really-old-poop-yields-really-new-microbes-and-new-medical-treatments/) - Omaha digs deep for a story on how millennia-old feces has reintroduced us to some long-lost germs in the human gut biome - that might be able to help heal modern humans: Previous research has made a connection between preindustrial diets, greater diversity in the gut microbiome and lower rates of chronic illnesses, and the
- [The US is building a big wind farm.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/12/the-us-is-building-a-bigwind-farm/) - Bloomberg reports on a Biden-administration initiative to build a massive, $2.8 billion windmill installation off the coast of Martha's Vineyard: “The whole industry has been watching and waiting for this permit,” said Jonathan Cole, head of offshore wind for Iberdrola SA, the parent company of Avangrid Inc., which is jointly developing Vineyard Wind with Copenhagen
- [Science Art: <i>Acrosome Reaction Diagram</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/09/science-art-acrosome-reaction-diagram/) - Happy Mother's Day! Wikimedia Commons user LadyofHats made this image of motherhood. And fatherhood, I suppose. Technically, this fertilization is happening in a sea urchin, but they can be parents too. A little spinier than most of ours, but still. The egg divides, the DNA mingles, and new individuals emerge.
- [Bees trained to detect COVID can speed up testing.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/07/bees-trained-to-detect-covid-can-speed-up-testing/) - Reuters has a sweet story on honeybees that have been trained by Wim van der Poel at Wageningen University to expect a treat every time they smell a COVID-infected sample - so within seconds of smelling one, they stick out their tongues. If they can be proved to as accurate as chemical tests, they could
- [On the memory of trees.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/06/on-the-memory-of-trees/) - Scientific American looks at the work of ecologist Suzanne Simard, and her efforts to preserve "mother trees," which have intelligence, memories, and even look out for their kin: You also found that birches give sugars to fir trees in the summer through the mycorrhizal networks and that firs return the favor by sending food to
- [Turning hard-to-recycle plastics into jet fuel, diesel, and gasoline.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/04/turning-hard-to-recycle-plastics-into-jet-fuel-diesel-and-gasoline/) - Science Advances outlines a way to use a platinum-tungten-zirconium catalyst ("Pt/WO3/ZrO2" for short) along with a zeolite crystal to turn trash into, if not treasure, then at least fuel for fast machines: Single-use plastics impose an enormous environmental threat, but their recycling, especially of polyolefins, has been proven challenging. We report a direct method to
- [Science Art: Holothuria Pentactes<i>, Lin. - die Rippenblasse</i>, from <i>from Gemeinnüzzige Naturgeschichte des Thierreichs (A Natural History of the Animal Kingdom)</i>.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/02/science-art-holothuria-pentactes-lin-die-rippenblasse-from-from-gemeinnuzzige-naturgeschichte-des-thierreichs-a-natural-history-of-the-animal-kingdom/) - That's the funniest lookin' carrot I've ever seen. A real cuckoo-maria. In fact, that's its name now - Cucumaria frondosa is the scientific name, and orange-footed sea cucumber is the common name, and I can't decide which one sounds funnier. Yes, it's not a carrot - it's an echinoderm. Like a sea urchin, only squishier...
- [Lighting cleans the air even more than we thought.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/05/01/lighting-cleans-the-air-even-more-than-we-thought/) - Science News chases the storm chasers who found some surprising air-purifying oxidant chemicals in the wake of major lightning strikes: Researchers knew lightning produces nitric oxide, which can lead to the formation of oxidants such as hydroxyl radicals. But no one had seen lightning directly create lots of these oxidants. In May and June 2012,
- [China ready to launch a big chunk of space station.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/27/china-ready-to-launch-a-big-chunk-of-space-station/) - Scientific American prepares for the launch of a new place in space - the core module of the CSS (China Space Station), which, after 29 years of planning, should be in orbit at the end of April: The T-shape, 100-metric-ton CSS will comprise three major modules: the 18-meter-long core module, called Tianhe (“Harmony of the
- [Blood-sugar test gives us the first way to quantify exactly how hungry you are.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/27/blood-sugar-test-gives-us-the-first-way-to-quantify-exactly-how-hungry-you-are/) - Nature reports on experiments mapping out exactly how hungry people will feel over the next 24 hours - giving a hard number to what's usually a vague sensation - by measuring how much a person's blood-sugar level dips a couple hours after breakfast: Ana Valdes at the University of Nottingham, UK, and her colleagues followed
- [Science Art: <i>Transverse section through the region of Clarke's column of the thoracic cord of a new-born dog</i>, 1906](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/25/science-art-transverse-section-through-the-region-of-clarkes-column-of-the-thoracic-cord-of-a-new-born-dog-1906/) - This is an image of nerves, the nerves of a dog, a new-born dog. "Clarke's column" is also called the posterior thoracic nucleus, a part of the spinal column. The main thing it does is control proprioception, the "sixth sense" that tells us where our body parts are relative to each other even when you
