Men and women have different nightmares.
PhysOrg divides bad dreams between the sleeping sexes: The study, carried out by Dr Michael Schredl of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, […]
SONG: 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 moreScience Art: Astrapia Splendidissima, 1895
This is the first illustration in the article “A New Bird of Paradise” by the Hon. Walter Rothschild, published…
Read moreNo song… yet.
Very close to making the deadline this month BUT NO CIGAR. I am, however, a grandfather now. So there’s that. A new song will be […]
Corn syrup not so sweet.
Princeton University researchers have found the bitter truth about HFCS: The first study showed that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in […]
Cookbook ecology
“Trophic level” is a measure of how far up the food chain an animal is. It’s generally used in ecological studies to show how much […]
Science Art: Aghatis Dammars, Nordisk familjebok
This is Agathis dammara, the tree from which we get dammar gum, used as a varnish on paintings, a glaze on food or an ingredient […]
Quantum drum beats without beating.
Nature reports on the first object large enough to see that’s been put into the quantum state of neither moving nor not-moving: Cleland and his […]
Shrimp that should not be!
The Associated Press plunges into the icy waters of the unknown to present us with an unspeakable creature… a shrimp that should not be: Six […]
Lose a gene, gain a limb.
PhysOrg shows you how to arrange the swap: The absence of this single gene, called p21, confers a healing potential in mice long thought to […]
Geek Pop: Interviewing Kepler
Yes, I interviewed (briefly) the legendary astronomer backstage at GeekPop ’10. The full text is up here, at the geekpop site.
Last one alive wins.
Science Daily takes a close look at how psychopaths’ brains are shaped by rewards: Previous research on psychopathy has focused on what these individuals lack […]
Science Art: Plate IV. Tapeworms by William Miller, after P. Syme
Another engraving by the Scotch Quaker, mentioned here previously. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
GeekPop online treasure hunt
So GeekPop ’10 has started, and they’re kicking things off with an online treasure hunt. Prizes include hula hoops, giant bubble-making kits and vouchers for […]
Fire from ice.
Discovery News finds a strange new source of energy – gas hydrates, solid chunks of frozen natural gas better known as combustible ice: In China, […]
“If it doesn’t exist then they don’t have a favorite planet.”
Hate Mail From Third Graders is NOVA’s tribute to Pluto’s lost status as ninth planet. The letters (to Hayden Planetarium director Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson), […]
Flu’s in your head.
BBC has an interesting report on the psychological dimensions of flu: While it seems obvious that we feel under-par when we are ill, Dr Harrison […]