The Soul of the Zombie Ant.
National Geographic has some creepy new insights into one of nature’s creepiest reproductive strategies. The zombie ants – insects whose brains have been hijacked by […]
Science Art: Mirounga leonina 01, by H. Zell
This is a southern elephant seal, the largest marine mammal that isn’t a whale. They’re about twice as weighty …
Read moreScience Art: What can make any tape recorder sound a little more like an Ampex?, 1963.
This is an ad for Ampex tape from the August 1963 edition of Electronics Australia, a magazine (which I found o…
Read moreScience Art: Cygnus region in emission lines, 2025
This is a photo of space with a bit of color amplification so we can tell what we’re looking at. Nebulas on the…
Read moreScience 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 moreFracking stinkwater.
Nature looks at the odoriferous threat to our drinking water created by new methods of natural gas mining: Injecting large quantities of water and other […]
Eyes on the forest and the trees
Medical Xpress examines new ways we can train our minds to use “holistic processing” – that is, we can teach our eyes not to miss […]
A language-killing grudge.
The Ayapaneco language is about to die out, the Guardian reports, in part because the last two speakers aren’t talking to each other: Manuel Segovia, […]
Science Art: Xylophylla, by Olof Swartz, 1791 (detail)
Click to embiggen From a page of botanical babies drawn by Swedish botanist Olof Swartz just before the dawn of the 19th century. Swartz was […]
Found: God of silence. Slightly used. Won’t talk.
The (not exactly) god of silence and secrecy, Discovery reports, is at the heart of a new Egyptian antiquities mystery. Of four statues recovered by […]
Robot buddies.
Science Mag produces proof – actual, empirical proof – that nice guys really can finish first and that even killer robots can learn to care […]
Words on sling stones can SO hurt me.
That’s the gist of an AFP report on the messages ancient soldiers carved into their ammunition: Slingers, also known as sphendonetai, have been used in […]
Truck stop life.
Scientific American has a great guest post about a driven entomologist who discovered a new order of life… one that had eluded discovery by hanging […]
Viral solar.
PhysOrg brings us a teeny tiny bit closer to going green with an MIT project that offers solar power that reproduces virally: This dramatic improvement […]
Helicoma spp + rhinoceros beetle, from Insecten-Belustigung, by AJ Rösel von Rosenhof, 1700s.
Click to embiggen From Insecten-Belustigung (Insect Amusements), a three-volume encyclopedia by 18th century German illustrator AJ Rösel von Rosenhof. [via Bibliodyssey, via Keep Your Pebbles.]
I, for one, welcome our new astronauts.
They’re squid. No, really. Science 2.0 has blown the whistle on the final Space Shuttle mission – the one that finally brings squid back to […]
Precious beetles.
It shouldn’t be surprising that The Optical Society likes getting a little flashy… but their beetle test subjects take things a little too far: Costa […]
Neanderthal Heaven.
Discovery News unveils the religious life of Neanderthals: The Neanderthals were found covered together with rocks burying their remains. The researchers believe it’s likely that […]
Science Art: Total Eclipse of the Sun, by E.L. Trouvelot, 1881-1882
Click to embiggen From the description at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery page: Total eclipse of the sun. Observed July 29, 1878, at […]