Science

Do You Live In A Flu Epidemic Zone?

Using the deadly SARS flu outbreak as a template, researchers have created a model that can predict the spread emerging global epidemics. A team of researchers in the US and Europe incorporated travel and census data from 3100 urban areas and 220 countries to figure out where a virus would travel and how fast. The…

Four Theories About Creatures from High-Gravity Worlds

Don’t support crappy science fiction where every planet has the same gravity as Earth. Astronomers say the planets most likely to support life are ten times the size of Earth. When we finally meet aliens, they’ll envy the spring in our step. Movies and other media are squandering the awesome story potential of creatures from…

Wi-Fi Signals Might Cause Childhood Autism (or Not)

Get scared! According to a new study published this week in the Australasian Journal of Clinical Environmental Medicine, Wi-Fi might be linked to the growing number of cases of childhood autism. Dr. George Carlo, who led the study, said, “The electromagnetic radiation apparently causes the metals to be trapped in cells, slowing clearance and accelerating…

Doctored Photographs Can Rewire How the Brain Remembers

People in Rome remember the 2004 anti-war protest as peaceful. But when university students in the United States looked at photographs of the protest later, they called it violent and disturbing. What happened? Was it a cultural gap? No — it was a doctored photograph, much like the ones the New York Times ran of…

Raytheon Heals the World, Immunosurveillance Cures Cancer

Here are your science headlines for this lovely Monday morning. Let’s start with a little global healing from your pals at Raytheon, the company best know for making the Phalanx (pictured at left), surveillance devices, and reconnaissance gadgets. Apparently the Green Building Council has awarded Raytheon’s new Wartime Protection Center in Alabama a “silver” badge…

Distilling the Tar From Two Cartons of Cigarettes

At this point, everybody knows that cigarettes are bad for you. It’s not like a smoker is going to hear that cigarettes cause cancer and be shocked enough to quit; they know what they’re doing. But in this video, in which someone with a homemade setup distills the tar from two cartons of cigarettes, is…

Roaches Follow Robot Overlords to Certain Doom, Studies Show

According to actual scientific research, a robotic Pied Piper can lead a flock (gaggle?) of roaches out of a secure location and into the open, where they could technically be exterminated more easily. José Halloy, a biology researcher at the Free University of Brussels, was lead author on a paper published today in Science, wherein…

United Nations Urges Human Rights for Clones (Sort Of)

Now that human clones are everywhere, how should we treat them? It’s not just Clonaid asking anymore. The United Nations has just released a policy report saying that if we cannot reach global consensus on banning human cloning, we’ll have to cope with a world full of human clones. And you know what that means.…

Indonesia to West: We Will Trade Virus for Your Vaccine

Indonesia is refusing to hand over its flu viruses to Western researchers, and that means flu vaccines this year may be less effective. Flu shots are basically created on a gamble that that popular Asian virus strains will come West by winter flu season. Epidemiologists study Asian viruses, predict which strains will come West, and…

CAVEman Creates Amazing, Gigantic 4D Holograms of the Human Body

A team of medical researchers up at the University of Calgary in Alberta has spent the last six years working on a remarkable “4D” hologram system called CAVEman. Combining data from CT scans, X-rays, biopsies and other medical tests, it creates a gigantic, realistic model of a patient’s body. It’s supposed to help doctors see…

China Will Win The Next Space Race

What will it take to launch another space age to replace the one that ended with the Cold War? Maybe another space race. China is ramping up its efforts to put people back on the Moon, launch more lunar orbiters, and build its own space station. Already, China is challenging the U.S.’ domination of space…

The Truth About Prehistoric Potatoes and Mini Skirts

Our ancestors loved to dress up nice and go out for tubers, according to two new studies of ancient human living areas. So thousands of years ago we weren’t going all 2001, with guys in ratty cloaks grunting. In fact, the prehistoric world wasn’t full of guys with spears hunting meat at all, but instead…

Astronomers were warning an asteroid (a comet?) was due to swerve closer to Earth than any large object since the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs — in just a few days. They were all set to issue an “emergency email” and start going on television telling people not to panic too much. At the…

Weather Engineers Remove CO2 From Atmosphere, Stop Global Warming

Some Harvard scientists suggest that we could turn back the clock on global warming by sucking CO2 out of the air and de-acidifying the oceans. Says weather engineer Kurt Zenz House: The technology involves selectively removing acid from the ocean in a way that might enable us to turn back the clock on global warming…

The Boston Globe has a great roundup of new mega-telescopes that will literally change the way we see the universe.

Tesla Coils Playing the Mario Bros Theme are Unsurprisingly Awesome

I’m as surprised as you are that this is the second video-game-themed Tesla coil post I’m doing in as many days, but this is too cool to pass up. These two Tesla coils are playing the original Mario Bros theme song – and there are no speakers involved. https://gizmodo.com/awesome-red-alert-tesla-coil-makes-quick-work-of-allied-318822 Twin Solid State Musical Tesla coils…

Harnessing Entire Galaxies for Energy? Maybe in a Few Thousand Millennia.

Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York, has a pretty mindblowing article in the latest issue of Cosmos on how super-advanced civilizations across the universe might be able to harness the power of stars and galaxies and survive indefinitely. Using the basic laws of physics as a guide, he posits…

High Speed Laser Kills Virus Without Damaging Healthy Cells

A new high speed pulsing laser developed by Arizona State physics professor Kong-Thon Tsen and his son Shaw-Wei Tsen, a pathology student at Johns Hopkins, has succeeded in killing a common virus without damaging the healthy surrounding cells. The laser utilizes the principle of “forced resonance” by vibrating the shell of a virus to “crack”…

A Fully-Functioning Nanotube Radio

A team of researchers at UC Berkeley have invented a radio made of a single carbon nanotube. The device is just a few billionths of a meter in size – so small that it could fit inside a living cell, or float along in your bloodstream. According to physicist and project lead Alex Zettl, who…

Future People Will Have Nicer Wobbly Bits

In just a thousand years, evolution will turn us all into supermodels, says British evolutionary psychologist and media whore Oliver Curry. That’s because “sexual selection” naturally means that only people with the nicest faces and genitals get to produce babies — which anybody who’s been to a baby shower will totally back up. Says Curry:…