Mountains’ purple majesty (1)
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Phil Plait (27)
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Bad Astronomy (91)
4 hours, 51 minutes
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There have been some volcanic eruptions in Alaska lately (probably due to Sarah Palin trying to find a place to drill for oil), and the aerosols spewed into the atmosphere can make for some interesting cloud formations and sky sights. BABloggee Kevin Baird has some shots up on Flickr with what look to show some of the effects. Pretty!
This is why I love my bath tub (1)
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katg (4)
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Katrine G @ 7inch.dk (4)
6 hours, 28 minutes
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This is such a cool invention, I gotta have one ASAP. The Underwater Disco Light-show. You just pop a small floating plastic thingy in your tub, and the party is started. This is what the web-page says about the little critter: This ingenious floating gizmo projects several seriously psychedelic multicoloured light sequences onto the bottom and sides of the bath. It’s truly hypnotic, especially as the pulsating effects are distorted by the water in the ...
This robot has a rat brain (1)
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Nicholas Deleon (99)
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CrunchGear (594)
6 hours, 28 minutes
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Scientists in the UK (well, Reading) have developed a robot that has an actual brain. Like, the brain is made out of rat neurons. So already this robot is smarter than Biggs. The scientists, from the University of Reading, put together the robot so they can better study “how memories are actually stored in a biological brain.” That it may help them study diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s is like bonus points. The brain communicates ...
Northwest Passage Open (1)
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No Wonder Keith Richards is Still Alive (1)
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Jon Taplin (43)
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Jon Taplin's Blog (43)
9 hours, 27 minutes
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Latest scientific finding. Researchers in Italy and Britain have found that the main active ingredient in marijuana — tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — and related compounds show promise as antibacterial agents, particularly against microbial strains that are already resistant to several classes of drugs.
Scientists should use Youtube more. Maybe. (1)
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rbaltman (4)
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Building confidence. (4)
9 hours, 34 minutes
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This summer, my lab experimented with posting some videos on youtube discussing our science. An example is by my student Magda Jonikas discussing her work on RNA structure. Why did we do this? A few reasons: 1. We thought it would be fun to try a new hip media (ok, not so new and hip anymore, but I’m an old guy) 2. We wanted to reach young people thinking about careers in science/engineering/medicine so that ...
Anyone Who Thinks the LHC Will Destroy the World is a T*** [Large Hadron Collider] (3)
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Ed Grabianowski (31)
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io9 (868)
12 hours, 32 minutes
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Particle physics professor Brian Cox of the University of Manchester has pretty much the final word on Large Hadron Collider fear-mongering with the above quote. What prompted such an outburst? Death threats against scientists working on the LHC. Perhaps an even better question - what does "t***" stand for? Numerous studies have found that the LHC poses no risk of creating reality-devouring exotic matter or world-shredding mini black holes, but still the messages of anger ...
9 Extraordinary Human Abilities - The List Universe (2)
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jfrater (82)
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The List Universe (82)
22 hours, 11 minutes
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This list of extraordinary human abilities was inspired The Top 10 Tips to Improve Your Memory when I began thinking about how some people are blessed (or cursed, depending on your point of view) with the ability to recall a scene as if they were looking at a photograph. And how other people can recreate music from memory, such as Mozart’s famed reproduction of Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere after one hearing. What other extraordinary abilities might ...
Ivory Gull Wins Most Polluted Bird on the Planet Award (1)
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TreeHugger (408)
1 day, 4 hours
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Image source: Bird Holidays If the ivory gull could, it would tell that polar bear, 'I wouldn't eat that if I were you' - eating carcasses of other animals is what got the ivory gull in this predicament in the first place. The ivory gull, which lives in the Arctic, was recently found to have the highest concentrations of PCBs and DDT when its eggs were tested. The more interesting point is that both of ...
What Do Creationists Think About Sarah Palin? (1)
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Little Green Footballs (30)
1 day, 5 hours
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Since I’ve posted two articles about Sarah Palin’s statements on creationism, let’s go across the aisle and see what the fanatical Darwin-hating creationists at “Answers In Genesis” think. They’re also examining Palin’s statements, and of course they’re eagerly hoping she’ll be an advocate for their weird pseudo-science: Is She Really a Creationist? (Notice how they add footnotes everywhere to make it seem like a scholarly work.) Before we look at Gov. Palin’s beliefs on creation/evolution ...
