The Boy-Crab Boogie.
New Scientist rocks like a crustacean with a new report on crab courtship dances: In the dense submarine thickets of seagrass that blue crabs (Callinectes […]
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 moreScience Art: A Gear Chain with a Mite Approaching
This is how small they’re making machines nowadays: Dwarfed by a spider mite. Lubricated by gases. Photo courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories, SUMMiTTM Technologies, www.mems.sandia.gov
The Creativity Disease.
New York Times profiles a bizarre ailment that has me wondering how one could contract it halfway. It’s a syndrome that causes uncontrolled creativity: In […]
Flat-faced Fish Fleet. Er, Family.
Scientific American introduces us to a whole new family of (rather cute) flat-faced fish: First photographed in January off Ambon Island, Indonesia, the critter has […]
As Matthew McConaughey said in Dazed and Confused….
New Scientist says old dudes like Charles Darwin really should be shacked up with younger women like Scarlett Johansen because of science. Humans, they say, […]
Grow Your Own Teeth.
Wired opens wide and spits out a story on a dental breakthrough. If you happen to have lost any of your teeth (ahem), you don’t […]
5th grader corrects Smithsonian Museum.
Yep, he might be an 11-year-old kid, but at least he was paying attention in class: Since it opened in 1981, millions of people have […]
Science Art: Red Giant V838 Monocerotis
Click to embiggen Photo by NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). You can read more about V838 Monocerotis exploding and swallowing nearby planets […]
Big Brains? So What.
Discover reviews a new book that proves Devo was right – big brains aren’t an evolutionary advantage. The book, called Big Brains, looks at the […]
Empathic Healing: Imaginary Massage for Phantom Limbs.
New Scientist reports on the discovery that amputees experiencing phantom limb pain – the unscratchable itch on a missing limb – can give themselves a […]
Algae Biodiesel in Production.
They’re squeezing oil from pond scum for real: The facility, located in Rio Hondo Texas, will produce an estimated 4.4 million gallons of algal oil […]
Doomsday Seed Vault Cooked and Eaten.
So much for planet Earth’s future. The Norwegian scientists behind the Svalbard Global Seed Vault – a facility described as “Noah’s Ark for Earth’s Agriculture” […]
Earliest recording predates Edison.
The International Herald Tribune says a Frenchman recorded “Au Clair de la Lune” 20 years before the phonograph was invented: The 10-second recording of a […]
Science Art: “Australisk fauna,” Nordisk Familjebok Encyclopedia
Click to embiggen This is an image from an old Norwegian encyclopedia, the “Norwegian Familybook” published sometime from 1904 to 1926. In Norwegian, the animals […]
A swarming army of cyborg bugs.
Wired reminds us that the U.S. military now has a functioning army of cyborg insects: DARPA’s Hi-MEMS program aims to implant place micro-mechanical systems [MEMS] […]