Repealing Net Neutrality Could Hurt Online Entrepreneurs
Here are some of the small businesses that stand to suffer from the dissolution of a free and open internet. ...read more
Month: December 2017
Announcing the 2017 Volcanic Event of the Year!
The spattering surface of the lava lake in the Halema’uma’u crater at Kilauea. HVO/USGS The ballots are in and the votes have been counted. Time to count down to the winner of the 2017 Pliny Award for Volcanic Event of the Year. Last year’s champion was Bogoslof in Alaska and its activity continued into 2017, so can we have our first back-to-back champion or did another volcano’s rumblings take the crown? First, some honorable mentions from the voting (which was done wi ...read more
The Banana As We Know It Is Dying…Again
(Credit: Shutterstock) The bananas your grandparents ate were different than the ones you eat today. And the bananas your grandchildren know will probably be entirely different as well. For the moment, we are in the age of the Cavendish, a banana cultivar that accounts for 99 percent of imports to the Western world. But the Cavendish is in trouble. Like its predecessor the Gros Michel, the Cavendish may soon pass from our lives, potentially taking with it an entire industry ...read more
Solar Eclipses Make Waves in the Atmosphere
(Credit: Andrew Preble/Unsplash) When the solar eclipse swept across the continental U.S. in August, it carved a subtle, but noticeable path through our atmosphere. For the first time, researchers confirmed that that moon’s shadow generates a pair of bow waves in Earth’s ionosphere, similar to the wake a boat leaves as it travels through the water. The waves are caused by the sudden drop and rebound in incoming energy from the sun, and they ripple through the atmosphere ahead ...read more
Donny the Drone Desires World Domination…For Its Own Good
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Are You a Directionally Biased Kisser?
(Credit: Shutterstock) Your brain is an organ of two halves – the left side and the right side. And there are many brain functions, such as language skills or which hand you write with, which are organized mostly in one side of the brain or the other. Simple behavioral tests have now allowed us to see how this organization is revealed through biases in how we see and interact with the world – and each other – often without us being aware of it. Examining how people perceive a ...read more
Dozens—Perhaps Even Hundreds—of Lionfish Likely Launched the Atlantic Invasion
The first wave of invaders likely numbered 48 or more, according to new research. (Credit: kzww/Shutterstock) In 1992, Hurricane Andrew ripped it’s way across the southern US. Southern Florida, where Andrew made landfall, was one of the hardest hit areas. It’s estimated that over 100,000 homes were damaged, and 63,000 were destroyed—among them an expensive beachfront house with a very large and memorable aquarium. That aquarium contained six lionfish, and when it br ...read more
Sexting doesn't lead to riskier sex… if you are of a certain age.
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It's time for winter solstice and lights!
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Back to the Moon for Real: A Conversation with Private-Spaceflight Evangelist Charles Miller
The future that never happened: A bustling Mon base as envisioned by a NASA study in 1986. (Credit: NASA/Dennis M. Davidson) NASA’s human spaceflight program has been in a state of uncertainty pretty much from the moment the Apollo 17 crew left the surface of the Moon 45 years ago this month. The Space Shuttle never became the hoped-for workhorse that would makes space access cheap and routine; the International Space Station never became a glorious gateway to deep-space exploration. Now ...read more