MIT material scientist and engineer Angela Belcher and her team are figuring out how to use viruses to grow rechargeable batteries. They mix bacteriophages (viruses that normally infect bacteria) with various materials. The bacteriophages self-assemble themselves, and the materials, in orderly layers. The same technique may be able to make everything from solar cells to …
For some reason, I have (or, rather, this blog has) been getting visitor after visitor in the last week or so from Norway–specifically, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. I have no idea why, unless it’s because of the recent spate of Banff pictures (the posting of photos and the surge of Norwegian …
Voyager 1, scientists have confirmed, crossed the termination shock (a shock wave in the solar wind that marks its slowing from supersonic to subsonic speed) on December 16 and is now sending back the first information ever of the helisheath, a transition region at the edge of the solar system. Voyager 1 is expected to …
Here (and in the previous few posts) are the final pictures of Banff I’ll be posting this time around. I end with a photo of the Banff Springs Hotel, because this is where my wife and daughter and I will be returning to at the end of October for the International Wine and Food Festival. …
Here I am, with the Bow Falls in the background. The rather odd perspective is caused by the fact that I set the camera on a low rock and used the timer to take the picture. I’m not really a giant that makes even the grandest of natural wonders look small.
The Bow River valley, from just downstream of the Bow Falls.
A tree clings to the edge of Banff’s Bow Falls.
Blue mountains, yellow leaves, black branches: autumn in Banff.
Another Banff hillside, another Banff forest.
Remember all the excitement about the discovery of the skeleton of a “hobbit,” a small version of a human the discoverers believed to be an example of an entirely separate human species that had evolved in isolation on its island home? There’s some skepticism arising: an Indonesian anthropologist says the “hobbit” was really a microcephalic …
Another gorgeous day in Banff, another gorgeous picture of another gorgeous mountain by another gorgeous photographer…er, maybe I’m getting a little carried away.
Today I walked a bit further along the river than I did earlier in the week so I could take photos of the Bow Falls; I was rewarded with this rainbow.
