Category: Science

  • Why Time Goes Forward

    How does this resolve the arrow of time problem? Well, put simply, running time in one direction allows records to be kept and events to be observed. In the other direction, observation becomes impossible. Therefore, although time could be running in either direction (or, who knows, both directions simultaneously), it is only possible for any […]

  • Archaeologists Find Cache of Tablets in 2,700-Year Old Turkish Temple

    Excavations led by a University of Toronto archaeologist at the site of a recently discovered temple in southeastern Turkey have uncovered a cache of cuneiform tablets dating back to the Iron Age period between 1200 and 600 BCE. Found in the temple’s cella, or ‘holy of holies’, the tablets are part of a possible archive […]

  • A Bird Grieves

    Recent image by jaythikay99 on Photobucket.

  • Bolivia Bans All Circus Animals

    Bolivia has enacted what animal rights activists are calling the world’s first ban on all animals in circuses. A handful of other countries have banned the use of wild animals in circuses, but the Bolivian ban includes domestic animals as well. The law, which states that the use of animals in circuses “constitutes an act […]

  • Entire Bacterial Genome Discovered Inside Fruit Fly

    Now, Julie Dunning-Hotopp from the J. Craig Venter Institute and Michael Clark from the University of Rochester have found an even more drastic strategy used by Wolbachia to preserve its own immortality – inserting its entire genome wholesale into that of another living thing. via  Not Exactly Rocket Science.

  • Slowing Light Down to 38 MPH

    But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed light to 38 miles an hour, about the speed of rush-hour traffic. Two years later, she brought light to a complete halt in a cloud of ultracold atoms. Next, she restarted the stalled light without changing any of its characteristics, and sent it on […]

  • Human DNA Includes Viruses That Couldn't Take Us Down

    And that’s not even including all the alien DNA: It turns out that about 8 percent of the human genome is made up of viruses that once attacked our ancestors. The viruses lost. What remains are the molecular equivalents of mounted trophies, insects preserved in genomic amber, DNA fossils. [In Our Genes, Old Fossils Take […]

  • Seventh Graders Go Beyond the Stereotypical Scientist

    From Fermilab – drawings of scientists by kids before they visit Fermilab and meet real researchers and afterwards: “A scientist is hardworking, studious, detail-oriented, observant, intelligent, exacting, and patient. A scientist is very important in our lives because all of the experiments he/she does in the lab can affect our health, environment, nutrition, and other […]

  • Bacterium Found in 120,000-Year-Old Ice

    "A team of Penn State scientists has discovered a new ultra-small species of bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years within the ice of a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles. The microorganism’s ability to persist in this low-temperature, high-pressure, reduced-oxygen, and nutrient-poor habitat makes it particularly useful for studying […]

  • Whites Get More Drugs in ERs

    Via CNN: Even for the severe pain of kidney stones, minorities were prescribed narcotics such as oxycodone and morphine less frequently than whites. The analysis of more than 150,000 emergency room visits over 13 years found differences in prescribing by race in both urban and rural hospitals, in all U.S. regions and for every type […]