Polio spreads.
BBC says the disease, once thought practically eradicated, is now moving out into China from Pakistan: Polio has been found in China for the first […]
SONG: 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 moreHerring AND good genes can keep you young.
So reports LiveScience’s “Bad Medicine” columnist Christopher Wanjek, writing about the woman who was the world’s oldest: The 115-year-old Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, who held the […]
Science Art: “Good News for Bad Writers” (The Typewriter, Punch, September1867)
Click to embiggen In 1867, the typewriter was a ridiculous leap in technology. The editor of Punch anticipated the next step: “Writing Superseded. — Mr. […]
T-rex hungrier, bigger than thought.
So time travelers, don’t say we didn’t warn you. Reuters reports that the king of carnivores was even fiercer than we imagined: Using three-dimensional laser […]
It makes, uhhh, more sense. When I, ummm…
And, according to Scientific American, when I “errr” and “hmmm” too. Those weird verbal tics help children learn: Such vocal hesitations, called disfluencies, tend to […]
Giant Squid, we salute you!
Giant Squid is a doom metal/sludge rock band (with a cello) that writes songs about humpback whale tongues and the violent mating habits of sharks. […]
Touching robot fingers.
You wouldn’t think it would be emotional, but as this CBS report illustrates, that depends on if it’s the first time you’ve held hands with […]
Lair of the kraken.
PhysOrg uncovers tantalizing traces of terrifying prehistoric predator – a giant squid that hunted ichthyosaurs: But the fossils at the [Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada] […]
Science Art: Caisson, by Pearson Scott Foreman.
Found on Wikimedia Commons. It moves water. It moves me.
Liver brains.
MedicalXpress reveals a new source for nerve cells without stem cells – making neurons from liver cells: Fully mature liver cells from laboratory mice have […]
It’s really invisible.
None of this “invisible to X-rays” or “invisible in the infrared” business for the University of Texas. When they use carbon nanotubes to make something […]
Today’s science-crime police blotter…
Dateline: Washington state. 3news reports on a paleontological poacher pinched purloining a prehistoric proto-pig: A Longview, Washington, man accused of digging up the skull of […]
Rhythm of memory.
MedicalXpress dances to the beat that makes memories in our brains: UCLA neuro-physicists have found there is an optimal brain “rhythm,” or frequency, for changing […]
Randy squid.
Not like the name. Like… you know. The squid the New York Times says are ready to get it on, however they can get it: […]
Science Art: Tiangong 1, by China Manned Space Engineering, 2011
In case you hadn’t heard, China is building its own space station. Not planning to build. Not any more. Building. The Tiangong 1 mission launched […]