Supercontinent Pangaea Pushed, Not Sucked, Into Place (2)
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National Geographic News (72)
1 day, 6 hours
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A plume of superheated rock from deep in Earth's crust welled up between the ancient continents, pushing them apart until they collided to form Pangaea, a new study proposes.
The closest thing to Jedi mind tricks (1)
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Meditation News (5)
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Wildmind Buddhist Meditation (5)
1 day, 7 hours
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New Scientist: Though neuroscience will never peer inside of Luke Skywalker or Yoda’s head to find the brain region responsible for feeling the Force, a new study comes close. Trained Zen Buddhists return to a state of inner calm faster than people who don’t practice meditation, according to neuroscientist Giuseppe Pagnoni and his colleagues at Emory University in Atlanta. Read more here.
The Latest in Space Tourist Fashion [Sci Fashion] (2)
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Annalee Newitz (215)
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io9 (868)
1 day, 11 hours
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When file-sharing destroys the movie biz, at least special effects designers will still have work — in the aerospace industry. Orbital Outfitters, the first company to manufacture special pressurized spacesuits for civilians, is hiring special effects designers from Hollywood to help. This swanky suit that you see here, created with help from special effects maven Chris Gilman for Orbital Outfitters, may be worn by passengers on XCOR Aeorospace's suborbital jets. Apparently Gilman's skills designing knight-in-armor ...
Attack of the Robot Spiders! [Mad Entomology] (4)
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Ed Grabianowski (31)
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io9 (868)
1 day, 13 hours
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British scientists have learned some interesting things about the way animals respond to traumatic experiences and how trauma affects their daily lives. What was the key to their groundbreaking research? Robot spiders that hug bumble bees. Seriously. In the wild, bumble bees can fall prey to crab spiders, which are able to camouflage themselves to match the color of the flowers bees frequent. Researchers at Queen Mary, University of London made mock flowers with sugar ...
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INCyr said:
NEARLY INVISIBLE ROBOT SPIDERS COULD BE LURKING ANYWHERE!
The Last Thing in the World I Would Ever Think Google Earth Would Be Used For (1)
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Steven D. Levitt (35)
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Freakonomics (189)
1 day, 13 hours
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It seems that cattle and deer tend to graze while standing in a north-south direction. No one had ever noticed this until some researchers used Google Earth to study the question. The researchers think it has something to do with Earth's magnetic field. (Hat tip: Spectre)
Going green with IT use (1)
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IDG News Service (2)
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Industry Standard Breaking News (2)
1 day, 13 hours
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If rising food and fuel prices aren't convincing enough, there's a world of good reasons to be a little more conscious of the cost of running your Mac. We know global temperatures have climbed 0.8 degrees Celsius since the start of the industrial revolution. We know the polar ice caps are shrinking and cataclysmic climatic events -- such as Hurricane Katrina, Burma's Cyclone Nargis, and the recent flooding in China that forced a million people ...
Alcohol And The Media (1)
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adambowie.com (6)
1 day, 19 hours
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There's a widely reported story today about a report examining how alcohol is covered in the media. In particular the perceived glamourisation of excessive drinking by radio DJs such as Chris Moyles. You can read coverage at the BBC News site, and in all the papers (here are links to the story in The Guardian and the Telegraph). An interesting and worthwhile story? Undoubtedly. But the critic in me would quite like to see the ...
Research ethics (1)
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Chris Bertram (7)
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Crooked Timber (44)
1 day, 19 hours
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Oh how times change! I rather doubt that a piece of 1958 research on how children behave when locked in fridges would make it past a modern university ethics committee! Using a specially designed enclosure, 201 children 2 to 5 years of age took part in tests in which six devices were used, including two developed in the course of this experiment as the result of observation of behavior. Success in escaping was dependent on ...
物理学家发现“双奇异”夸克粒子 (2)
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matrix (295)
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Solidot (303)
1 day, 22 hours
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费米实验室DZero项目的物理学家发现了一个新的三夸克粒子（科技日报报道），名叫Omega－sub－b（Ωb）。该粒子由两个奇异夸克和一个底夸克（s－s－b）组成，是质子的“远亲”，其重量是质子的6倍。这可能是欧洲粒子物理研究所（CERN）之外最后几个令人注目的亚原子粒子发现之一，更引人注目的大强子对撞机（LHC）即将启动去寻找上帝的粒子。
