The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

PopSci reports on why one man thinks the petroleum industry wants him dead. Frank Pringle has figured out a way to turn plastics back into oil and natural gas:

Petroleum is composed of strings

Welcome to interstellar space. Nature reports that Voyager 2 has left the solar system. And, as NASA emphasizes, it did so while discovering our solar system is a little bit squished. From… Read the rest “Go well, Voyager.”

Israeli researchers believe they’ve found a genetic basis for generosity, according to PhysOrg.com:

Through an online task involving making a choice whether or not to give away

National Geographic reveals how parasitic wasps transform cockroaches into zombie slaves:

he parasitic jewel wasp uses a venom injected directly into a cockroach’s brain to inhibit

The BBC has a field report on the XO, the laptop distributed by the One Laptop Per Child project. It’s a field report by one of the XO’s intended users (sort of) – an actual… Read the rest “Keeping the “C” in OLPC.”

Natural History magazine sounds a warning for words. University of Michigan linguist Sarah Grey Thomason, a specialist in the Salish–Pend d’Oreille language of Montana’s Native… Read the rest “Endangered words.”

Palaeontologists in North Dakota have found a first-of-a-kind duck-billed dinosaur fossil, the BBC reports, containing not just hadrosaur bones, but the remains of skin, ligaments … Read the rest “Dinosaur meat.”

Science Daily continues to make me feel inadequate by pointing out that even chimpanzees are better at math:

“There are still many people, including many biologists, who believe

New Scientist reports on the wisdom of babes. Six-month-olds are able to recognize who’s really on their side and who’s trying to do them wrong, even though you might think … Read the rest “Babies know who’s helpful.”

For a few years now, computer engineers have been building a virtual brain – using computers to replicate every neural connection in a mammal’s gray matter. The question they’re… Read the rest “Making a brain.”

Nature recently revealed research that will please the nihilists among us, from astrophysicist Teppo Mattsson, who says that dark energy, the stuff that keeps the universe from imploding,… Read the rest “Invisible? Or just empty?”