This is pretty amazing: A pocket-sized device that runs on two AA batteries and copies DNA as accurately as expensive lab equipment has been developed by researchers in the US. The device has no moving parts and costs just $10 to make. It runs polymerase chain reactions (PCRs), to generate billions of identical copies of …
The science of sleep was one of my earliest column topics, way back in 1991. And why not? After all, as I pointed out then, sleep is so important birds, fish, reptiles and mammals all do it, we spend a third of our lives doing it, and if we don’t do it, we die. Like …
Well, that went pretty well. McNally-Robinson did indeed have Lost in Translation (already signed, though, since I signed their entire stock on my last trip up here), A Safe and Prosperous Future and Genetics Demystified on hand. I signed two or three books and talked to several school librarians, so it was all good. And …
So here I am at the Saskatoon Inn, due to go down in a couple of hours and take part in an Author Signing Coffee House as part of the Saskatchewan School Library Association Conference getting underway here, along with lots of other Saskatchewan writers: Rebecca Grambo, Byrna Barclay, Dave Glaze, Linda Aksomitis, Rod MacIntyre, …
Very few violinists ever get to play a Stradivarius, but maybe they can still get the sound: Researchers at Manchester University claim to have a solution for all those string players who wish their cheap violins could sound like a Strad. According to an article in the London Guardian, the researchers have developed an electronic …
My kind of workout.
From the CBC: James Doohan’s ashes headed for orbit Plans are on schedule for the remains of Star Trek actor James Doohan to head to a final frontier on Saturday. The Vancouver-born actor’s ashes are to be launched into suborbital space on a rocket launched from a private desert spaceport near Upham, N.M.So which is …
In view of the fact that quantum physics seems to suggest that reality doesn’t exist until it is observed, and since great portions of the universe are currently unobservable by humans, I’m thinking of creating a T-shirt with the slogan: GOD: Observing reality so you don’t have to. What do you think?
For the past 17 years, my science column (which continues to run weekly in the Regina Leader Post) also ran, at first weekly, then every other week, on CBC Radio’s Afternoon Edition here in Saskatchewan. As of two weeks ago, however, my CBC focus has changed to matters World Wide Webbish.I still write them up …
A Cambridge University security researcher has demonstrated the ability to read text and capture images from flat-screen displays…through as many as three intervening walls. Well, that’s unnerving.
Phillips says it can build a video display that would consist of a piece of fabric covered with fur: Here’s how it works: imagine the fabric is red and the hair is blue. With the hairs lying flat obscuring the fabric beneath, the pixel looks blue. But applying an electrostatic charge causes the hairs to …
Gress Aerospace has plans for an automobile-sized single seat vertical take-off and landing aircraft. In SF circles, we call that an “aircar.”
