Chemistry, Walter White once said, is the study of change. Apply the right combination of materials and heat, electricity, or light — some kind of energy — and the results can literally be explosive.
In their quest to manipulate matter, scientists have explored different ways of poking molecules to see how they react. According to a paper that appeared in the journal Nature this week, they’ve found a new one, and possibly the most cartoonish one yet: using tiny anvils to liter ...read more
We're no better than monkeys when it comes to advertising. Or, perhaps it's better said that they're no better than us.
In a clever study, researchers showed rhesus macaques brand logos (which were just random images to them) paired with a picture of either a high-status male monkey, a low-status male monkey, or female monkey genitals to see if they could elicit preferences in them. In short, they were trying out one of the oldest tricks in the advertising world — selling p ...read more
On January 24, University of British Columbia geneticist Dave Ng tweeted, "It's always interesting to me how kids react when they find out I'm a scientist who also does artistic things (like they can't co-exist or something). Would love to start a thread where other scientists share their artistic tendencies. #scienceartmix."
Ng posted some of his own visual art and writing, and invited others to chime in. Musicians, painters, dancers and more eagerly joined the da ...read more
Given all the money spent on advertising, it’s no wonder there are stereotypes about iPhone and Android users. But are these real? Is there anything you can predict about me just from knowing whether I use an iPhone or Android (and vice versa – can you predict my phone choice from my personality)? Well, according to these researchers, there really are population differences between iPhone and Android users: if I told them I used an iPhone, they would guess that I’m younger, fem ...read more
In recent days, two powerful storms packing hurricane-force winds have spun up in the North Atlantic. You can watch them in the animation above of GOES-16 satellite imagery. It was posted to the awesome GOES-16 Loop of the Day website.
The storm closer to North America was so strong that it churned the waters up into stupendous waves higher than 60 feet tall:
https://twitter.com/NWSOPC/status/965872247864004608
That would be almost high enough to inundate the White House.
Here ...read more
It turns out more than just Apple employees are crashing into the Apple campus. (Seriously, they're running into its glass walls)
A drone pilot recently crashed a drone at Apple Park — Apple's spaceship-like headquarters in Cupertino, California. Unfortunately, the pilot didn't know where the precious drone crash-landed, so he recruited a fellow drone operator to help. Matthew Roberts, known for his drone videos documenting the development of Apple Park, and his DJI Ph ...read more
Many of us are familiar with the phrases “water is life” and “every drop counts,” but may still take our access to clean water for granted. Not until incidents like the lead poisoning of Flint residents or Cape Town running out of water do we become truly thankful for being able to turn on our taps and immediately drink the water that comes out of them. Incidents like those in Flint and Cape Town serve as constant reminders of how precious water is and that we should do w ...read more
For all its precise helical structure, the DNA inside our cells is a mess.
When a cell isn't preparing for the process of splitting itself in two, our DNA lies in a massive tangle inside the cell nucleus; a strand more than six feet in length jumbled like an earbud cord. But when it comes time to undergo cellular division, this disorderly strand must be packaged neatly into chromosomes to be passed onto daughter cells — stuffed into a space much tighter than before.
Around and Around
To ...read more
If you still think Neanderthals were dull-witted brutes, you simply aren’t woke.
In 1856, laborers in a limestone quarry in Germany’s Neander Valley unearthed a skull cap that belonged to our closest evolutionary ancestor, and from the start we asserted our intellectual superiority over our thick-skulled cousins. To this day, the hunched-over, doltish caveman stereotype persists, an image that likely stems from Marcellin Boule’s reconstruction of a mostly complete, geriatric N ...read more
