Science Etcetera, Venusday 20080822

August 22nd, 2008

Just as the Eiffel Tower was designed to optimize the flow of stress throughout its structures, trees have evolved a design to optimize the flow of water from the ground into the atmosphere. This Constructural Theory is not to be confused with Intelligent Design.

Eiffel Tower as a Tree

The Douglas-fir, one of the tallest tree species on Earth, finally stops growing taller because it can’t pull water any higher.

Entangled photons “communicate” at 10,000 times the speed of light.

The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) will search the sky for Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) with four telescopes sporting 1.4-gigapixel cameras, and a one-pentabyte database.

Those human-verification images of words websites require to foil spambots could be used to identify words in antique texts.

Optical Character-Recognition Software Makes Mistakes
Credit: AAAS

Cats and dogs can get along if cats are in the home first.

A Massachusetts man was arrested and his home ransacked for practicing Chemistry.

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Mark Sykes held a debate about Pluto’s fate.

Clever WWF billboard time-lapsed:

5 comments to “Science Etcetera, Venusday 20080822”

Re: Cats and Dogs Living Together
Kurt Vonnegut has a anecdote about a dog that could not (from some kind of injury) wag its tail. Because it couldn’t do that, it had no means to let other dogs know that it was friendly, so it always had to fight.

Although I have known for sometime that dogs wag their tails when they are happy and friendly and cats wag their tails when they are pissed, I never really put it in the context about how the two species interact. They really are talking two different kind of languages there.

Now, I’m going to be sure to pay attention to how Jimmie (a dog) and Stench (a cat) interact. Particularly with the greeting the article spoke about– sniffing the cat’s nose rather than sniffing the cat’s butt.

On a side note– Jimmie was already established in an apartment before Stench came along. BUT– Jimmie had been exposed to cats long before Stench which may have helped. When he was a puppy, he lived with a cat and you could see it in his behavior back then as well. He went through a phase where if he was pissed at something he would swat at it like a cat would. :)
by Vicky August 27th, 2008 at 11:35 am
P.S. Loved the two tree articles as well! :)
by Vicky August 27th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Mom said that he got his high-five trick from the cat. She said he’d swat like a cat, so you used that to train him to do the high-five.
by Carolyn August 27th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Cats sniff butts too. I’ve seen Vladi do it way too often.

Then again, he did spend the first year of his life in a house with multiple dogs, so maybe the cross training goes both ways. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Toonces(who grew up without dogs) sniff butt.
by Chriggy August 27th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “otherwise you wouldn’t have come here.”
Alice didn’t think that proved it at all: however she went on. “And how do you know that you’re mad?”
“To begin with,” said the Cat, “a dog’s not mad. You grant that?”
“I suppose so,” said Alice
“Well, then, ” the Cat went on, “you see a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.”
by Dave August 27th, 2008 at 9:15 pm