Atop Earth’s largest active volcano, an alarm bell has tolled unheeded for six decades. In 1958, Scripps Institution climatologist Charles Keeling began making precise measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa Observatory. Back then, Earth’s atmosphere clocked roughly 310 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide. It took just a year for Keeling to spot a now-familiar upward trend.
“You can think of it as taking planetary vital signs,” says Ra ...read more
Our relationship with yeast is like a college friendship that grew beyond keggers and into distinguished adulthood. We’ve partied with our eukaryotic wingmen dating back to at least 7000 B.C., using them in foods and head-spinning libations. In 1680, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, godfather of microscopy, gazed upon yeast for the first time; that’s when we started moving past the party years.
We still throw down with yeast, but we’ve grown up and have jobs now. These days, the fungus i ...read more
Can we improve medical devices by designing them to translate the language of the body? Materials scientist Canan Dagdeviren, who just launched a new research group at MIT, thinks so. Ever since she was a child growing up in Turkey, she’s turned tragedy and loss into research that speaks to hope.
Her inventions suggest that scientists can harvest electricity from the movements of our organs, pick up the first hints of disease from subtle changes in physiological patterns, or track changes ...read more
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1. Yoga today is a mainstream fitness activity; 1 in 5 American adults participates in what most people believe is an ancient practice. Surprise: The yoga you’re going to the mat for isn’t that old.
2. What we generally think of as yoga began in late 19th century India, when leaders of an anti-colonialism movement sought to rally their countrymen to their cause.
3. Some of these men saw yoga, then more of a philosophy, as a non-sectarian, indigenous symbol of India that transcended d ...read more
Even before we’re born, human beings are sensitive to face-like shapes, according to a paper just published in Current Biology.
British researchers Vincent M. Reid and colleagues of the University of Lancaster used lasers to project a pattern of three red dots onto the abdomen of pregnant women. The lasers were bright enough to be visible from inside the womb. The dots were arranged to be either “face-like”, i.e. with two “eyes” above one “mouth”, or in ...read more
Have you heard of the idea that smiling actually makes you joyful? Perhaps you know of the experiment where researchers got people to hold a pen in their mouth, so they had to smile, and it made them find cartoons funnier.
If you’re familiar with this idea, then you’re familar with the work of German psychologist Fritz Strack, who carried out the famous pen-based grinning study, back in 1988.
Now, Strack has just published a new piece, called From Data to Truth in Psychological Sci ...read more
This article was originally posted on August 21, 2013 but we thought this project provided a great way to celebrate World Oceans Day even if you can’t make it to the beach!
Calling all citizen scientists! It doesn’t matter where you are. You can still be an ‘honorary’ diver to help with this project. The idea is simply to look at seafloor photos on your computer and catalogue what you find.
Explore the Sea Floor is part of the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) usi ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
SecondMuse, an agency that collaborates with organizations to help solve complex problems, looked to the latest drone and 360 video technologies to help showcase aquaculture — the farming of aquatic life-forms — in Tanzania.
Last year, the Blue Economy Challenge awarded 10 projects for their creative uses of aquaculture. Led by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s InnovationXchange, in partnership with SecondMuse, the goal was to awa ...read more