- [Old coffee is coming back to save the business (and the species tastes great, too)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/22/old-coffee-is-coming-back-to-save-the-business-and-the-species-tastes-great-too/) - The Scientist toasts the rediscovery of Coffea stenophylla, a relative of the C. arabica coffee plant our society runs on - that's proved itself able to cope with some of the climate-change problems, like warmer growing seasons and increased diseases, that are now threatening our coffee supply: Arabica, which makes up more than half of
- [Science Art: <i>Scheme of quadrocopter impellent (X and H configuration)</i>, by Ulrich Heither](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/18/science-art-scheme-of-quadrocopter-impellent-x-and-h-configuration-by-ulrich-heither/) - This looks like a heraldic emblem to me, but it's not. It's also not merely an abstract diagram of circular forces, though that's a little closer. It's a schematic of a quadrocopter - a drone, in other words - in an X-H configuration. I think you can see the X and the H in the
- [Humans have touched 97% of the Earth's land.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/17/humans-have-touched-97-of-the-earths-land/) - Science News has disheartening news for would-be explorers or lovers of virgin wilderness. The latest survey has found that no more than 3 percent of Earth's land remains untouched by humans - and most of that isn't protected: The vast majority of land on Earth — a staggering 97 percent — no longer qualifies as
- [SONG: Welcome to the Landing](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/24/song-welcome-to-the-landing/) - SONG: "Welcome to the Landing" ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on NASA, 5 Mar 2021, Welcome to 'Octavia E. Butler Landing'", as used in the Science Art post "Welcome to ‘Octavia E. Butler Landing’, NASA, 2021.", as well as, to a smaller degree, Science, 22 Feb 2021, " Martian rover sends back ‘overwhelming’ video, audio from
- [Red cabbage could soon turn your food blue (and green and purple) - naturally.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/13/red-cabbage-could-soon-turn-your-food-blue-naturally/) - Science magazine celebrates a new natural way to replace the artificial dyes that make candy, soda and ice cream blue - by stabilizing the pigments found inside red cabbage: The food industry mostly relies on two synthetic dyes to create blue candies, cereals, and drinks: “brilliant blue,” also known as E131, and indigotine, or E132.
- [Science Art: <i>Geologic Map of Jezero Crater and the Nili Planum Region, Mars (Scientific Investigations Map 3464)</i>, by Vivian Sun and Kathryn Stack.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/11/science-art-geologic-map-of-jezero-crater-and-the-nili-planum-region-mars-scientific-investigations-map-3464-by-vivian-sun-and-kathryn-stack/) - Click to embiggen This is a colorful map (literally called a mosaic!) of the area where Perseverance landed, only from a little higher up. You can see the pink semicircle of the crater, and inside the black circle, there's the blue "fan unit 2" delta that spills onto Octavia E. Butler Landing out of the
- [Brood X - the cicada boom we expect this summer - will boost birds. Temporarily....](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/10/brood-x-the-cicada-boom-we-expect-this-summer-will-boost-birds-temporarily/) - Scientific American predicts a lively summer 2021, with the noisy emergence of Brood X - three species of 17-year cicadas - filling the air with noise and with well-fed young birds, whose populations should skyrocket thanks to the insect bounty... at least temporarily: “In response to this superabundance of food, a lot of the predator
- [We can grow brain tissue in a $5 microchip. (And it's reusable.)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/08/we-can-grow-brain-tissue-in-a-5-microchip-and-its-reusable/) - New Scientist reveals the cost of building a brain from scratch has just gone way, WAY down: The device, dubbed a “microfluidic bioreactor”, is a 4-by-6-centimetre chip that includes small wells in which the brain organoids grow. Each is filled with nutrient-rich fluid that is pumped in and out automatically, like the fluids that flush
- [After 20 years, they found the weird toxin that's been killing eagles.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/07/after-20-years-they-found-the-weird-toxin-thats-been-killing-eagles/) - Science News celebrates a discovery that may save the lives of hundreds of eagles, ducks, and other birds living on or near lakes in the southeastern United States every year. They've been getting killed by a toxic combination of bacteria and a specific water plant that directly attacked their brains - and now we can
- [Sugar - as in sweet sodas - disrupts kids' brain development.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/04/sugar-as-in-sweet-sodas-disrupts-kids-brain-development/) - Translational Psychiatry has some research that should be making a bigger splash. It indicates that feeding kids more sugar affects the development of their brains and their ability to form memories: (from the abstract) Here we explore whether excessive early life consumption of added sugars negatively impacts memory function via the gut microbiome. Rats were
- [Science Art:<i> Diagram to Show the Destination of the Arterial Arches in Man and Mammals. (Modified from Rathke. )</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/04/science-art-diagram-to-show-the-destination-of-the-arterial-arches-in-man-and-mammals-modified-from-rathke/) - Click to embiggen This is an anatomical drawing of the blood vessels around the heart, but it's odd to me how much it looks like a simple drawing of a heart, a Valentines heart, with wings. The colored vessels are permanent, the text says, and the diagram appeared in a chapter on development of the
- ["Xenobots" are tiny robots made from living cells - self-healing swarms that can form bodies... and memories.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/04/01/xenobots-are-tiny-robots-made-from-living-cells-self-healing-swarms-that-can-form-bodies-and-memories/) - Eurekalert introduces the next generation of living robots. Tufts University biologists and computer scientists have created a second generation of tiny, biological machines they're calling "xenobots": Compared to Xenobots 1.0, in which the millimeter-sized automatons were constructed in a "top down" approach by manual placement of tissue and surgical shaping of frog skin and cardiac
- [A 12,500-year-old statue is rewriting history. Or prehistory.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/31/a-12500-year-old-statue-is-rewriting-history-or-prehistory/) - The New York Times examines the Shigir Idol, a wooden statue from the Ural Mountains that defied decay to become the oldest known work of ritual art: Dug out of a peat bog by gold miners in 1890, the relic, or what’s left of it, is carved from a great slab of freshly cut larch.
- [Science Art: <i>Owen Magnetic Radiator Emblem</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/28/science-art-owens-magnetic-radiator-emblem/) - From 1915 to 1922, this was the symbol of electric luxury - or at least a hybrid-electric luxury car. The Owen Magnetic label was a celebrated icon of the finer things, and the electric vehicle was advertised as "The Car of a Thousand Speeds." The more affordable Model-T was what established the gasoline combustion engine
- [Cone snails trick their prey into thinking it's time to get it on. Then they eat 'em.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/26/cone-snails-trick-their-prey-into-thinking-its-time-to-get-it-on-then-they-eat-em/) - Science News shares a nightmare scenario from the ocean. The lights are low, there's slow music playing, and look, there's someone sexy over by the bar who doesn't seem to want to be drinking alone. You sit together, flirt for a while, things start getting heated, and then the club manager suddenly grows a spike-tipped
- [The key to staying fit when you're less active is maintaining your intensity.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/25/the-key-to-staying-fit-when-youre-less-active-is-maintaining-your-intensity/) - Outside takes a hard, scientific look at our pandemic year (and our softening middle sections) using a measure called "VO2," which is a way of tracking how aerobically fit one is. Experiments have found that if you want to keep fit when you can't work out as often, then keeping your workouts long and intense
- [Fake news is a symptom... of fast scrolling social media. (Not wishes, partisan thinking, or anything else.)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/25/fake-news-is-a-symptom-of-fast-scrolling-social-media-not-wishes-partisan-thinking-or-anything-else/) - Scientific American broadcasts a study (by David Rand and Gordon Pennycook, published in Nature) that looked at why misinformation spreads online, and found that it isn't because people are trying to spread pleasing lies, or even because some people don't care what's true - it's just the way being online works on human brains: Our
- [Science Art: <i>A quarantine safeguards health...</i>, 1936.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/21/science-art-a-quarantine-safeguards-health-1936/) - Click to embiggen This is how public health was handled in the days before a lot of diseases were considered "eradicated." It's from The Body and Health: Grade Six by Ruby M. Simpson, a school book for Canadian children, which I found on archive.org. I try to keep my pandemic-related posting to a minimum -
- [A new Dead Sea Scroll... and even more ancient things.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/19/a-new-dead-sea-scroll-and-even-more-ancient-things/) - NPR reports that archaeologists working in caves on the shores of the Dead Sea have found, for the first time in 60 years, another fragmentary parchment dating back to the time of the Christ, along with a much, much older basket and mummified child: For four years, archaeologists rappelled down desert cliff sides and excavated
- [They resuscitated 100 million-year-old bacteria.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/18/they-resuscitated-100-million-year-old-bacteria/) - Scientific American reports on new evidence that bacteria may be "effectively immortal" after researchers brought back microbes that settled to the ocean floor tens of millions of years before the dinosaurs went extinct: The sea here is so miserly that it takes one million years for a meter of marine “snow”—corpses, poo and dust—to accumulate
- [To take a "D" off ADHD.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/17/to-take-a-d-off-adhd/) - Scientific American puts forward an argument for renaming the neurological, psychological, something-ological condition that we currently call ADHD: The classificatory terms we use all refer to disorders that cause symptoms, and therefore suggest that we understand the causes of the problems. Which we do not. At the very least, the term disorder suggests a common
