Blue light smells like bananas.
That’s how Science Daily says life is like for fruit flies who’ve had their smell gene connected to the light gene: Normally animals avoid light. […]
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 moreTestosterone, the fact-checking hormone.
BBC reports on what appears to be (oversimplifying here) a hormonal link between skepticism and aggression: To test the impact of testosterone on trust, the […]
Look! It’s a… Hey-a WHAT-ee?
UPenn paleontologists have named a whole new kind of dinosaur: The dinosaur, whose name translates to mean “grinding-mouth, wrinkle-eye,” was most likely an herbivore that […]
Zeppelin ready to take wing. Or, uh, airbag.
The Christian Science Monitor (a surprisingly good source for tech news) is carrying a report on the newest advances in old flying technology – the […]
SONG: Golden Record
SONG: “Golden Record”. (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Partially based on “Have aliens hijacked Voyager 2 spacecraft”, Daily Telegraph, 12 […]
It’s ALIVE!
BBC (among other outlets) has gotten all excited over the world’s first artificial life form: The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the […]
Monkeys pay for porn.
Nature says it’s true: Rhesus monkeys will trade items of value – in this case, juice – in return for sexy monkey booty shots: The […]
Computers get the joke.
PopSci releases the terrifying news that computers can decode our humor now. We can’t tell jokes over their little silicon heads any more – they’ve […]
Bat sex: Dirty enough to make trouble.
New Scientist uncorks a biological scandal involving research into the naughty things bats do after dark: University College Cork in Ireland is coming under international […]
Aw, the widdew scientist want to tawk aww gwown up!
Yep. Science Daily says it’s a good idea to talk to children using grown-up language: Academic language is characterised by difficult, abstract words and complex […]
Science Art: Barnard’s Star, by Kate Horowitz.
after Ann Druyan I send for you my heartbeat, the rhythms of my latest dream. You are just now finding the frozen clicks of muscles, […]
10 limbs for hugging!
The Christian Science Monitor (reprinting LiveScience) has published the greatest science headline I think I’ve ever read: School-bus sized squid actually quite friendly, study finds. […]
I**AM**V-GER***
That’s what Sydney’s Daily Telegraph wants me to hear when they tell me about a strange malfunction affecting the Voyager 2 space probe: But now […]
Mammoth blood lives again.
Science magazine brings us a step closer to a Pleistocene Park by reporting on the creation of living mammoth blood: By inserting a 43,000-year-old woolly […]
What happened to the ozone hole?
In case you were wondering, what with all the climate change talk nowadays, LiveScience reminds us that there’s still a hole in the sky: First, […]