Mapping commercial sea routes in the Arctic Sea
Map of potential Arctic Sea shipping routes…..Credit: UCLA Last year (2012) 46 ships made the journey over what used to be considered the mythical “Northwest Passage” – they sailed through the Arctic...
View ArticleePSC: A new type of pluripotent stem cell
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco have discovered a new type of stem cell. This does not happen every day, guaranteed. In fact, this discovery is potentially very important....
View ArticleCRE: A killer coming to a critical care facility near you
It is not pandemic, not yet, but the spread of a particular form of drug resistant bacteria is serious enough to warrant this March 6 statement from Dr. Thomas Frieden the head of the United States...
View ArticleGlia brain cells: Not just infrastructure
So many stories about this recent neuroscience research begin with – “human brain cells make mice smarter” – and miss the point of the research almost entirely. It’s not about mice. It’s about a type...
View ArticleEpigenetics ‘leaks’ into trans-generational inheritance
One of the bigger and most important ‘debates’ in biology – both now and in the past – is whether adaptations made for the environment of a single individual can be inherited by its offspring. This is...
View Article“Gray Mars” and the stuff of life
Rover Curiosity’s bore hole in Mars rock, note color change from reddish to gray Scientific knowledge requires a process of confirmation, for example, scientists have believed for decades that Mars...
View ArticleBig Telescopes: ALMA already on the job
Some of the ALMA antenna array at Atacama….Credit: ESO Today, March 13, 2013 marks the official ‘opening’ of the world’s largest telescope, ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array). As the...
View ArticleMicro-endoscope: A visual probe as thin as hair
A schematic of the micro-endoscope….Credit: Joseph Kahn, Stanford University The endoscope, a thinish, flexible tube with a light and image sensor or lenses at the probe end, is an indispensable tool...
View ArticlePlanck’s Universe
Cosmic Microwave Background radiation map of the Universe…Credit: ESA, Planck Collaboration The big news for this week and I do mean big as in as big as the whole Universe, is a new collation and...
View ArticleGetting your head around huge brain projects
As the ‘thinking’ goes – a billion here, a few billions there and eventually we’ll know how the brain works. The billions are Euros and dollars. The “there” are two projects aimed at learning how the...
View ArticleFrederick Sanger: Gone and should not be forgotten
If you don’t know about Fred Sanger, it’s not surprising. He was a quiet man, far more interested in his work than in recognition. In today’s world of media hypertrophy, that work generally gets a...
View ArticleConfirmation: Element 115
The thing about new elements these days is they don’t exist in nature. They’re a product of human research. A ‘new’ element, dubbed ununpentium with the symbol Uup, was first “discovered” (read:...
View ArticleSynaptic transmission: Another step illuminated
Illustration of neural exo and endo cytosis. Credit: U of UtahMany people, including neuroscientists, refer to the patterns of neurons in the brain and elsewhere in the body as “wiring.” It’s a...
View ArticleLife on Mars: Curiosity finds a promising lake bed
After about two decades of poking around Mars, it’s clear that scientists don’t expect to find life, certainly not on the surface [SciTechStory: Life on Mars: If it exists, is below the surface]. There...
View ArticleSci-Fi Movie Review: Pacific Rim
[Pacific Rim. Released July 1, 2013. Directed by Guillermo del Toro, Writers Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham. DVD/Blu-Ray released. As usual, this “post-viewing review” contains many...
View ArticleSci-Fi Movie Review: Elysium
[Elysium. Released August 9, 2013. Directed by Neill Blomkamp, Writers: Neill Blomkamp. DVD/Blu-Ray released. As usual, this “post-viewing review” contains spoilers.]What to make of a shoot-em-up...
View ArticleWhat do we lose as large carnivores disappear?
A world without top predators? Wolves, for example….Credit: Doug McLaughlin, Oregon State UniversityGlobally, we are losing our large carnivores. That is the central conclusion of a large...
View ArticlePeer reviewed climate change deniers
Sometimes overwhelming numbers are a stand-in for credibility (or the lack of it). Consider these figures of published peer reviewed papers compiled by James Lawrence Powell*:November 2012 through...
View ArticleFlow batteries: For when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine
The Harvard prototype organic flow battery….Credit: SEASA team of scientists and engineers at Harvard tackled the problem of storing electricity from short term or irregular energy sources, such as...
View ArticleBlack Holes, Steven Hawking, Oh My
According to much of the media, Steven Hawking says there’s no such thing as a black hole. This sounds really rad but is the media reflecting celebrity and titillating terminology rather than substance...
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