Battling the Red Queen (2)
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Kirsten Sanford (3)
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The Bird's Brain (3)
52 minutes
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The Red Queen has to keep running just to stay in the same place. In the same vein, drug development for infectious diseases has to constantly keep on its toes. Infectious disease sources, like some bacteria, can evolve resistance to our drugs, and when that happens we need new drugs to maintain our effective battle against the threat to our health. But, is there a way to get around this process of evolution - to ...
Our Toyota Freakout (1)
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Ryan Sager (2)
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True/Slant Network Activity (20)
3 hours, 54 minutes
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Image by Getty Images via Daylife With the nation freaking out about runaway Toyotas, how dangerous are they really? How much of the danger is just our availability bias run amok? Well, the buggy vehicles increase the risk of driving, according to Carnegie Mellon University Professor Paul Fischbeck, a risk expert, by about 2 percent. So, would it just be safer to walk?: “Replacing driving by walking really increases the risk of dying,” Fischbeck said. ...
Another earthquake, but not more earthquakes (1)
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Maggie Koerth-Baker (256)
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Boing Boing (3425)
4 hours, 52 minutes
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Haiti, Chile, Turkey, Chile (again). There've been a lot of earthquakes lately. But scientists say there haven't been more earthquakes lately. Tremors are, and have always been, common. On average, per year, you can expect one 8.0 or above quake, 17 quakes between 7 and 7.9, and 130-odd quakes between 6.0 and 6.9. One thing that has risen: Death tolls. But scientists say that increase has more to do with economic conditions that drive people ...
The effects of gold-medal hockey on Edmonton, Canada water usage (4)
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Maggie Koerth-Baker (256)
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Boing Boing (3425)
5 hours, 27 minutes
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I feel a great disturbance in the public utility, as if millions of bladders cried out, and were suddenly silenced. Pats Papers: What If Everybody in Canada Flushed at Once? (Thanks, Christina!)
Are You A Tetrachromat? (1)
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Gerard (22)
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The Presurfer (18)
6 hours, 18 minutes
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Look at the three circles above. If all you see are three circles filled with dots of the same color, you are normal. If you see something different (such as different colored letters inside each circle) you may be a tetrachromat: very rare and super human.A tetrachromat is sort of like being a super taster of color vision. To date, only two or three people have been identified as potential tetrachromats. You might be one.The ...
A Rogue Star May Be Roaming Our System (1)
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Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) (12)
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Softpedia News - Science (12)
6 hours, 18 minutes
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Experts believe that the possibility of another star existing within our solar system may not be as remote as initially thought. Experts believe that a dark body, several times the mass of Jupiter, may be making its way through our surroundings, at times kicking comets within the inner solar system. The body, called “Nemesis” or “The Deat... (read more)
The Fallacy of Irreducible Complexity (1)
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Andrew Gonsalves (2)
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Don't Feed the Animals (2)
6 hours, 20 minutes
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There's a term floating about that I have an epistemological problem with: irreducible complexity. The premise of this phrase is that the modern biological systems that make up our bodies and those in nature are too complex to have happened "by chance." To me, the use of this argument represents a lack of understanding of many different concepts: chaos, evolution, time, probability and history. Funny enough, these are the very subjects I've been studying over ...
DIY: Make Your Own LEDs (1)
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Andrew Dobrow (8)
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GEARFUSE (8)
8 hours, 52 minutes
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And all you’ll need is a few things laying around the house. You know, the usual – 9v batteries, needles.. *ahem* silicon carbide crystals *ahem*, all easily accessible stuff. In all honesty though you apparently can pick up silicon carbide crystals easily enough from eBay. And if you’re really in a pinch you can even use sandpaper, which is made out of a similar material but will likely only give off a faint glow. You ...
Publicada en Nature: Primera verificación a escala cosmológica de la teoría de la gravedad de Einstein (1)
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emulenews (10)
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Francis (th)E mule Science's News (10)
9 hours, 12 minutes
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Comparación entre observaciones experimentales y teóricas para el nuevo parámetro cosmológico (izq.) obtenido tras un análisis de los datos de galaxias del Sloan Digital Sky Survey. (C) Nature La cosmología moderna se basa en el supuesto de que la relatividad general es una teoría válida de la gravedad a escalas cosmológicas. Un artículo publicado en Nature presenta la primera confirmación de la teoría de la gravedad de Einstein, la relatividad general, en escalas mucho más ...
Dating Science – The three speeds of male dating (1)
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Toast (2)
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The Wed or Dead Wager (2)
12 hours, 33 minutes
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Toast Yes it’s been quiet of late. The reason being that I haven’t seen the Fez because of work and currently I don’t really want to see anyone else. I know this is a dangerous tactic, but I am a fool, it’s a defining characteristic. Anyway. Biscuit and I were talking about girls and things and we realised that men have three speeds or modes when it comes to dating. 1) I Wouldn’t touch you ...
