Endangered words.
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 […]
Science 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 moreScience 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 moreDinosaur meat.
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 […]
One chimp, two chimp.
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 […]
Science Art: Rust and Dirt
No, this isn’t an orbital photo of Mars or a microscopic image of crystallography. It’s a photo of good old iron oxide, taken by Roger […]
Etienne-Jules Marey, Fusil Photographique
Picture borrowed from the Étienne-Jules Marey biography in the Hargrave Aviation History pages. In the 1800s, Étienne-Jules Marey made a name for himself studying human […]
Babies know who’s helpful.
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, […]
Making a brain.
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 […]
Invisible? Or just empty?
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 […]
Robot Guitar.
I’m not sure if this takes the fun out of weird intonations and un-well-temperedness, but Gibson is now selling an amazing guitar that Is. A. […]
Science wants to be free…
…even when taught online by some of the world’s top universities. Maybe I can finally get chemistry to make sense.
Dry tobacco.
Nature reports on a new strain of genetically modified drought-resistant tobacco. OK, so some people are probably thinking this sounds like the least healthy plant […]
Science Art: Snow crystals 2b
Hexagonal dendrite snowflake as captured by the Electron Microscopy Unit of the USDA Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.
Goodbye, alien neighbors.
Nature makes us feel lonely. It turns out that Gliese 580c isn’t that likely to have life on it after all. The most Earth-like planet […]
Sunny smiles…
…from a solar-powered toothbrush, of course. The invention, from University of Saskatchewan professor Kunio Komiyama and his colleague Dr. Gerry Uswak, uses electrons to replace […]
Winds of War
UN Scientists looking at the weather have found that over the past 500 years, climate change has marched hand in hand with war, New Scientist […]