Archive for the ‘Sci-Fact’ Category
Not sure how I feel about this. Wired has a report today that Dr. Michael Mithoefer and nurse Anne Mithoefer have gotten a $500,000 grant to see if soldiers with PTSD can be treated by giving them Ecstasy. Don’t want to be a prude here, but isn’t Ecstasy largely not understood, and what is understood [...]
In researching my new novel, I’ve been following International Space Station cosmonaut Maksim Suraev’s blog (kindly translated by the good folks at RT). Suraev’s blog is a fascinating window into life at zero-g, and he’s got a great, easy manner and a good sense of humor — two essential things when you’re cooped up in [...]
I think Google’s 20% time program is one of the most genius innovations in the history of business. Look, if we’re going to live in an evil imperialist late-capitalist society, at least there’s Google giving people some time to think creatively while on the job. Here’s one result of that 20% time: Liquid Galaxy. Basically, [...]
Journalist Lisa Katayama recently had her brain scanned and wrote an article for Popular Science describing the experience. Basically, scientist can stick you in an fMRI, present you with a simple black-and-white shape, and then, “reading” your visual cortex, recreate a shaky, pixelated version of that image. Depending on your outlook, your reaction may be [...]
I started following Mythbusters on Twitter–literally the only tweets I follow–and they led me this afternoon to this exquisitely beautiful picture of a solar corona, via Discovery News: Here, according to Discovery News, is what a solar corona is, exactly: The solar corona is the magnetically dominated atmosphere of the sun, reaching millions of miles into [...]
I love literature; I’ve pretty much devoted my life to its creation and study; I’ve no regrets. And yet. Sometimes, when perusing the pages of the New York Times, it’s not the stories about writers and their cock-eyed theories that make my heart well with amazement and joy. (Take a look at this utterly homophobic [...]
GeekDad posted today about three “monsters”: three recently discovered members of the animal kingdom that range from the cool to the terrifying to the gorge-inducing. In that order: Cool: The Spanish ribbed newt. This little darlings have a gobsmacking defense mechanism: they can invert their ribs, aiming the pointy ends outward to perforate the palette [...]
A week or so ago I Facebook’d about regretting not having sold my soul to corporate America in my 20s, so that I could shoot myself into space now, like that Cirque de Soleil dude. Well, the regrets just keep piling up: according to a post on Wired, an auction to be held at the [...]
Just incredible: feast your eyes upon images scientists took of memories in the process of being formed. What you’re seeing above is the formation of a long-term memory. More specifically, you’re seeing proteins between the “pre- and post-synapse” synthesizing. That chemical reaction is what causes memories to be retained in the long term. But how? [...]
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