For the microscopic lab worm C elegans, life equates to just a few short weeks on Earth. The bowhead whale, on the other hand, can live over two hundred years. Why are these lifespans so different? And what does it really mean to age
anyway? Joao Pedro de Magalhaes explains why the pace of ageing varies greatly across animals.
Lesson by Joao Pedro de Magalhaes, animation by Sharon Colman — via Youtube
Poisoning has always been a popular method of getting rid of one’s enemies, but is there actually a perfect
poison capable of being completely undetectable? Here are six of the poisons that have confounded doctors throughout history — via Youtube
Don’t feel bad. You don’t suck, the game makers do — via Youtube
This question vexed Darwin — and now we have a fascinating answer — via Youtube
Among living things, the color blue is oddly rare. Blue rocks, blue sky, blue water, sure. But blue animals? They are few and far between. And the ones that do make blue? They make it in some very strange and special ways compared to other colors. In this video, we’ll look at some very cool butterflies to help us learn how living things make blue, and why this beautiful hue is so rare in nature — via Youtube
Already replete with sharks, crocodiles, snakes and poisonous jellyfish galore, Australia may also be home to arsonist birds that spread fire so they can feed on animals as they flee.
The belief that birds like the Whistling Kite, Black Kite and Brown Falcon spread grass fires goes back so far that it’s commemorated in indigenous ceremonial dances, according to Bob Gosford, a co-author of this paper in the Journal of Enthnobiology.
The paper posits that the behaviour isn’t accidental: Most accounts and traditions unequivocally indicate intentionality on the part of three raptor species and a handful provide evidence of cooperative fire-spreading by select individuals from within larger fire-foraging raptor assemblages
, it notes.
And while the researchers’ main interest was to confirm and document those stories, Gosford told Vulture South the research is also important to understanding how fire spreads in Australia.
This may give us cause to re-examine fire history, and the conduct of fire in this country,
Gosford said — via The Register
— via Youtube
At first glance this crocheted blanket just looks like a pretty pattern. But it is actually so much more! The blanket maps out climate change over the course of the past 130 years. Each hexagon represents a single year and the colours represent the change from the mid century average.
This ingenious data visualization blanket is the brainchild of Lara Cooper. By day, Cooper is a wildlife conservation biologist. But when she isn’t in the lab she runs Level Up Nerd Apparel, an online store where she makes and sells nerdy apparel. This project was the perfect way for her to put both of those skills together — via Make: Zine
In Lancaster, California, there’s a musical road. When you drive over it, it plays the William Tell Overture. Unfortunately, it’s out of tune. Here’s why — via Youtube
— via Youtube
— via Youtube
Australian researchers have developed a new superglue-like substance that can be squirted onto wounds — even internal ones — to seal them within seconds, potentially revolutionising treatment in war zones and at the site of car crashes.
The gel works like the regular bathroom sealant commonly used for tiling, but is made from a natural elastic protein.
You can just squirt it onto a wound site, zap it with light and the whole thing sets in a matter of seconds,
University of Sydney biochemistry professor Anthony Weiss said — via ABC News
— via Youtube
Why Christopher Nolan is obsessed with Shepard tones — via Youtube
I can show a brighter pink. I can show a more saturated pink. But I can’t show you this pink. Not quite. More about Stuart Semple and his pigments — via Youtube
Ancient Roman concrete marine structures built thousands of years ago are stronger now than when they were first built.
So how has Roman concrete outlasted the empire, while modern concrete mixtures erode within decades of being exposed to seawater?
Scientists have uncovered the chemistry behind how Roman sea walls and harbour piers resisted the elements, and what modern engineers could learn from it.
Romans built their sea walls from a mixture of lime (calcium oxide), volcanic rocks and volcanic ash, a study, published in the journal American Mineralogist, found.
Elements within the volcanic material reacted with sea water to strengthen the concrete structure and prevent cracks from growing over time.
It’s the most durable building material in human history, and I say that as an engineer not prone to hyperbole,
Roman monument expert Phillip Brune told the Washington Post — via redwolf.newsvine.com
When radium was first discovered, its luminous green colour inspired people to add it into beauty products and jewelry. It wasn’t until much later that we realized that radium’s harmful effects outweighed its visual benefits. Unfortunately, radium isn’t the only pigment that historically seemed harmless or useful but turned out to be deadly. JV Maranto details history’s deadliest colours — via Youtube
Forensic scientists say they have been overwhelmed by the number of people wanting to donate their corpses to the southern hemisphere’s first body farm.
The secret bushland facility on the outskirts of Sydney is being used to study how human bodies decompose.
It was established in early 2016 by Professor Shari Forbes, a forensic scientist from the University of Technology Sydney.
We’re not CSI, we don’t solve investigations in an hour, but we can solve investigations through the research that we do,
Professor Forbes said.
The facility is currently the only body farm outside the United States and Professor Forbes said the public interest had been higher than anyone had expected.
The level of interest has definitely surprised us,
she said.
We already have 30 of our donors who have arrived at our facility, and that’s in just over a year.
We weren’t expecting anywhere near that number.
More than 500 people have now said they will also donate their bodies to the cause once they die.
We do have a slight bias towards seniors and the elderly, thankfully because they live long and healthy lives and intend to die from natural causes,
Professor Forbes said.
We don’t hope to see young people out there, but the few that arrive are really beneficial to the work that we do for the police
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
When you examine the lives of history’s most creative figures, you are immediately confronted with a paradox: They organize their lives around their work, but not their days.
Figures as different as Charles Dickens, Henri Poincaré, and Ingmar Bergman, working in disparate fields in different times, all shared a passion for their work, a terrific ambition to succeed, and an almost superhuman capacity to focus. Yet when you look closely at their daily lives, they only spent a few hours a day doing what we would recognize as their most important work. The rest of the time, they were hiking mountains, taking naps, going on walks with friends, or just sitting and thinking. Their creativity and productivity, in other words, were not the result of endless hours of toil. Their towering creative achievements result from modest working
hours.
How did they manage to be so accomplished? Can a generation raised to believe that 80-hour workweeks are necessary for success learn something from the lives of the people who laid the foundations of chaos theory and topology or wrote Great Expectations?
I think we can. If some of history’s greatest figures didn’t put in immensely long hours, maybe the key to unlocking the secret of their creativity lies in understanding not just how they laboured but how they rested, and how the two relate — via redwolf.newsvine.com
There are several different ways of thinking about how many continents there are, with models ranging from 4 to 7 continents. However, in most English speaking countries, as well as other nations around the world, the 7-continent model is taught. Using this model, the continents of the world in order of size (descending) are: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia — via Youtube
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