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Editor’s Note: In 2012 REALscience rolled out a new feature — Science Ditty Friday. Each and every Friday we’ll compile a song (preferably with accompanying video) to kick your weekend off with a musical start. And there will be a more detailed explanation of the science in the lyrics to boot. Have a favorite science song? Send it to ditty@realscience.us.
When “Nice”...
Golden orbweaver spiders from Madagascar secrete the only spider silk that is gold in color, not white. And now a five-year project to create a cape is finished and on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. This is the first spider silk textile made since the late 19th Century.Nicholas Godley and Simon Peers with Their Spider Silk Cape
Clothing designer Nicholas Godley designed the...
For those expecting President Barack Obama to expound on the accomplishments of his laundry list of science and innovation policy he outlined in last year’s State of the Union, there were a few nods to but no specifics in this third State of the Union address on Tuesday evening.
As Forbes reported this morning for those interested in science and science policy the President’s address “offered...
As a precaution planes that travel over the North Pole are being rerouted. Satellites are bracing for a direct hit and technicians are watching energy grids with unblinking eyes. The reason for all the hub-bub is a big solar storm. The Space Weather Prediction Center issued a warning on Monday when the sun released a coronal mass ejection and sent it hurtling toward Earth.
At first blush, the NOAA-run...
After several deaths of people in Cambodia, Vietnam and China recently, the bird flu is making a comeback in public discourse. Concerns are growing about the H5N1 strain of the influenza virus. A few years ago the world-sweeping swine flu stole headlines but the bird flu, which is much more virulent than it’s porcine cousin, has been spreading from poultry to people.
An 18-year-old duck farmer...
Editor’s Note: To mark the new year REALscience is rolling out a new feature — Science Ditty Friday. Each and every Friday we’ll compile a song (preferably with accompanying video) to kick your weekend off with a musical start. And there will be a more detailed explanation of the science in the lyrics to boot. Have a favorite science song? Send it to ditty@realscience.us.
The official...
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences gave an important math prize to two U.S. mathematicians for their pioneering work in harmonic analysis.
Professor Anders Bjorner from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm says, “These are two of the best problem-solvers alive and even on an historic scale this is totally unique that so many important problems have been solved by individuals as...
Beaches along the coasts of Washington and Oregon are treasure troves of flotsam for avid beachcombers. But one scientist says that what’s on its way to the west coast is unprecedented and those areas are totally unprepared.
Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer is a self-proclaimed expert on manmade stuff that floats the ocean blue. He even wrote the book on it, called Flotsametrics and the Floating...
Right now there are about one million magnetized atoms involved in one bit of information. A bit is defined as a variable that can have only two possible values, 1 or 0. In computing those values are interpreted as binary digits. And IBM just lowered that minimum threshold from one million to 12.
For years computer scientists have been trying to figure out how small a storage device can be before...
Samantha Garvey wants to be a marine biologist and the science-focused 17 year old is now one of 61 finalists from Long Island in the Intel Science & Engineering Fair for her pioneering work with mussels.
But the real story of this scientist-in-training is that she is able to excel in the classroom as an honor’s student without all the creature comforts of home. In fact, the teen and her...
Every few years biologists struggling to understand the evolutionary constraints placed on the largest and smallest of animals happen upon — usually by accident– a new contender. But that little creature then gets replaced by the next littlest critter. The competition goes on and biologists now find themselves measuring the smallest spined animals in tenths of millimeters.
The latest find...
For years, scientists have been talking about the era of personalized medicine. While many preparations are underway, the biggest hurdle to widespread adoption has been the prohibitive cost to read a person’s entire DNA. Our genetic code provides a full road map to preventing and treating disease. We just don’t know how to read it yet.
Since the first entire human genome was sequenced...
Leann Lloyd had the dubious honor of lugging a metallic rock through airport security in Missouri. She was on her way back to Albuquerque and the Meteorite Museum at University of New Mexico after retrieving the missing meteorite.
She says, “It stopped the line and caused a big hub-bub and three or four agents came over and pulled it out.”
The meteorite isn’t that big but because...
Maggie Arias is on her way to becoming the next iTunes sensation. The Atlanta-area 6th Grader is not your typical pop princess though. She uses “thermosphere” in her song, Aurora, which pays tribute to the beauty and power of the Northern Lights.
When her teacher asked each student to become an expert on a science subject they studied last semester and teach the class, young Maggie chose...
In 2006 bees began disappearing. Entomologists have never been exactly able to pinpoint the cause of syndrome, which they now call colony collapse disorder. It occurs when the worker bees abandon the hive and the whole system falls apart. No one knows why the bees leave. Some have suggested they get disoriented and can’t find their way back home. After studying fungus, chemicals, environmental...
Recently scientists in Australia discovered that two species of sharks are interbreeding. The common black-tip shark and the Australian black-tip shark have started producing hybrid sharks. Marine biologists in Queensland say they’ve found 57 sharks so far.
The common black-tip shark is found around the world in subtropical and temperate ocean waters while the smaller Australian black-tip shark...
Hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking to reach deep pockets of natural gas seems to be the culprit behind a small earthquake that shook Youngstown, Ohio on Saturday. By Monday, state lawmakers had imposed a two-week ban on drilling while the latest quake is investigated.
Since the epicenter of the 4.0 quake is less than one-tenth of a mile from an injection drilling site, many feel confident that...
For many, 2011 was the year of Steve Jobs. His bright, creative light went dark. His legacy of innovation and creativity lives on in the products of Apple and the people who work there. But his reach extends much further. Political scientists, business gurus and pop culture junkies are still calculating exactly how big of an impact Jobs had on shaping modern society. And despite his death, I don’t...
If it’s December it’s time to count the birds. For 112 years the National Audubon Society has been documenting the avian world with its annual Christmas Bird Count. The oldest citizen science (and longest running) project now utilizes the bird-spotting expertise of over 60,000 volunteers from around the country.
The task is simple. Go outside and count birds. Then add your observations...
Rosie Redfield is no shrinking violent. The outspoken University of British Columbia microbiologist always seems to have a wild hair about something. This year it ran the gamut from a fight over mailing flu cells to England using FedEx to her efforts showing scientific journals acting irresponsibly by limiting access to research in the Internet age.
Rosie Redfield, at Home in the LabBut last year,...
A new theory posits that an instantaneous light burst at the moment of Jesus’ resurrection left the imprint of his image in the cloth used to bury him.
Just in time for what believers call a Christmas miracle, a team of Italian scientists has concluded that the cloth believed to hold the image of Jesus at the moment of his resurrection was not faked. They studied the chemical properties of...
It’s almost Christmas and the value of the gifts of the Three Wise Men is on the rise. For those not remembering the Nativity story the Three Wise Men brought three items, gold, frankincense and myrrh to the birth of baby Jesus. Quite valuable way back when, the three items are still quite rare today.
Boswellia Tree Hangs in the BalanceGold increased 20 percent in value this year while price...
Just a couple of weeks after announcing the discovery of a planet within a distant solar system that is orbiting in what astronomers called the habitable zone for life, another exciting announcement adds two more confirmed planets to the list.
Since its launch in 2009, the Kepler Space Telescope has been scanning hundreds of thousands of distant stars, looking for the slightest wobble, which would...