- [Science Art: <i>Welcome to 'Octavia E. Butler Landing'</i>, NASA, 2021.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/14/science-art-welcome-to-octavia-e-butler-landing-nasa-2021/) - Click to embiggen NASA named the landing site for the Mars rover mission after science fiction author Octavia E. Butler. As they say on their Image Gallery site: The landing location is marked with a star in this image from the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). ... A
- [Mars rover sends "overwhelming" audio home. (And video and pics too.)](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/13/mars-rover-sends-overwhelming-audio-home-and-video-and-pics-too/) - Science magazine celebrates an unusual media package - pictures, movies, and most of all sounds sent to Earth from the Mars Perseverance rover: But perhaps even more thrilling, an unexpected gift arrived along with the video and the thousands of new images that were downloaded over the weekend: the first sound recording taken from the
- [New climate change weapon sucks CO2 straight out of the sky.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/11/new-climate-change-weapon-sucks-co2-straight-out-of-the-sky/) - Scientific American reports on some scientific Canadians who have tackled the carbon-offset problem - there's too much CO2 trapping heat in the atmosphere - in the most direct way possible, with Canada's largest company, Shopify, funding a new technique called "direct air capture" (DAC) that sucks carbon dioxide right out of the sky: Carbon Engineering
- [Science Art: <i>Persea: Taft</i>, by Royal Charles Steadman, 1914.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/07/science-art-persea-taft-by-royal-charles-steadman-1914/) - Click to embiggen It's an avocado, an aguacate, also known as an alligator pear in English and a "lawyer pear" in Dutch. This is a Taft variety, an ancestor of the Lula cultivar, and may or may not still be around. In the 1910s, it was a well-known summer variety of the "Guatemalan race" of
- [Psych study: Microdosing really works. But so do placebos.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/07/psych-study-microdosing-really-works-but-so-do-placebos/) - Science shares a study that found microdoses of psychedelic mushrooms really do work to boost creativity and create feelings of well-being... but so did inert placebo doses: Placebo-controlled trials are tricky to pull off, because psychedelics are so tightly regulated. Now, researchers have come up with a creative workaround: They’ve enlisted microdosing enthusiasts to hide
- [A quickly random bow tie, and why that's important.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/04/a-quickly-random-bow-tie-and-why-thats-important/) - Nature reports on a new milestone in the quest for true randomness - a quality that's vitally useful in things like data security and models of chaotic systems like, say, hurricanes - using a laser-lit superconductor shaped like a bow tie: True randomness is surprisingly difficult to come by. Algorithms in conventional computers can produce
- [Science Art: <i>Diagram of interferometer and four mirrors mounted on stone floating in mercury...</i>, 1887](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/01/science-art-diagram-of-interferometer-and-four-mirrors-mounted-on-stone-floating-in-mercury-1887/) - Click to embiggen From the Library of Congress, we find a diagram of astrophysics equipment from the 19th century. It's not a telescope. It's a device designed to disprove the existence of the luminiferous ether, the stuff that we once thought filled outer space rather than the endless void we now know we're all suspended
- [Brain-cell clusters can mimic a newborn's brain.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/03/01/brain-cell-clusters-can-mimic-a-newborns-brain/) - Science magazine looks at a mini-brain in a mini-jar - a cluster of stem cells coaxed into forming an "organoid," a clump of cells that start taking on the functions of an organ. In this case, brain cells left to develop for a few months start undergoing the same kinds of changes as a newborn's
- [Slavs first wrote with runes.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/27/slavs-first-wrote-with-runes/) - Archaeology magazine looks at a cow bone engraved with runic letters around 600 CE in the southern Czech Republic - a discovery that indicates that Slavic people first wrote using the letters of the Vikings: The runes inscribed on the bone are in the Elder Futhark script, which was used by German speakers in central
- [SONG: Small](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/23/song-small/) - SONG: "Small" ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Science News, 4 Feb 2021, "A new chameleon species may be the world’s tiniest reptile", as used in the post "Just discovered: world's tiniest reptile". ABSTRACT: I managed to write and record this entirely in one day, which pleases me. I was doing other things, too. I knew
- [America is cloning ferrets.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/22/america-is-cloning-ferrets/) - AP News is reporting that America has caught up with Scotland in the clone wars. They cloned Dolly the Sheep, and now we've cloned an endangered black-footed ferret using DNA from Willa, an animal who died in 1988: Black-footed ferrets are a type of weasel easily recognized by dark eye markings resembling a robber’s mask.
