Azhdarchids

Giant 16 foot tall pterosaurs sound kind of scary to me.  Still, interesting regardless.

 (from National Geographic)

 

Clone Vikings

“We can clone vikings now.” ~ Meg

I feel that I cannot say it any better than Meg did in her email that presented this article to me.  I don’t know if I really want there to be any cloned vikings.  I seem to recall learning that they were rather savage and violent people.

Merging Science with other disciplines

Science provides us with significant and important tools for observing and understanding the world but scientific thinking is not the only way in which we, as humans, are capable and/or choose to look at the world.  Often times I feel that as people we are quick to define separations of differing disciplines, as seeing incompatibility.  How could scientific thinking and experimenting have anything to do with literary criticism?  Why would we want to lump things like physics and chemistry in with the arts and humanities?  having minored in philosophy, and thus having a self proclaimed love of the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge, I think that it is of vital importance that we take what we may at first hand see as differing disciplines and find ways to incorporate them with each other.  Two recently encountered articles delve into this kind of thinking and I greatly enjoy them and the goals of the people behind them.  The first was brought to my attention by Evan and is from The Boston Globe.  The second appeared today in the New York Times.  Both are excellent and spark some great thinking.  I feel that the merger of science and arts needs to also go further with mergers in science and religion or at least concepts of faith (and note this is coming from a self described non-theist).

Yay for More Humpback Whales!

In a day and age where it seems we are constantly hearing distressing news regarding the decline of various species it is a bit of a breath of fresh air to hear that humpback whale populations have made dramatic increase over the past forty plus years or so.  This AP article appearing in Discovery News gives the details.  Considering that these whales were once on the brink of extinction due to whaling this is some really exciting news.  Now lets see if we can help save some other creatures like honey bees and polar bears.

Images from Mars

NASA’s Phoenix Lander touched down on the red planet this past Sunday beginning a mission to study Mar’s polar region, including permafrost analysis in hopes of finding evidence of life.  Discovery News provides us with a good slide show of some of the first images the probe beamed back to Earth.  Very cool stuff.

I Love Walruses

They are just awesome animals.  Enough said.

Seeing in More Colors

researchers have found that Mantis Shrimp see in more colors than most animals.  These strange crustaceans (which are not actually true shrimp) see into the ultraviolet, infrared, and polarized light.  Read about it in this National Geographic article.  Interestingly they are pretty colorful critters themselves.

Big Bugs

Personally I would not be very thrilled to find any insects as large as this in a box.

 (from National Geographic)

This Day in Science

On May 16th 1960 scientists demonstrated the first working laser.  Since then lasers have been elevated to a grand level as a piece of both pragmatic and entertaining technology.  Without lasers we wouldn’t have CDs and DVDs.  Without lasers some super precise measurements would be nearly impossible.  Without lasers kids wouldn’t have their annoying laser pointer key chains that they use to annoy teachers and try and blind one another.  All I have to say is what a great invention. 

Graphene, a future of super strong materials?

I first heard about graphene some month back but didn’t really pay all that much attention to it then.  But it seems like lately discussion of the stuff is turning up more and more. Graphene is atom thing sheets of carbon in which the atoms are arranged in a design like chicken wire.  It is suppose to even stronger than diamond (which, as you may be aware, is also made of carbon).  Graphene can be used to make carbon nano-tubes which are also generating a lot of publicity in the science and manufacturing world lately.  This Discovery New article this morning provides some good details on graphene and some of its potential future uses.  Who doesn’t love this nano-tech shit?