New poison dart frog discovered. Tiny. Cute. Poisonous. But tiny. And cute.
National Geographic reveals the newest Panamanian sensation to enter the world of science: A new species of poison dart frog so teeny it can fit […]
Science Art: Jupiter's Family of Comets, 1898
This is a diagram from A New Astronomy For Beginners, a textbook that’s about a century and a quarter old, or a…
Read moreSONG: Your Catalogue
SONG: “Your Catalogue”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: NBC News, “New wild cat species is ide…
Read moreScience Art: Beebe's Bathysphäre, 1934
This is an image of William Beebe’s bathysphere, as placed on Wikimedia Commons by ETH Bibliothek. It was creat…
Read moreScience Art: Power of RCA Electron Microscope, May 1955
These are diatoms, I think, seen by two different microscopes.
As the caption from Popular Electronics says…
Read moreScience Art: Red Pepper, 1910.
Red pepper (Cayenne pepper) will cure almost any case of la grippe within 24 hours, or so they say. At least no…
Read moreScience Art: Figs. 1315-1333 (Various rotary piston engines), 1890.
This is a page of figures from (deep breath) The engineer’s sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices, appli…
Read moreHow all the Stone Age people learned the same tricks at the same time.
Nature examines – and possibly answers – a long-standing archaeological puzzle. How did a bunch of unrelated paleolithic people in different parts of the world […]
SONG: Could you tell me your name?
SONG: “Could You Tell Me Your Name?” ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on“Anxiety and sleeping pills ‘linked to dementia’”, BBC News, 9 September 2014, as used […]
MAVEN’s at Mars.
The skies over the Red Planet, as The New York Times and others are reporting, are getting downright crowded with satellites from Earth. The latest […]
Science Art: Sarcoptes scabiei, from Brockhaus’ Konversations-Lexikon, 1892.
Click to embiggen They itch. They dig in and they itch. These are the mites that cause scabies, the tiny tunnelers, burrowing into the skin […]
India’s Mars probe ready to orbit
Nature reports on India’s preparations for their first interplanetary exploration: Mangalyaan, known formally as the Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM, was launched by the Indian […]
Thanks for the rides, former Soviets – Boeing and SpaceX are taking it from here.
NASA has formally announced that two private companies will be taking our astronauts to the International Space Station: The CST-100 and Dragon version 2 have […]
Schizophrenia: many diseases in one
Daily Beast looks over Washington University research that’s found that the singular diagnosis of schizophrenia is actually a compound disease, caused by eight different genetic […]
Robot cheetah runs free!
Science Daily blows the whistle on the MIT robotics engineers who let the robot cheetah off its tether to run and jump like a wild […]
Science Art: Figure 3, Transverse Section of a Single Cell by F. Bauer, Esq., F.R.S., 1827.
Click to embiggen Take a deep breath. This is the inside of your lung, seen really closely. At the time his was drawn, we weren’t […]
Bendy ceramics.
Science Daily explores the weird, microscopic world of making ceramics that can bend and twist and smush and reform: Caltech materials scientist Julia Greer and […]
Printing solar cells.
Outside has a hopeful, intriguing report on an Australian company that’s figured out how to print electricity-generating solar cells on plastic… or whatever: The Victorian […]
Worried? Trouble sleeping? Congrats, you might have a higher risk of Alzheimer’s.
BBC reports the in no way worrisome news that researchers have discovered a correlation benzodiazepines (pills for anxiety and sleep) and a hugely increased risk […]
Blue whales have recovered, just about.
It’s taken quite a while, but AP can finally report that blue whales off the coast of California have finally reached pre-whaling-industry levels: Researchers previously […]
Kid finds 3,000-year-old sword… while washing his hands.
It helps, as the BBC points out, if you’re washing your hands in a river running through one of the world’s oldest civilizations. But for […]