Some amazing historical geek on how underwater telephone cables were laid across the San Francisco Bay. How's that for engineering?
IBM researchers in Zurich are first to measure the charge on a single atom, image a single molecule, and now image the distribution of charge in a single molecule. Over achievers.
Why astronomers consider pulsars a gift from the Universe.
Six places on Earth you can go and pretend you are on another planet.
380 million year old fossilized forest unearthed beneath quarry in upstate New York.
Ancient New Zealand penguins were tall and fat.
Otzi the iceman had a rough life even before he was killed by an arrow.
New bat species discovered in Vietnam looks like it could almost be a Klingon.
Researchers in Singapore discover the nature of the chemical alarm signal fish secrete when scared or injured. Naturally, the Germans have a word for it: "Schreckstoff" or scary stuff.
The neuroscience of deja vu all over again.
Memory altering drugs may be beside the point as the brain constantly alters memories on its own.
Google street view is coming to the Great Barrier Reef. I vote we call it Google reef view.
Presented without comment -- Toronto Zoo wants its orangutans to have iPads.
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Ancient New Zealand penguins were tall and fat.
Newly translated ancient Maori inscriptions indicate they were called "Limbaughs."
Wonderful!
LOL ! Yep, it's geeky but interesting !
Another great collection, Summer!
The iPads For Orangutans is a terrific way to further study the cognitive ability of higher primates. It's already been shown that chimps, gorillas and orangutans recognize themsevles and relatives in a mirror so it makes sense that they would do so using an iPad. Then there is the bonus of keeping orang's busy and happy because, like other higher primates (including humans), they need and crave stimulation; besides, they can be very creative so it'd be interesting to see what they paint.
The study of pulsars is also fascinating, for different reasons. Most amazing is that it is likely to, once again, essentially prove Einstein's theory of general relativity - incredible given that he first published his paper in 1916 without the aid of supercomputers and space telescopes yet it has withstood every challenge ever since.
Finally, I always wonder how the anti-evolution crowd manages to cling to its belief that Earth and the entire universe is a mere 8,000 years old when discoveries of 380-million year old fossilized forests and the like are uncovered. Yeah, Rick Santorum, I'm talking to you.
Wow! Real American History...
OMG, that was so cool! We used to live in Hercules, Ca. For those of you not from the Bay Area, it is in the East Bay about 10 miles East of Berkeley.
Their biggest claim to fame is/was the Hercules Dynamite Factory. It had been there for quite some time, it would blow up, just a little bit, every year or so, get repaired and everything was hunky-dorey again, until the next time! My dog and I used to walk by there several times a week. Loved it!
Imagine my delight when my husband and I were on the tour for Lake Mead and the dam there! There we were, I have forgotten how many feet down in the Earth, looking at old, blown up (couldn't not resist the pun) pictures of the making of the dam and there they were, boxes of dynamite from the Hercules Dynamite Factory. Talk about "representing"!
We even got married in the little clubhouse that was for the "officers" of the company or whatever, haven't been able to clarify that one, which was on a bluff over-looking the factory, San Pablo Bay and in view of many other landmarks. The City of Hercules got it all shined up to celebrate it's 100 year anniversary that year, 1999.
It was the BEST!
I love the GEEK stuff, and your reporting, please keep it coming.
Re: German word for chemical alarm signal
Hey hey hey Summer- Check out the Romneyfish video posted yesterday- (New Scientist).
There is an aspect of "Conservative" culture that has nothing to do with conserving what one views as good. It has more to do with blending in with whatever one's surroundings are, of using your perceptions to determine what you ought to look like, then morphing yourself to appear to be that. Stockholm syndrome basis of tribalist. Theodore White called the Goldwater types that took over the GOP in 64 as primitives too. Anyway, this science story is symbolic of just how primitive it runs. The odd thing about CuttleFish is that when they appear over broken circles, their pattern is a completed circle. So even a primitive nervous system has the notion of Platonic forms- ideal shapes.
Anyway, the flippant political observation is that we are not observing behavior that is terribly sophisticated. These are such fundamental biological skills that even a mollusk has the basic skill set to participate in the GOP.
Hey John, I saw the 52 sec. New Scientist TV segment. Although it is a purely scientific video about Cuttlefish, and silent, except for the solo steel-string guitar musical accompaniment, it was extremely interesting, and educational to watch.
Behavior comparisons between mollusks ,and the bizarrely morphing GOP are remarkably uncanny! Being able to change ones looks in an instant, and blend into ones surroundings is an invaluable trait for both the mollusk and the GOP. And since Cuttlefish are among the most intelligent invertebrates, having one of the largest brain-to-body size ratios of all invertebrates, I easily managed to give the ' RomneyFish ' human thoughts.
Instructions: Watch the video at : http://bcove.me/rzyqwghh Then, come back and read my dialog for the ' RomneyFish '.This new art form is like a collaborated flip book experience, and Liberals can grasp the nuance by merely reading the dialog.Liberals are smart.They get everything.
Cool
<From 1970 to 1986>, scientists came to believe that the stark and frigid <antarctic> landscape we see today has existed for a very long time; the climatic message embedded in sea sediments is that once an ice sheet enveloped East Antarctica 15 million years ago, it never let go.
However in the mid 1980s, scientists working on the continent itself have uncovered the wooden remains of what they believe was an extensive forest that flourished only 400 miles from the South Pole about 3 million years ago.