- [Science Art: <i>Leavitt Bulldog body diagram</i>, 2013](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/21/science-art-leavitt-bulldog-body-diagram-2013/) - As most folks know, today's English bulldog is an animal that has been, as they say, "overbred." They have beautiful temperaments as a rule, and can barely breathe, which gives them flatulence, can't reach their own tails to groom themselves, have absurd wrinkles which get kinda gnarly and require human cleaning regularly, and are otherwise
- [Was it beer, or was it bread? Made for the living or made for the dead?](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/20/was-it-beer-or-was-it-bread-made-for-the-living-or-made-for-the-dead/) - Discover pulls back the curtain on an archaeological debate over some pits in the ground in Israel - holes that show traces of 13,000-year-old fermentation that was brewed up next to an equally ancient graveyard. The disagreement? No one's really sure if this was food for mourners or alcoholic offerings for the spirits - but
- [A piece of human brain survived 2,600 years.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/19/a-piece-of-human-brain-survived-2600-years/) - Science magazine reveals the secret to cellular survival for a chunk of human brain that didn't rot for more than two and half millennia after its owner was beheaded: Using several molecular techniques to examine the remaining tissue, the researchers figured out that two structural proteins—which act as the “skeletons” of neurons and astrocytes—were more
- [Farfarout is as far, far out as you can get (and still be in the Solar System).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/18/farfarout-is-as-far-far-out-as-you-can-get-and-still-be-in-the-solar-system/) - NSF's NOIRLab looks at a body that the Gemini Observatory spotted in 2018 and that astronomers working at Hawaii's Subaru telescope nicknamed Farfarout. Now, they've confirmed that the dim rock really is the most distant object in our solar system: “At that time we did not know the object’s orbit as we only had the
- [Science Art: <i>Ingenuity Mars helicopter</i>, by NASA/JPL-Caltech](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/14/science-art-ingenuity-mars-helicopter-by-nasa-jpl-caltech/) - Next week, on February 18, this little chopper will touch down on Mars with the Perseverance rover. Then, a little while later, it'll take off for a few seconds. Then a few more. Then it'll start whirring around the atmosphere. The Mars Ingenuity helicopter (you can see videos at that link) is designed to test
- [Alpha Centauri's possible planet: a warm Neptune, a very large Earth.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/13/alpha-centauris-possible-planet-a-warm-neptune-a-very-large-earth/) - Scientific American wonders whether we've just spotted a new planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, our sun's nearest neighbor. If it's there, that potential planet is in the just-right "Goldilocks zone" where water stays liquid enough for life to form, despite being a vast world the size of a small gas giant: But even though it would
- [Just discovered: world's tiniest reptile.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/12/just-discovered-worlds-tiniest-reptile/) - Science News shows off a critter from Madagascar that is very small, yet enormously cute. You have to see this. Click the link to meet Brookesia nana, a newly discovered chameleon that might be the world's smallest reptile: Just two adult specimens, a male and female, are known. The female measures 28.9 millimeters, considerably larger
- [China's Mars probe is sending back pictures.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/11/chinas-mars-probe-is-sending-back-pictures/) - Popular Science shares a postcard of Mars taken up-close and personal by China's Tianwen-1 probe as it enters orbit around the Red Planet: The five-ton craft carries an orbiter, a lander, and a 530-pound rover. After entering orbit, it will begin a landing attempt with the aim to place the rover on the surface in
- [Science Art: <i>Tackles</i>, 1905.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/07/science-art-tackles-1905/) - Click to embiggen Pulleys and rope, arranged to make lifting heavy weights easier. I've been messing around with boats lately, lowering a 30-foot mast with a lot of help. Pulleys are an amazing invention. These are pictured in the Manual of Military Engineering, published in 1905 by the War Office of Great Britain... but I
- [Voyager 1 has kept in touch for 40 years.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/06/voyager-1-has-kept-in-touch-for-40-years/) - Discover reports on a dedicated little space probe that's still writing home to NASA (using 11 vital instruments) after four decades of hurtling away from home: 6. Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument SHUTDOWN DATE: Still active PURPOSE: Measure ions and their distribution in the outer solar system. KEY FINDING: A violent burst of solar activity in
- ["Just grow a table."](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/05/just-grow-a-table/) - MIT News looks at the new science of tissue engineering, taking lab-grown cells and training them to grow objects to order: It takes a lot to make a wooden table. Grow a tree, cut it down, transport it, mill it … you get the point. It’s a decades-long process. Luis Fernando Velásquez-García suggests a simpler
- [There's a new whale in the Gulf of Mexico. A whole new species, in fact.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/04/theres-a-new-whale-in-the-gulf-of-mexico-a-whole-new-species-in-fact/) - NPR introduces us to a 42-foot-long stranger, the Rice's whale. The mysterious species is large in size, but small in number, hanging out in off the Redneck Riviera and not bothering anyone except plankton: It was only in the 1990s that scientists first determined that a small whale population was living in the northeastern Gulf
- [Science Art: <i>Hunting with a Sound Camera</i>, by William Vogt, 1933.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/02/01/science-art-hunting-with-a-sound-camera-by-william-vogt-1933/) - Click to embiggen Listen! This was how people catalogued birdsongs in the 1930s, with a giant acoustic dish. And then they transferred them to phonograph discs, so everyone could listen. This image is from Natural History, the magazine of the American Museum of Natural History.
