(Credit: Anna Kutukova/Shutterstock) While the world’s population is steadily increasing, the number of spoken languages is actually decreasing. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) looked at factors like intergenerational language transmission, total number of speakers and percentage of speakers within a population, and found that about 2,700 of the world’s 6,700 languages, each carrying generations of worldviews and cultural traditions, a ...read more

A shifted version of the Arecibo message transmitted in 1974, showing what it might look like if laid out incorrectly as a 73 x 23 grid instead of 23 x 73. (Credit: Jarmo kivekas) Projects like SETI and Breakthrough Listen are dedicated to spotting the signals extraterrestrials may be sending out into the universe. But there’s an additional side to the story — if E.T. did contact us, would we even be able to understand him? That was the topic of a recent gathering of linguists that ...read more

(Credit: Christos Georghiou/Shutterstock) In 2016, the National Institutes of Health introduced a regulation to address a growing issue in clinical research — sex differences. Until then, most work that relied on animal models tended to use only male critters. The trend was problematic, particularly since any drug therapies based on these studies often worked differently once females were factored into the equation. Since the recent push for more balance, researchers are discovering ...read more

A striking circle of clouds with a bullseye center is seen over Asia in a high-resolution satellite image, and an animation of multiple images NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of a circular swirl of clouds over Lake Balkhash in eastern Kazakhstan on May 22, 2018. (Source: NASA Worldview) We’re accustomed to seeing satellite images of clouds organized in big swirly circles. They are, of course, called cyclones. And, in fact, as I’m writing this post, one of ...read more

Threaten a sea urchin, and you may see it point its spines at you. This defensive response is pretty unremarkable—except for the fact that, if you look closer, you will not see the sea urchin’s eyes. It doesn’t have any. Sea urchins are the only animals that have vision despite “conspicuously lacking eyes,” write Dan-Eric Nilsson, a biologist at the University of Lund in Sweden who studies animal vision, and his colleagues. In a new study, the researchers gave the ...read more

Lava flows from Fissure 8. The lava fountain from the fissure can be seen in the background. Seen on May 28, 2018. Image: USGS What is rapidly becoming the new normal in the lower East Rift Zone of Kīlauea continued over last few days. Fissures in the Leilani Estates and Lanipuna Gardens have waxed and waned, with Fissure 8 taking center stage now, producing ~60 meter (200 foot) lava fountains and a lava flow that moved at ~15 meters per hour. Many other fissures have quieted as has the mul ...read more

Peggy Whitson took her record-setting 8th spacewalk outside the ISS on March 30, 2017. (Credit: NASA Johnson Space Center) Life is all about bubbles. Every cell in your body is a bubble, a membrane holding together a miniature world of organelles, ribosomes, and genetic material. Your body itself is another bubble, a skin wrapped around a wet, salty interior that carries a distant memory of the oceans in which our ancestors lived hundreds of millions of years ago. And our entire planet is a bu ...read more

Steamboat Geyser erupting in March 2018. USGS/YVO. Over the weekend, USGS Volcanoes tweeted this: Again? Yes. @YellowstoneNPS#SteamboatGeyser erupted at 7:33 PM MST. That’s 7 times since March 15. We’ve got a counter on our Yellowstone Volcano Observatory home page. See signal on this @UUSS_Quake_Info webicorder (continuous signal at the bottom). https://t.co/653XydhbWkpic.twitter.com/2c1BogpcbL — USGS Volcanoes🌋 (@USGSVolcanoes) May 28, 2018 If you’re unfa ...read more

An Atlantic article from July 2017 has been widely discussed on Twitter over the past few days. It’s called Power Causes Brain Damage and I remember that it was fairly popular at the time of publication. Its recent revival was prompted I think by Harvey Weinstein’s arrest and more generally the abuses of power revealed by the #MeToo movement. The article itself, of course, dating to the pre-Fall of Weinstein era, isn’t specifically about this. In my view, while power is certai ...read more