Science Etcetera, Jupiterday 20080605

June 5th, 2008

Mission Accomplished: The ISS toilet is fixed. Something else in there about powering up the Kibo lab, but I was in the john.

Toilet Onboard the ISS
(Astronauts “clamp” themselves to it)

Bioengineers have found subjecting cartilage to pressures equal to traveling a half-mile beneath the ocean’s surface promotes new tissue growth. I fully expect this innovation to come to market just in time to save my knees, but (fingers crossed) not the babyboomers.

More hope for life on Mars. Colonies of fossilized creatures called “hairy blobs” have been found in lakes that existed 250 million years ago and formerly thought far too acidic to support life.

Mythbusters’ Jamie Hynement gives a list of unusual energy sources from cow manure to human motion to empty space.

Human contact is making chimps in Tanzania sick.

The Phoenix Mars Lander is playing in the dirt, practicing before the big dig.

In addition to being a Hollywood celebrity, Hedy Lamarr also invented a signal technology still in mass use today.

Hedy Lamarr, Scientist
in Her Highness and the Bellboy

Location tracking data from 100,000 cell phones in Europe shows we don’t vary our routines much. Something unnerving about researchers tracking humans like any other migrating animal.

Biofuels and obesity came under attack by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which is calling for the world to put up an additional $30 Billion to prevent future wars over food.

Yee-Haw! Babies born to first-cousins are only two-percent more likely to have birth defects.

Forcing Fundamentalism into public school science books has evolved from “Creationism,” to “Intelligent Design,” and now to “Strengths & Weaknesses.”

There is a black market for recycling garbage in Peru.

Researchers are planning an experiment to see how gravity affects anti-matter, which can, hypothetically, fall up.

Ranger Rick on Climate Action: