Why are American kids getting so good at higher math?
The Atlantic investigates the social movement behind America’s recent surprise win at the international Math Olympiad: You wouldn’t see it in most classrooms, you wouldn’t […]
Science Art: Astrapia Splendidissima, 1895
This is the first illustration in the article “A New Bird of Paradise” by the Hon. Walter Rothschild, published…
Read moreScience 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 …
Read moreScience Art: Sunrise - Philippine Sea, 2017
This is an image from the “Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth” gallery, maintained by the Earth Science …
Read moreScience Art: Égouts de Paris, by Jules Ferat.
There’s a subtitle here that Google Translate renders as “Sewer cleaning wagon. (System of Chief Engineer Mr. B…
Read moreScience 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 a…
Read moreSONG: Alone
SONG: “Alone”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “What Killed the Neanderthals? A Lack …
Read moreFossilized nerves.
Washington Post reports on an impossible-seeming thing – a fossil that’s not just of hard tissue like teeth and bones (and shells), but that reveals […]
So we’ve made sperm. No man necessary.
Nature cuts my last potential for productivity to the quick with news that researchers have made mouse sperm in a dish: Researchers in China say […]
Science Art: Contour plot of Rastrigin’s function in two variables, by Tos
Click to embiggen I don’t have the math language to explain what’s going on here very well. It’s a diagram of the Rastrigin function, which […]
Celebrating happy accidents with The Golden Mole
NPR’s Skunk Bear turns us on (in general, but specifically with this) observing the outsized influence of unanticipated consequences – singling out for awards all […]
SONG: Janssen
SONG: “Janssen.” ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “Scientists just analyzed the atmosphere of a ‘super-Earth’ for the first time,” Washington Post, 16 Feb. 2016, as […]
Modern Milgram Experiments: plumbing the horror of only following orders
Nature reveals a new generation of Milgram experiments – the 50-year-old psychological tests that had subjects electrocute (or believe they were electrocuting) other people on […]
Science Art: Figure 4, Neopteroplax conemaughensis, 1963
Click to embiggen Such a winning smile…. Neopteroplax was, at one point, something like a crocodile of salamanders – an amphibian about 3 meters long […]
Modern humans and Neanderthals go back further together than we thought.
Science Daily talks about our ancient brothers, the Neanderthals who were us, 100,000 years ago: Today in Nature the team publishes evidence of interbreeding that […]
Alien atmospheres
Washington Post unveils our first observations of the atmosphere on an Earth-like planet outside the solar system: For the first time ever, scientists are sniffing […]
Coffee (and pepper) of the dinosaurs discovered.
Discovery News hypes the headline a little here (but forgivably) by declaring that a 45-million-year-old prehistoric coffee has been discovered preserved in amber: Named Strychnos […]
A new generation of anti-Alzheimer’s drugs
BBC News covers the preventative medicines that act like statins for your brain: Statins are taken by people to reduce the risk of developing heart […]
Science Art: VII. Scientific Literature, by Finnish artists.
Click to embiggen This is a chapter heading from the book Finland in the Nineteenth Century: by Finnish authors, illustrated by Finnish artists, published in […]
*Ants* have the speed… when it comes to boxing.
I’m reading a EurekAlert report on entomologists sitting ringside watching the fastest boxers in the world – trap-jaw ants: In a new study, entomologists at […]
Obama tries to boost science funding on his way out.
Nature reports on the outgoing president’s attempt to boost research & development funding by a mandatory four percent: With less than a year before he […]