It’s said there are cat people, and there are dog people. Personally, I like both, but if I had to state a preference, I’d probably give the edge to cats. It’s not very often I have an excuse to write about them in this column, but this week I do, because by some coincidence, two …
Category: Columns
“Musseling” in on the glue industry
Since all of my science columns are online, I frequently get questions out of the blue about past column topics. This week, for example, I received an e-mail from a mother whose nine-year-old had decided to do a third-grade science project on glue. They’d found my column on the topic from a decade ago, and …
A cure for cat allergies?
Do pets make you sneeze? Well, you’re not alone: an estimated ten percent of the population is allergic to animals. And the animal responsible for the majority of those allergies is Felis domesticus–your basic household cat. Being the cat person that I am, this strikes me as a terrible, terrible, thing, worthy of serious research. …
A building in a bag
Every year disasters and wars leave homes in ruins or drive people from them. One of the first tasks of emergency workers is to provide shelter–typically in the form of tents. As anyone who has ever served time–er, spent time camping knows, however, a tent is not something you want to live in indefinitely. When you’re camping …
The changing brain
We’re all getting older. (As the saying goes, it’s better than the alternative.) And as we age, we can’t help noticing that our brains don’t work quite the same way as they did when we were younger. Researchers have certainly noted this, and whether it’s because the average age of the population is going up …
Bad movie science
It will probably come as no surprise to you that when Hollywood tackles scientific topics, it almost always gets them wrong. But as Sid Perkins describes in a recent article in Science News Online, some scientists and teachers are using movie science to teach science and promote an interest in science. There are innumerable examples of bad movie …
Apollo 11’s 35th anniversary
It’s hard to believe, for those of us of a certain age, but July 20 marked the 35th anniversary of the first manned moon landing (and, as it happens, the 35th anniversary of my 10th birthday, in case you’re wondering just what “a certain age” is). In January, President George W. Bush called for the …
Blue moons
Have you ever wondered why we consider “once in a blue moon” to be the epitome of rare occurrence? This is a good time to ask, because July 2004 is one of those rare months when there are two full moons: one on July 2, and a second on July 31. According to folklore, the …
Aboriginal science
In 2000, Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Saskatchewan-born singer, artist, teacher and Academy Award-winning songwriter, was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Letters Degree by Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. During her convocational address, she mentioned some of the breakthroughs of aboriginal peoples in science and technology. Inspired by her address, Lakehead University shortly thereafter set …
Bacteria on a chip
There’s an old science joke that goes, “If it stinks, it’s chemistry, if it’s green and slimy, it’s biology, and if it doesn’t work, it’s physics.” Now, however, scientists are messing with these once-sacred boundaries, as they attempt to combine living cells and computer chips to create tiny, inexpensive pollution detectors. Many cells contain mechanisms …
Cassini-Huygens
If you’re a kid interested in astronomy, as I was, there are few thrills to compare with your first view of the rings of Saturn. So you can imagine how excited astronomers (and ex-kids like myself) are with the imminent arrival of the International Cassini-Huygens Mission at Saturn. The $3 billion space probe, launched October …
Brain fingerprinting
It sounds like science fiction: strap a few electrodes onto someone’s head and determine whether his or her brain contains certain information. But in fact “brain fingerprinting” is here today. Brain fingerprinting is based on the “ah-ha” response, an involuntary response by the brain to information it has been exposed to before. Dr. Lawrence Farwell, …
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