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• OMG UFO!

  The British Ministry of Defense is releasing its formerly classified files on UFOs. A really fun site from the British National Archives has the files available for download, along with a hilarious quotation by Churchill—"What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?" There's also a video from Nick Pope, a former MOD UFO investigator who's described, confusingly, as an "expert on the unexplained."
  
  Via New Scientist.
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  • Date: May 14 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• The Cost of Intelligence

  In Tuesday's Science Times, Carl Zimmer grants us access to scientists who are asking the question, "If it's so great to be smart, why have most animals remained dumb?" Researchers hypothesize that any animal with a nervous system can learn, but in the case of the test subjects—good old Drosophila melanogaster—the fast-learning fruit flies (the smarter ones) live on average 15 percent shorter lives than their unschooled counterparts. In his brief response to the story, author and New York Times editorial board member, Verlyn Klinkenborg, reframes the question behind the research by asking whether there is "an adaptive value to limited intelligence." Being smart, it turns out, is often high-priced: "It takes more upkeep, burns more fuel and is slow off the starting line because it depends on learning—a gradual process—instead of instinct. Plenty of other species are able to learn, and one of the things they’ve apparently learned is when to stop." At last, perhaps, evolutionary biology explains the age old adage, "Ignorance is bliss."
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  • Date: May 08 2008
  • Posted by danielriley

• Mushrooms Versus Mushroom Clouds

  We were already impressed with fungi. They gave us penicillin and vision quests, and can turn bland cheese into a delicious blue stilton. Now we hear that a common fungus may be able to clean up battlefields contaminated with radioactive uranium. Is there anything this kingdom of organisms can't do? (The 2002 article from Salon, "How mushrooms will save the world," answers the question in the negative.)
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  • Date: May 05 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• Good News For Penguins

  Between threatened habitats and cultural biases against tap dancing, it's hard out there for a penguin. But, as Monty Python's Terry Jones reports, life just got a lot sunnier for one penguin community. Via VSL.
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  • Date: Apr 28 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• Father Of Chaos Theory Dies

  Edward Lorenz, the father of chaos theory, died of cancer today, April 16, at the age of 90. Lorenz was the first to formalize the idea that tiny variations in initial conditions could set similar, deterministic systems on vastly different courses. A vivid example of this principle was the "butterfly effect": the idea that the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas. In this obituary, a colleague at MIT summed Lorenz up thusly: "By showing that certain deterministic systems have formal predictability limits, Ed...fomented what some have called the third scientific revolution of the 20th century, following on the heels of relativity and quantum physics. ...He was also a perfect gentleman." Both admirable accomplishments. Once in his grave, Lorenz will, of course, turn over in it every time Jeff Goldblum explains chaos theory in Jurassic Park. Photo of the "Lorenz attractor"
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  • Date: Apr 16 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• Fish That Catch Themselves

  Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts have taught fish to "catch themselves." The researchers trained the fish by feeding them in an enclosed area right after playing a certain tone. After two weeks, the fish associated the tone with food and would swim right into the enclosure when they heard the sound: "remote control fish." Being able to call fish into a trap could "bolster depleted fish stocks and reduce the costs of fish farming." That sounds great. We just hope they cite Ernie if this research gets published. Thanks Folkert.
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  • Date: Apr 15 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• Intermission

  There have been new advances recently in the use of soap bubbles to model weather on other planets, and you know what that means: trippy web video.
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  • Date: Apr 10 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• Mad Scientists

  Twenty percent of scientific-community respondents to a new Nature survey admitted to using neuroenhancers like Ritalin and Provigil. The poll comes on the heels of a pair of reports this winter that "brain steroids" run rampant among scientists. Whether this is true or not, it merely takes sauntering around a university library during finals week—where there are no doubt plenty of scientists-in-training—to recognize that at least college students are willing to dabble in brain-boosting enhancements when critical evaluations are on the line. Via Wired
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  • Date: Apr 10 2008
  • Posted by danielriley

• Fifth Grade Fact Check

  An 11-year-old from Michigan identified a labeling faux pas at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History, providing empirical evidence for the one-year-old study by Fox to determine whether you are, in fact, smarter than a fifth grader. While perusing the Tower of Time—a popular exhibit that had been thought to be error-free for nearly 30 years—the young man noticed that the Precambrian period was falsely identified as an era, instead of as the "dimensionless unit of time" that he knew it to be. After notifying the museum via comment card, he was recently informed that his observation was "spot on," and that a swift rectification of the error was in order. Which proves, as the show does, that fifth grade is best at preparing you to subvert both mildly intelligent adults and revered national institutions with a comprehensive knowledge of pedantic details.
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  • Date: Apr 03 2008
  • Posted by danielriley

• Adult Edutainment

  Are you at your desk, hard at work, sending emails and making excel spreadsheets and stuff? Not any more. This little puzzle game from sciencemuseum.org is really diverting. Also, did you know copper conducts heat? (Yeah, we already knew that too.) Thanks Atley.
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  • Date: Apr 01 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice