The Next Generation. That is what it looks like. A table sized, touchscreen microscope view screen. I could use one of these bad boys.
Category: Curiosities of Nature
Tripping the Sedge
I have no idea if it is ok to call the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences “The Sedge”; but it should be. For St. Patrick’s Day, we took The Frogger and The Bell to The Sedge to hunt dinosaurs: Continue reading “Tripping the Sedge”
Cell phones don’t cause blinding either
According to a preliminary study in the Journal of the American Medical Association – “Effects of Cell Phone Radiofrequency Signal Exposure on Brain Glucose Metabolism” (Volkow et al. 2011) – the radio frequency emissions from cell phones can cause detectable changes in the metabolism of a specific brain region.
In healthy participants and compared with no exposure, 50-minute cell phone exposure was associated with increased brain glucose metabolism in the region closest to the antenna. This finding is of unknown clinical significance.
While there has been a great deal of speculation in the media regarding the mechanism of this effect, we need to dedicated some thought to whether there is actually an effect that requires explanation.
Superb Science Times
I don’t know what the special occasion is, but today’s NY Times Science section has a star-studded lineup:
Natalie Angier, Nicolas Wade, Carl Zimmer, and Sean Carroll all have fascinating pieces up in today’s Times.
The topic:
This issue of Science Times is devoted to our many bonds with animals, and also to the distance between us and them. No other animal makes operas or nuclear weapons. How did we become so different? What made us human?
One more reason to fear global warming
Heat Damages Colombia Coffee, Raising Prices:
In the last few years, coffee yields have plummeted here and in many of Latin America’s other premier coffee regions as a result of rising temperatures and more intense and unpredictable rains, phenomena that many scientists link partly to global warming…
In 2006, Colombia produced more than 12 million 132-pound bags of coffee, and set a goal of 17 million for 2014. Last year the yield was nine million bags…
Yet as stockpiles of some of the best coffee beans shrink, global demand is soaring as the rising middle classes of emerging economies like Brazil, India and China develop the coffee habit.
The Finch and Pea 