Well thank you for the kind words, Pietro Michelucci (founder of EyesOnALZ, a crowdsourcing platform designed to accelerate Alzheimer’s research). Pietro is one of 15 project and platform partners we’ve been working with to test and deploy a suite of new citizen science tools.
For the past two years, thanks to support from the National Science Foundation, the SciStarter team has been hard at work building tools, partnerships, and methodologies to help connect millions of citizen scie ...read more
Sex appeals in advertising have a long history, but for good reason? (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Chiseled abs and bikinis can sell just about anything, right? According to the minds behind those Carl’s Jr. ads—and countless others—you’d think that’d be true.
This idea that “sex sells” has hung around for more than a century, and by this point it’s almost accepted as a doctrine. And those are exactly the types of claims researchers love putting to ...read more
This is a guest post by Jake Buehler, who just so happens to be an AAUS certified scientific diver as well as a science writer based in the Seattle area. He blogs over at Sh*t You Didn’t Know About Biology, which is full of his “unrepentantly celebratory insights into life on Earth’s under-appreciated, under-acknowledged, and utterly amazing stories.”
Summer is finally here in the Northern Hemisphere. The days are long, the weather is warm, and t ...read more
This artist’s concept shows the Milky Way and MACS 2129-1 side by side. MACS 2129-1 is only half the Milky Way’s size, but it’s three times as massive as our home galaxy. (Credit: NASA/ESA/Z.Levy/STScl)
Objects in the distant universe appear small and difficult to see – unless they’re sitting behind a cosmic magnifying glass.
That’s exactly the case for MACS 2129-1, a galaxy lensed by a massive foreground galaxy cluster. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, ast ...read more
Photo: flickr/Dallas Krentzel
Is there such a thing as an ugly penis? How about a pretty one? These researchers set out to determine what features are most important for a “good-looking” dong (with a specific application to men who had surgery to correct a penile birth defect). To do so, they had over 100 women rate photos of normal and surgically corrected penises, as well as complete a survey about which features of penile appearance were most important to them. The res ...read more
Various bird eggs on display at Natura Docet Wonderryck Twente in The Netherlands. (Rudmer Zwerver/Shutterstock)
When something is described as egg-shaped, the ubiquitous hen’s egg typically comes to mind. But for birds, eggs come in myriad shapes: owl eggs look like ping-pong balls, hummingbird eggs are shaped like jelly beans, swift eggs are pointed at one end like a pear.
So what’s the reason?
Biologists have been asking that question for quite some time, and their hypotheses ar ...read more
A close-up of moth’s eyes from order Lepidoptera. (Credit: Muhammad Naaim)
Moth eyes and lotus leaves may be important to the future of touch screens.
Researchers from the University of Central Florida and National Taiwan University designed an anti-reflective coating that was inspired by moth eyes. The coating reflects about 10 times less light than the best anti-glare technique in commercial use.
Optical Properties
The ability to see your phone’s display is a competition between ...read more
(Credit: NChamunee/Shutterstock)
Rolling luggage is both a blessing and a curse for hurried travelers. While we no longer need gym-toned biceps to heft our sundries through the airport, the slightest misstep can send a two-wheeled suitcase rocking and spinning into an uncontrollable disaster. Now, scientists think they know why rolling suitcases are so annoyingly unsteady at exactly the wrong times.
French researchers, writing in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, say that ...read more
By: Alexei V. Filippenko and Hugh Hudson
Diagram of a solar eclipse. Credit: Google
On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will trace a shadow over a narrow band of the United States from Oregon to South Carolina. And if you own a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera*, you can become a part of scientific history by joining hundreds of other photographers to make the first crowdsourced image archive of a total solar eclipse from coast to coast.
The “Eclipse Megamovi ...read more
