The moon is not so lonely.
PhysOrg says our moon has lots of company – little “minimoons” are always stopping by for an orbital visit: Mikael Granvik (formerly at UH Manoa […]
Science Art: Heart apical two-chamber view myocardial regions, by Patrick Lynch
This is an illustration of a particular perspective in a cardiac echocardiogram. An “apical view” is one of the…
Read moreSONG: Sleeping Cathedrals
SONG: “Sleeping Cathedrals”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “World’s biggest whale g…
Read moreScience Art: Build Your Own Lie Detector, 1955
This is the opener for an article in the May 1955 issue of Popular Electronics. You can read the article here, …
Read moreScience Art: Collops bipunctatus, U, Back, SD, Pennington County, 2013
This image of a Collops bipunctatus, a beetle from the Melyridae family, was taken by Sam Droege from flowers …
Read moreScience Art: Histologist Microscope, 1900
An illustration of an elegant optical device from Science Gossip magazine (a publication which I discovered via…
Read moreScience Art: Rudimentary Simulator, 1963.
This is Figure 3 from “Man-Machine System Simulation for Flight Vehicles” by Steven Belsley, an article which w…
Read moreSenators demand giant blimp. (No, really.)
Wired’s Danger Room takes a long look at the Blue Devil project – a 370-foot-long airship that, if some legislators have their way, will be […]
Something is killing lots of dolphins in the Gulf.
Discovery News says the 714 reported dolphin deaths are just the tip of a much larger iceberg: NOAA declared the die-off an “Unusual Mortality Event” […]
The world’s first winemakers were the world’s first beekeepers.
They lived in the Republic of Georgia, says Eurasianet.org, where scientists have just found 5,500-year-old honeypots: The honey stains found in the ceramic vessels, found […]
Science Art: A red blood cell in a capillary, pancreatic tissue – TEM, by Louisa Howard
Click to embiggen Happy blood. April fool blood. Pancreas blood. Turning sweetness to pep blood. Smiling blood. Very, very enlarged blood. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
World’s largest laser gets just a little larger (and closer to making fusion happen).
Scientific American makes me jealous of the physicists at Livermore’s National Ignition Facility, who get to utter orders like, “Now, my assistants! Fire the FUSION […]
The hands ARE NOT CLEAN! (Or: how germs could cause OCD.)
New Scientist reveals a possible irony of microbiology. It could be that obsessive-compulsive disorder – in which the brain gets stuck in loops of repetitive, […]
Grampa Worm!
PhysOrg greets our oldest known ancestor – a very special worm: Researchers from the University of Cambridge, University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum […]
Farewell, Great White North.
Climate scientists, as quoted in New Scientist, have said goodbye to summer ice in the Arctic. For good: Despite fears of runaway sea-ice loss after […]
A blood test for autism.
MedicalXpress reports that Swedish and Iranian researchers might have identified a way to diagnose autism physically, by checking biomarkers in blood plasma: In the current […]
Science Art: FAGOCITOSI BY RAFF by Raffmara.
Look, this isn’t funny, OK? This isn’t funny at all. If this wasn’t going on inside your body all the time, you would be SO […]
Language is the music of emotion.
PLoS ONE presents research on music and words, showing that, no matter what language you use, speaking an emotion uses the same sounds as playing […]
Cheer up, science fiction!
It’s probably just coincidence that the week after pulp hero John Carter, Warlord of Mars finally made it to the big screen, Neal Stephenson appeared […]
The simple elegance of the Flame Challenge.
Alan Alda asks exactly the right question in exactly the right way: As a curious 11-year-old, Alan Alda asked his teacher, “What is a flame?” […]
SONG: “Back into flow”
SONG: “Back into flow.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “What it’s like to wear a brain-stimulating ‘thinking cap’”, […]