New species discovered… on Flickr.
NPR takes a close look at an eye-catching insect… a new species of lacewing entomologists discovered on Flickr: [Shaun] Winterton, a senior entomologist at the […]
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 moreSpider web glass protects birds on the Holy Island
I can’t outdo the BBC’s headline on this story about a beautiful application for a strange, new material: A lookout tower at Lindisfarne has installed […]
Science Art: Reptile Skeletons and Skulls, from Allgemeine Naturgeschichte für alle Stände, 1835
They look even more reptilian from the *inside*. This image was part of one of those wonderful 19th-century German encyclopedias, but I found it in […]
If you were an MIT math student, you’d fix the lottery too.
Boston Globe blows the lid off an M.I.T. syndicate that appears to have made a cool $8 million fixing the lottery: [Massachusetts Inspector General Gregory […]
Caffeine Junkies of the Lost Metropolis
Wired (suitably enough) gets all hepped up over traces of a prehistoric Starbucks in Cahokia: In a new study, researchers have found the first direct […]
Not quite video games for elderly brains, but almost.
Laboratory Equipment explores “brain fitness programs” and the way computer games can boost seniors’ memory and alertness: The [UCLA] team studied 59 participants with an […]
Antarctic rainforest ready to be reborn.
The Bangkok Post unearths the forgotten past of the lush, humid Antarctic jungle: The study of sediment cores drilled from the ocean floor off Antarctica’s […]
Curiosity is on Mars
The rovers don’t seem to have the same way with words that Neil Armstrong did. From Curiosity’s twitter feed: “I’m safely on the surface of […]
Science Art: Fig. 68, The Two-Toed Sloth, American Types of Animal Life, 1893.
A contented sloth peers out of the pages of St. George Mivart’s American Varieties of Animal Life. I have no idea who the artist is, […]
Butter-flavored Alzheimer’s.
ScienceBlogs pours it on with research that links a popular artificial butter flavor with one of the brain-destroying processes of Alzheimer’s disease: It found evidence […]
Olympics 2016: powered by waterfall.
The Creators Project is already turning attention from London to Rio, where Swiss engineers are planning to erect a giant, power-generating waterfall: Designed by Swiss […]
Prehistoric poisoners push civilization’s start 20,000 years further back.
LiveScience looks at faint traces of deadly poisons that prove Paleolithic culture rose in Africa at the same time it did in Europe: “Our research […]
Smartphones save lives?
Gigaom strolls into a safer future, thanks to car-sensing apps that can help smartphones save lives: Although both cars and smartphones are filled with sensors, […]
“Extinct” tree lobsters coming back. Happy birthday, giant stick insect!
Grist welcomes a new citizen of Earth – a member of a species we thought was dead until they found a few last survivors on […]
Science Art: Giant Excavator, Wills’ Cigarettes.
Click to embiggen About 100 years ago, cigarette companies like Wills put collectible cards in their packs of cigarettes just like bubblegum companies did. Only […]