Human Subway Map (3)
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Maggie York-Worth (27)
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Cool Hunting (65)
12 hours, 42 minutes
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Good Magazine highlights a new illustration from Sam Loman that incorporates subway design into a map of the human body. The body shows urinary, digestive, arterial and respiratory lines, among many others, with stops at the liver, kidneys and more. The biggest transfer point is, of course, the heart. Check out the visual at Good.
Fat is a flavor? (3)
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Cory Doctorow (1283)
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Boing Boing (3425)
14 hours, 20 minutes
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Researchers at Australia's Deakin University have published a paper in the British Journal of Nutrition showing evidence that human beings can taste fat -- that is, they can distinguish between two flavourless solutions in which one has more fat than the other. I believe that this is true -- and that fat can offset bitterness the same way that sweet can. For example, raw cacao nibs mixed with cashew nuts taste sweet and chocolatey. "We ...
Fat is a flavor? (3)
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Cory Doctorow (1283)
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Boing Boing (3425)
14 hours, 56 minutes
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Researchers at Australia's Deakin University have published a paper in the British Journal of Nutrition showing evidence that human beings can taste fat -- that is, they can distinguish between two flavourless solutions in which one has more fat than the other. I believe that this is true -- and that fat can offset bitterness the same way that sweet can. For example, raw cacao nibs mixed with cashew nuts taste sweet and chocolatey. "We ...
IBM Develops Infinitely Recyclable Plant-Based Plastic [Plastics] (5)
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Kyle VanHemert (249)
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Gizmodo (3833)
16 hours, 13 minutes
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Earlier this week, IBM researchers announced a discovery that could lead to plastics made from plants instead of petroleum. The new plastics will be more energy efficient, more versatile, and infinitely recyclable (until we move to our space colony). More »
Genomes of whole family sequenced (1)
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Ian Sample (6)
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The Guardian World News (133)
16 hours, 58 minutes
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Sequencing the genomes of every family member gives researchers a powerful new tool for tracking down the defective genes that cause inherited diseasesAn American family has become the first to have the entire genome of each member mapped to identify the causes of rare diseases that affect the children.The family of four is unusual because the parents are healthy but both son and daughter have two rare inherited medical conditions that cause facial and limb ...
Bill Gates’ hurricane-busting tubeships are real, people (1)
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Devin Coldewey (162)
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CrunchGear (448)
18 hours, 21 minutes
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Last year, I wrote that Bill had this (let’s be honest) evil-genius style plan to weaken hurricanes before they make landfall. Sounded a bit fantastical at the time, but as it turns out, there are real scientists ready to rock and roll with these things. They’re so serious they even put together a video. The idea is really pretty simple: by pumping warm surface water to the cool depths of the ocean, the temperature at ...
Free Energy and the Meaning of Life (4)
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Sean (25)
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Cosmic Variance (11)
19 hours, 12 minutes
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When we think about the “meaning of life,” we tend to conjure ideas such as love, or self-actualization, or justice, or human progress. It’s an anthropocentric view; try to convince blue-green algae that self-actualization is some sort of virtue. Let’s ask instead why “life,” as a biological concept, actually exists. That is to say: we know that entropy increases as the universe evolves. But why, on the road from the simple and low-entropy early universe ...
Black Penguin (2)
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Deron Bauman (37)
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clusterflock (90)
19 hours, 53 minutes
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King Penguins are notorious for their prim, tuxedoed appearance — but a recently discovered all-black penguin seems unafraid to defy convention. In what has been described as a “one in a zillion kind of mutation,” biologists say that the animal has lost control of its pigmentation, an occurrence that is extremely rare. Other than the penguin’s monochromatic outfit, the animal appears to be perfectly healthy — and then some. “Look at the size of those ...
National Geographic’s Great Sperm Race (1)
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Violet Blue (23)
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Laughing Squid (232)
20 hours
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image by Jeremy Benning, National Geographic We really wish we could have been a fly on the wall when “Sizing Up Sperm” — a human re-enactment of fertilization — was pitched in the esteemed offices at National Geographic. Regardless of how the idea was hatched, the results are stunning and the program airs this Sunday, March 14. In it, people dressed in all white literally act out the role of sperm in the race to ...
Absurdly Simple Ocean Pumps Could Thwart Hurricanes [Science] (4)
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Mark Wilson (505)
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Gizmodo (3833)
20 hours, 41 minutes
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In yet more research funded by Bill and Melinda Gates (and Intellectual Ventures), Stanford University's Ken Caldeira explores a mechanically simple ocean pump that could significantly diminish the power of a hurricane. More »