Treasure trove 'found by octopus'
An octopus with a porcelain plate stuck to its suckers has led to the discovery of a hoard of ancient pottery, South Korean scientists say. —Treasure trove ‘found by octopus’ (BBC) Thanks for the link, Rosemary.
An octopus with a porcelain plate stuck to its suckers has led to the discovery of a hoard of ancient pottery, South Korean scientists say. —Treasure trove ‘found by octopus’ (BBC) Thanks for the link, Rosemary.
Besides not beaming down, another factor that showed to increase the survival rate of the red-shirts was the nature of the relationship between the alien life and captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an alien woman and “makes contact” the survival rate of the red-shirted crewmen increases by 84%. In fact, out of Captain Kirks’…
Until the eigth school in the list, they’ve only included schools with a few students which means that any large percentage drops or gains are not strange at all, but expected. To put them on the “Biggest Metro Math Losers” (what kind of name for a table is that anyway?!) is simply poor reporting. I’m…
Sometimes called the reptilian brain because its basic structure dates back to our reptile ancestors, the brain stem is largely devoted to our most primal instincts, far removed from the complex, higher-brain skills that allow us to understand humor. And yet somehow, in this primitive region, we find the urge to laugh. —Steven Johnson —What’s…
Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics, more than 30 years after he abandoned his studies to form the rock group Queen. —Queen guitarist to complete doctorate (AP | Yahoo! (will expire)) This brightened my day.
And as far as I know, no other news outlet in the world got this point wrong except the BBC — not even the tabloids. People often accuse the BBC of agenda-driven falsification of stories. Perhaps that’s sometimes true, I don’t know. But in the cases of science mis-reporting that I’m familiar with — and…
Your job is very simple! All you need to do is look out for the features that mark out sprial and elliptical galaxies. In fact, as you’re a human and not a computer, most galaxies should be easy to classify since they’re obviously spirals or obviously ellipticals. On this page, you will practice classifying galaxies.…
I used to think that things like rocks and buildings and my own skeleton were fairly solid. But they’re made up of atoms, and atoms, as you can see here, contain so little actual material that they can barely be said to exist. We are all phantoms. —Hydrogen Atom Scale Model (Phrenopolis)
‘One approach to seeing the future is through scenarios — carefully crafted “what if?” stories that let us imagine several different outcomes’, the book says. It suggests holding a ‘scenario party’ (seriously) where you can ‘pool the imaginations and experiences of your friends’. In short: we have no idea what the future will look like,…
They were surprised when a magazine article asserted that women use an average of 20,000 words per day compared with 7,000 for men. If there had been that big a difference, he thought, they should have noticed it. They found that the 20,000-7,000 figures have been used in popular books and magazines for years. But…
The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago. Since then they have travelled 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack. —Ben Clerkin —Thousands of rubber ducks…
Behavioural experts have found that infants begin to lie from as young as six months. Simple fibs help to train them for more complex deceptions in later life. Infants quickly learnt that using tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing could win them attention. By eight months, more difficult deceptions became apparent, such as…
The idea is simple enough. Imagine a 30-storey building with glass walls, topped off with a huge solar panel. | On each floor there would be giant planting beds, indoor fields in effect–Jeremy Cooke —Vertical farming in the big Apple (BBC) What will they think of next — maybe, taking an urban residential skyscraper, tilting it…
Doctors backed away on Sunday from a controversial proposal to designate video game addiction as a mental disorder akin to alcoholism, saying psychiatrists should study the issue more. —Experts oppose video game addiction designation (Reuters | C|Net)
Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age,…
At the end of their most recent paper reporting these findings, the researchers reflect that it is “ironic, sublime and truly humbling” that this 4,500-year-old limestone is so true to the original that it has misled generations of Egyptologists and geologists and, “because the ancient Egyptians were the original-albeit unknowing-nanotechnologists.” As if the scientific evidence…
Playing a game may teach the player that he can optimize the game only in certain ways (or that the game is impossible to win, like Global Thermonuclear War); but it’s open to question whether the optimal game strategy corresponds to an optimal real-life strategy. As we see more of this kind of thing (and…
This activity is set in a research group that is developing an antivenom for spider bites. In the opening scene, Nelson Pogline, a talented graduate student, dies unexpectedly at a university reception. As a detective, you must use chemistry concepts to determine if this was murder and if so, solve the case. You can interview…
“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid,” explained Stéphane Udry, from the Geneva Observatory (Switzerland) and lead-author of the paper reporting the result. “Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth’s radius, and models predict that the…
The potential caves were spotted near a massive Martian volcano, Arisa Mons. Their openings range from about 330 to 820 feet (100 to 250 meters) wide, and one of them, Dena, is thought to extend nearly 430 feet (130 meters) beneath the planet’s surface. The researchers hope the discovery will lead to more focused spelunking…