- [Maybe mass extinctions *don't* lead to a great flowering of new life forms.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/29/maybe-mass-extinctions-dont-lead-to-a-great-flowering-of-new-life-forms/) - Scientific American has looked at the fossil record and found it wanting. Instead of there being a regular pattern of mass extinctions (like the death of the dinosaurs) followed by the rise of new dominant life forms (like the rise of mammals), the two things don't seem to be related at all. Mass extinctions don't
- [Lobster-shell patterns make concrete stronger.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/27/lobster-shell-patterns-make-concrete-stronger/) - Reuters reveals a new technique to strengthen ordinary concrete by imitating the criss-cross pattern of lobster shells: Reinforced with steel fibres, the concrete becomes more durable when set in a pattern that copies a lobster shell, according to a new study from Melbourne’s RMIT University. Rather than use a mould, the process involves depositing layers
- [Science Art: <i>Coronavirus spike protein structure</i>, by David Veesler, University of Washington,2016](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/25/science-art-coronavirus-spike-protein-structure-by-david-veesler-university-of-washington2016/) - Click to embiggen This is not an alien forest. It is also not a picture of the COVID19 virus. It's an illustration from 2016 of another coronavirus, and specifically of the spike proteins that provide the "handles" that vaccines can grab onto - and that allow the virus to enter a cell. As the NIH
- [SONG: In the Albatross Museum.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/24/song-in-the-albatross-museum/) - SONG: "In the Albatross Museum" ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Science Friday, 8 Jan 2021, "Giant, Toothed Birds Once Ruled The Skies", as used in the post "The toothy mega-albatross". ABSTRACT: I do have a soft spot for spoken word, and Amanda Gorman's inauguration reading reminded me how much I loved recordings of Dylan Thomas
- [SONG: Iron in the Sky](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2020/12/24/song-iron-in-the-sky/) - SONG: "Iron in the Sky" ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Science News, 19 Nov 2020,
- [Counting elephants from space: satellite conservation.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/21/counting-elephants-from-space-satellite-conservation/) - The BBC reports on a new use for space hardware: training computers to count elephant populations from 370 miles overhead to keep them from hurtling into extinction: The breakthrough could allow up to 5,000 sq km of elephant habitat to be surveyed on a single cloud-free day. ... And all the laborious elephant counting is
- [The toothy mega-albatross](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/18/the-toothy-mega-albatross/) - Science Friday remembers the mysteriously vanished pelagornithids - birds that, we now know, once ruled the skies with toothy beaks and a wingspan twice the size of the modern albatross: While alive, pelagornithids successfully took over the planet. Their remains have been found on every continent, and their existence stretched for more than 50 million
- [Science Art: <i>Cloud Vortices off Isla Socorro (Detail)</i> by NASA Goddard Photo and Video](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/18/science-art-cloud-vortices-off-isla-socorro-detail-by-nasa-goddard-photo-and-video/) - Click to embiggen On May 25, 2010 at 17 :35 UTC, this was the weather off the North Pacific island called Isla Socorro: Partly cloudy with scattered spirals. The interesting thing about truly chaotic systems is that sometimes they give rise to very orderly structures. Pleasantly swirly. The photo was taken by Satellite: Terra, part
- [Our oldest art is a picture of a pig.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/14/our-oldest-art-is-a-picture-of-a-pig/) - The Guardian (among other sources) reports on cave paintings on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi that push back the earliest known art made by Homo sapiens to a date about 15,000 years before the first cave paintings appeared in Europe: Humans have hunted Sulawesi warty pigs for tens of thousands of years, and they are
- [A pacemaker for your brain.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/13/a-pacemaker-for-your-brain/) - Discover surveys the state of the research into deep-brain stimulation (DBS), using electrical implants to treat conditions from Parkinson's to chronic pain, OCD, depression and Alzheimer's: Currently, DBS is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat patients with movement disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor and epilepsy. The FDA sanctioned the use
- [Baby bees keep their moms up all night, too.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/10/baby-bees-keep-their-moms-up-all-night-too/) - Scientific American's 60-Second Science recently covered the neurology of parenthood, revealing how sleep deprivation for caregivers extends to insects as well: Researchers found that worker bees who care for the brood get less sleep than their sisters, because bee babies produce chemicals that keep their caretakers awake. The findings appear in the journal Current Biology.
