And it’s not the first: Baracktrema obamai isn’t just any parasite. It’s so distinctive that it represents not just a new species but an entirely new genus… B. obamai is a flatworm that infects black marsh turtles and southeast Asian … Continue reading →
Every now and then I lose something and can’t find it, or it takes me a long time to find it. My favorite earring fell off in my car, and seemed to completely disappear. Several years later I found it … Continue reading →
Apparently we have the ability to completely eliminate that very common pest, the mosquito, through genetic engineering: Powerful new gene-editing technologies could allow scientists to program mosquito populations to gradually shrink and die off. Some efforts have gained enough momentum … Continue reading →
I’ve had many an argument—um, discussion—with my son on the topic of artificial intelligence. How far can it go? Could it ever include consciousness? Suffice to say we have not answered the question. Nor have scientists, although there is no … Continue reading →
This old question has been in the news again recently because of the publication of a massive study on the subject that’s just been published, written by two Johns Hopkins affiliated professors, Laurence Mayer and Paul McHugh, that says there’s … Continue reading →
Research shows that human beings are not innately optimistic. Well, I never thought they were. Somehow, I’d missed the news of research that seemed to indicate that optimism was innate. Now they say that such research showing “optimism bias” was … Continue reading →
I have no idea whether this theory known as “Snowball Earth” has any validity at all, but it’s fascinating to contemplate it: The Snowball Earth hypothesis proposes that the Earth’s surface became entirely or nearly entirely frozen at least once, … Continue reading →
Practically everybody knows about Pavlov’s dogs. But do many people know about their master, Pavlov himself? The other day I started to wonder—apropos of just about nothing—why dogs? And was Pavlov mean to his dogs, or were they treated well? … Continue reading →
They’re certainly more amazing than I knew, anyway, and I already knew they were pretty amazing merely by looking at them. It’s the neck, of course—that impossibly long, impossibly stretched-out, Dr. Suess-like neck. I recently saw surprising footage of giraffes … Continue reading →
…there’s this.
Continue reading →Yesterday we had a discussion on this thread about whether polls are gamed in order to help a certain candidate or party. It’s a question that’s interesting enough to devote a whole other post to it. Then answer is: it … Continue reading →
…the universe is full of black holes. Probably. Maybe. Supermassive black holes with masses of more than 10bn suns have previously been found at the heart of large galaxies located in dense clusters in the universe. But this is the … Continue reading →