Science Etcetera Saturnday, 20080412

April 12th, 2008

A project where college students created drawings to explain scientific concepts to high school students gives both sides a better understanding of the subject matter.

Science Drawings Clarify Science
Kara Culligan and Eunji Chung, Harvard University
Lina Garcia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

80 percent of web searches are informational, as opposed to navigational or transactional according to researchers who classified web searches

Washing fruits and vegetables reduces risks of food poisoning, but irradiating them is probably the most thorough safety precaution.

A team of international collaborators have come up with a map of protected areas Madagascar needs to establish in order to preserve the most biodiversity.

For $230, Nestle has bought the rights to hundreds of millions of gallons of water out of Florida, while the state’s neighbors are begging for drought relief.

Short video documentary covering urban bee-keeping.

Eat your heart out Batman! It’s a kerosene-powered jetpack!!!

Kerosene-Powered Jetpack

One study hints that the “epidemic of autism” might actually be an epidemic of misdiagnosis.

The active learning robot is cool, but I want to see it applied to something practical, like playing RoboRally.

An archeological dig at Stone Henge is turning up evidence for its purpose.

A Fox News anchor actually told viewers that “the U.N. says the planet may actually cool off for the 10th year in a row.” They then cut to commercial so someone could wipe the drool off her chin.

Climate Change is going to impact the production of beer. EVERYBODY PANIC!!! (HT Clint)

Laika, the first dog in space, finally gets her own statue.

Laika Monument

Boys and girls do better in school when they learn co-ed.

Electronic networks modeled after the nervous system in our skin will lead to planes, buildings, and other structures that let us know when they need repair.

While we’re scanning the skies for radio waves from extraterrestrials, some civilizations in our Milky Way are probably 1.5 Billion Years more advanced than that.

Ohhhhh… Check out the new NASA Science Portal.

Beyond Flash and Hard Disk memory, Racetrack Memory has the performance and reliability of the former and the high-capacity of the later.

It’s a space-themed day, so while appreciating the past, also look to the future with this Virgin Galactic Passenger Spaceflight Animation:

3 comments to “Science Etcetera Saturnday, 20080412”

Florida homeowners should be screeching at the tops of their lungs. One of the reasons that much of Florida gets its water from places like Georgia (my tap water in Sarasota came from an aquifer in Gerogia) is that Florida has as its bedrock calcium carbonate. If you pump the water out from extremely porous calcium carbonate, many times large empty subterannean caverns are exposed. Ever hear of a sinkhole? Guess why they don’t pump water out of Florida aquifers? So now Nestle wants to pump an enormous amount of water from Florida aquifers…is it too much to hope their plant falls into a ginormous sinkhole of their own creation?

And why drink water from your tap when you can pay upwards of $1.00 a glass for it, generate nonbiodegradable waste, and burn loads of fuel transporting it? Isn’t that essentially what Nestle is selling? Augusten Burroughs had the right idea going into marketing. “They took all the water, and bottled it up in plastic/Charged folks a dollar, and boy were they ecstatic.” Sad that the “they” references the buyers OR the sellers.
by flyingsirkus April 12th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Yea, it’d disgusting.

They should be working on Ryan’s proposed Robo-RoboRally project instead!
by ClintJCL April 12th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Bottled water is a complete sham. It’s amazing that NY had to take up an ad campaign explaining to people that their tap water was just as clean as bottled water, and regularly beat bottled water in blind taste tests.

Remember Spaceballs? We’ll have Perrie-air next. : )
by ideonexus April 13th, 2008 at 11:46 pm