- [Salome's dance floor - where John the Baptist was condemned to death - has been uncovered. We think.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/06/salomes-dance-floor-where-john-the-baptist-was-condemned-to-death-has-been-uncovered-we-think/) - LiveScience brings together sordid incestuous subtext, capital punishment, judicial critique, scripture, Oscar Wilde, and of course archaeology in a single story of an excavation on the eastern side of the Dead Sea in Jordan: At Herod Antipas' birthday party, Herodias' daughter, named Salome, performed a dance that so delighted Herod Antipas that the king promised
- [Science Art: <i>Perihelion Parts of Orbits of the August and November Meteor-showers</i>](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/04/science-art-perihelion-parts-of-orbits-of-the-august-and-november-meteor-showers/) - Click to embiggen Where the meteors come from in August and November, as pictured in A new astronomy for beginners, 1898, as found on archive.org. Something about this diagram reminds me of hotels from the 1930s and cars from the 1950s. It's an Art Deco scientific illustration.
- [The same genes that protect against Ebola also protect against COVID-19.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2021/01/01/the-same-genes-that-protect-against-ebola-also-protect-against-covid-19/) - The Scientist has some satisfying news to ring in the New Year. The same genetic mechanism that boosts immunity to one lethal pandemic - the hemorrhagic fever known as Ebola - also helps protect us against the coronavirus, giving hope for new therapies to prevent both diseases (and maybe more): In the Ebola experiments, [Adam]
- [Defrosting a woolly rhino (and its last supper).](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2020/12/30/defrosting-a-woolly-rhino-and-its-last-supper/) - Siberian Times has breaking news from practically before modern humans existed, when a baby woolly rhino got frozen in the permafrost layer that's only melting now: The juvenile rhino with thick hazel-coloured hair and the horn, found next to the carcass was discovered in the middle of August in permafrost deposits by river Tirekhtyakh in
- [Kangaroos intentionally communicate with humans.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2020/12/28/kangaroos-intentionally-communicate-with-humans/) - Sci-News.com wants all of us to know that kangaroos, despite never having been domesticated, still want to let us know what they're thinking: ...[S]aid lead author Dr. Alan McElligott from the University of Roehampton and his colleagues. “In species without hands for pointing, gazing at humans when dealing with inaccessible food during an unsolvable task,
- [Science Art: Lamprometra protectus,<i> ventral view of a specimen with 23 arms from Stat. 125.</i>, 1918](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2020/12/28/science-art-lamprometra-protectus-ventral-view-of-a-specimen-with-23-arms-from-stat-125-1918/) - This is a crinoid, a cousin to sea urchins, sea cucumbers and starfish. I suppose some of them have stalks like sea anemones, but these ones don't! The image is from The Unstalked Crinoids of the Siboga Expedition gallery in the Biodiversity Heritage Library's Flickr account, which is all taken from this book of the
- [NASA's Mars rover trains for "seven minutes of terror."](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2020/12/27/nasas-mars-rover-trains-for-seven-minutes-of-terror/) - BBC shares a video showing how February's Perseverance Mars rover mission plans to start with an automated landing sequence engineers have dubbed "the seven minutes of terror": The robot is being sent to a crater called Jezero where it will search for evidence of past life. But to undertake this science, it must first touch
- [Scientists suspect magnetic fields in mass extinctions.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2020/11/19/scientists-suspect-magnetic-fields-in-mass-extinctions/) - Science News looks at new research revisiting an old idea - that mass extinctions have something to do with reversals in Earth's magnetic fields. The two phenomena are looking more and more like they line up in the fossil record: During the past 2.5 million years, eight species of one-cell marine animals called Radiolaria became
- [Male crickets use leaves to make themselves seem bigger... in THAT way, yes.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2020/12/23/male-crickets-use-leaves-to-make-themselves-seem-bigger-in-that-way-yes/) - Science News brings attention to male shortcomings and the gender's creativity in overcoming them with a story about crickets who use leaves as megaphones, amplifying their mating calls to make lady crickets think they're bigger: Some male crickets make their own megaphones by cutting wing-sized holes into the center of leaves. With their bodies stuck
- [Coronavirus has reached Antarctica](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2020/12/23/coronavirus-has-reached-antarctica/) - Reuters reports on the inevitable - COVID-19 has finally been carried to a research station in the Antarctic, breaking out in more than 30 people stationed in the remote, icy continent: Chile’s armed forces said at least 36 people had been infected at its Bernardo O’Higgins base, including 26 army personnel and 10 civilian contractors
- [Look southwest.](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2020/12/22/look-southwest/) - NASA has details on how to spot the Great Conjunction - the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn appearing almost as a single point of light shortly after sunset yesterday, today (the solstice) and tomorrow just a smidge west of southwest - in a crossing that happens once every 800 years: In 1610, Italian astronomer Galileo
- [Science Art: <i>In s is das Centrum fur den Meridian ANQ</i>, 1857](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2020/12/20/science-art-in-s-is-das-centrum-fur-den-meridian-anq-1857/) - Click to embiggen As described on Wikimedia Commons (who got this diagram from the British Library), the image was "taken from page 100 of 'Grundzüge der mathematischen Geographie und der Landkartenprojection ... Ein Handbuch für Jeden, der ohne Vorkenntniss der höheren Mathematik sich über den Gegenstand unterrichten will, etc'." It's a lesson in how to

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- [Songs](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/category/music/these-are-the-songs-of-the-scientific-troubadour/)
- [Science Art](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/category/science/images-that-illuminate/)
- [Featured](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/category/featured/)
- [Penitential Covers](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/category/music/these-are-the-songs-of-the-scientific-troubadour/penitential-covers/)

## Tags

- [Scientists](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/scientists/)
- [astronomy](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/astronomy/)
- [meteorology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/meteorology/)
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- [medicine](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/medicine/)
- [neurology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/neurology/)
- [musicology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/musicology/)
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- [evolution](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/evolution/)
- [chemistry](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/chemistry/)
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- [engineering](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/engineering/)
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- [anatomy](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/anatomy/)
- [electronics](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/electronics/)
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- [quantum physics](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/quantum-physics/)
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- [science art](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/science-art/)
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- [aurochs](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/aurochs/)
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- [biochemistry](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/biochemistry/)
- [fellow travelers](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/fellow-travelers/)
- [au revoir simone](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/au-revoir-simone/)
- [astrophysics](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/astrophysics/)
- [physiology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/physiology/)
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- [creationism](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/creationism/)
- [rap](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/rap/)
- [space exploration](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/space-exploration/)
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- [agronomy](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/agronomy/)
- [electrical engineering](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/electrical-engineering/)
- [polka](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/polka/)
- [microbiology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/microbiology/)
- [acoustics](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/acoustics/)
- [mycology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/mycology/)
- [alternative energy](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/alternative-energy/)
- [research](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/research/)
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- [theremin](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/theremin/)
- [pharmacology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/pharmacology/)
- [economics](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/economics/)
- [primatology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/primatology/)
- [linguistics](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/linguistics/)
- [remixes](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/remixes/)
- [aeronautics](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/aeronautics/)
- [David Barnett](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/david-barnett/)
- [geekpop](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/geekpop/)
- [nutrition](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/nutrition/)
- [forensics](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/forensics/)
- [gerontology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/gerontology/)
- [geography](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/geography/)
- [gethan & myles](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/gethan-myles/)
- [dentistry](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/dentistry/)
- [space explorer](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/space-explorer/)
- [poetry](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/poetry/)
- [marine biologist](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/marine-biologist/)
- [gastronomy](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/gastronomy/)
- [robotics](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/robotics/)
- [ichthyology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/ichthyology/)
- [geometry](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/geometry/)
- [Michael Hearst](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/michael-hearst/)
- [mechanical engineering](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/mechanical-engineering/)
- [hydrology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/hydrology/)
- [Music](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/music/)
- [materials engineering](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/materials-engineering/)
- [ornithology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/ornithology/)
- [nuclear engineering](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/nuclear-engineering/)
- [chemstry](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/chemstry/)
- [seismology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/seismology/)
- [chemical engineering](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/chemical-engineering/)
- [political science](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/political-science/)
- [zymurgy](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/zymurgy/)
- [gene](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/gene/)
- [researchy](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/researchy/)
- [electronic engineering](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/electronic-engineering/)
- [astrobiology](https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/tag/astrobiology/)