Download the audio version of this column. Get my science column weekly as a podcast. **** Summer is the season for outdoor music festivals. Here in Regina, for example, the Folk Festival will fill Victoria Park with music this weekend. But as you sit on the grass at your favorite festival listening to your favorite …
Category: Blog
If this were a science fiction thriller…
…this would be bad news: An 8-million-year-old bacterium that was extracted from the oldest known ice on Earth is now growing in a laboratory, claim researchers. If confirmed, this means ancient bacteria and viruses will come back to life as ice melts due to global warming. This is nothing to worry about, say experts, because …
Sports, schmorts
Orson Scott Card writes an extended rant about sports that echoes many thoughts of my own, as a non-athletic kid. I particularly liked these lines: There is no excuse for athletes being more respected and honored in school than scholars. But few indeed are the high schools that provide scholars and musicians and actors and …
Scientists achieve levitation
And, no, they’re not members of Canada’s old Natural Law Party (the one that advocated research into something called “yogic flying”). They say they can reverse the Casimir force: The Casimir force is a consequence of quantum mechanics, the theory that describes the world of atoms and subatomic particles that is not only the most …
Science fiction writers heading to Mars!
Well, sort of. Actually, it’s their words that are heading to Mars, as part of a DVD compiled by The Planetary Society and launched with the Phoenix lander, due to touch down next May.
Source of fever identified
Humans have been dealing with fevers for millennia. Now scientists have, for the first time, identified the precise location in the brain that generates fever in the body: During periods of inflammation, such as when the body is fighting an infection or illness, the body produces hormones known as cytokines. The cytokines, in turn, act …
Photos of the Day: Fuzz, and Dragonfly
More photos here.
Maps on the Web
This week’s CBC Web column… Download an audio version. *** Jokes about how hard it is to fold a highway map use to be a staple of slice-of-life comedians. Well, highway maps are probably just as hard to fold as they ever were—but you don’t have to fold them, or even use them, if you …
Robots with guns…
…the first armed robots in history…have now been deployed in Iraq. No, they don’t look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Apollo photo archive coming online!
This is exciting:Nearly 40 years after man first walked on the moon, the complete lunar photographic record from the Apollo project will be accessible to both researchers and the general public on the Internet. A new digital archive – created through a collaboration between Arizona State University and NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston – …
Photo of the (Yester)Day: Midway
More photos here.
I’m officially podcasting!
I’ve decided to try turning my weekly science columns into a weekly podcast, and the first episode (“Prosthetics”) is now at its permanent home (I know, I posted it earlier in the week using Box, but now it’s at avMYpodCast.com, which also automatically indexes it with iTunes). Everything is very bare-bones right now and I …
My latest live walk and vlog
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