A seemingly cheap and ordinary technology may have paved the way for a cultural exchange breakthrough that saw South Korean K-pop idols receive an unprecedented welcome from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
It was not the first time that democratic South Korea has sent music acts to North Korea as part of diplomatic overtures to the authoritarian regime. In 1999, two pioneering K-pop groups, including the girl group Fin.K.L. and the boy band Sechskies, performed in the North Kore ...read more
When NASA launched John Glenn on its first ever orbital mission in 1962, there was a pretty realistic chance that he was going to die. Not because the agency was taking an unnecessary risk. It wasn't; every element of the flight was tested and proven to a point where everyone, Glenn included, was confident. But still, it was the early 1960s and rockets had a nasty habit of blowing up. With that in mind, a memo reached Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson on January 16, 1962. It was from O. B ...read more
By: Julia Travers
Scientists need your help to find out what ants in your neighborhood like to eat.
Would you ask an ant to join you for lunch? A team of researchers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh calls on citizen scientists around the world to flip the picnic concept – they want *us* to feed the ants. By counting ants, recording their meal preferences, and sending in data, you can help Dr. Magdalena Sorger and her colleagues better understand what foods ants have access t ...read more
If you had to guess, you'd probably say that people who watch a lot of pornography are less likely to be religious. And you'd be right -- to a point. But according to this study, which looked at the connection between porn viewing and later religiosity, there actually appeared to be a more complicated relationship between porn and religious sentiments. More specifically, people who watched no porn were likely to be religious, and religious levels declined with more frequent porn use up to "o ...read more
CO₂ averaged about 410 parts per million in the atmosphere during the last week of March. Ten years ago, it averaged ~387 ppm in that week.
I spotted the animation above on Twitter the other day. It illustrates the growth of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in a novel and particularly compelling way, so I thought I'd share it here.
The animation shows how the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has changed week-by-week and year-by-year starting at t ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine