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Science

Meet the New Tardigrade – Even Weirder Than the Old One

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Tardigrade

A newfound species of tardigrade, or “water bear,” with tendril-festooned eggs has been discovered in the parking lot of an apartment building in Japan. The newfound tardigrade, Macrobiotus shonaicus, is the 168th species of this sturdy micro-animal ever discovered in Japan. Tardigrades are famous for their toughness: They can survive in extreme cold (down to minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 200 Celsius), extreme heat (more than 300 degrees F, or 149 degrees C), and even the unrelenting radiation and vacuum of space, as one 2008 study reported. They’re bizarre and adorable at the same time, with eight legs on … Read more

SCIENCE: Dying Brains Silence Themselves in a Spreading Dark Wave

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Brain

At the edge of life and death is a spreading dark wave. Scientists spotted it first in rabbits. In a series of papers published throughout the 1940s, Harvard biologist Aristides Leão described finding a sudden silencing of electrical activity in the exposed brains of his unconscious experimental animals after subjecting them to injuries — applying electrical shocks, poking them with glass rods or cutting off the blood in their arteries. The “spreading depression,” as he termed it, began at the injured spot within 5 minutes of the injury, before eclipsing more distant parts of the brain. Seven decades later, a … Read more

SCIENCE: Real Life Vampires

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blood cells - pixabay

Ben Franklin famously wrote: “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” What he didn’t mention, despite being 83 years old, was a third, almost inevitable eventuality: ageing. Depending on when in history and where on the planet you look, ageing is variously considered desirable – bringing with it wisdom and status – or as something to be feared, eliminated, or at least delayed as long as possible. In the 16th to 18th centuries, Western societies believed old age was a time of considerable worth. But, since the 19th century, we have sought ways … Read more

New Company Wants to Map Your Brain, But It Will Kill You

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Neurons - Pixabay

Four things are true: One, a startup called Nectome plans to embalm the living brains of dying people, with the promise that the preserved tissues might someday be brought back to life. Two, the grim plan has gotten a ton of press coverage in the past few days, ever since MIT Technology Review covered it on Tuesday (March 13). Three, most of that press coverage doesn’t cite any outside neuroscience experts. And four, all of the experts that Live Science contacted to discuss the story have expressed, one way or another, that they found the plan ridiculous. Nectome plans to … Read more

SCIENCE: Funky Protein in Platypus Milk Could Beat Antibiotic Resistance

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Platypus - pixabay

Posted for all of our platypus members… The milk of the platypus may contain a protein that can fight drug-resistant bacteria. Now, a new analysis of that protein reveals that its shape is as bizarre as the shape of the animal that excreted it. The protein has a never-before-seen protein fold, now dubbed the “Shirley Temple” thanks to its ringlet-like structure, according to researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and Deakin University in Australia. “Platypuses are such weird animals that it would make sense for them to have weird biochemistry,” study researcher Janet Newman of CSIRO … Read more

How Stephen Hawking Supported LGBTIQA Rights

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Stephen Hawking

Physicist Stephen Hawking passed away early this morning in his home in Cambridge. He was 76. Hawking is best known in the academe for his work on black holes, general relativity, and quantum mechanics. And his best-selling book A Brief History of Time, as well as appearances on TV shows like The Simpsons, made him a household name. Hawking signed a letter asking the British government to pardon mathematician Alan Turing. In 1952, Turing was found guilty of homosexuality and punished with chemical castration. He committed suicide shortly after. “We urge the Prime Minister formally to forgive this British hero, … Read more

U+(N/T)M*G: Edge

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Out in a lonely spot, somewhere around the vast Australian desert, there sits a little machine one might mistake for a shiny table. And that machine did something our most powerful telescopes couldn’t do. It found the first stars. The EDGES is a highly sensitive radio telescope with only one job, to find the faint frequency signal from the one-hit wonders at the beginning of stellar formation. The blue ones which burned hot and died young in glorious nova, and seeded the Universe with heavier atoms. The deaths of those first cosmic pioneers gave rise to what we needed for … Read more

SCIENCE: Electronic Skin May Help Prevent Robots from Crushing Us (Unless They Really Want To)

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robot - pixabay

A metallic robot hand with “Terminator”-like power sounds good for the movies. But what about a real-life future where that android is now cradling your baby or just shaking your hand? That’s when attributes like “gentle” and “sensitive” might be more warranted to avoid a human-crushing outcome. Electronic skin may be the answer, as it could give such robots (and even prosthetic limbs) the ability to sense how forceful their handshakes and cradles are when interacting with humans. A new electronic skin may also prove more robust than previous versions to prevent accidental damage. It could even heal with the … Read more

SCIENCE: Hidden Under the Ice

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Antarctica - pixabay

A huge, trillion-ton iceberg about the size of Delaware broke free from Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf in July 2017. As it moved away from its chilly birth mom and into the Weddell Sea, a vast expanse of water saw the light for the first time in up to 120,000 years. And this month, a team of scientists will venture to the long-ice-buried expanse to investigate the mysterious ecosystem that was hidden beneath the Antarctic ice shelf for so long. The newly exposed seabed stretches across an area of about 2,246 square miles (5,818 square kilometers), according to the British … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Found

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Sometimes, in the course of innocuous browsing for a topic, one comes across a cool bit of science and an unexpected tidbit pops up that really gets the muse going. This happened to me today. Almost two decades ago, NASA launched a little satellite whose mission was to study our magnetosphere. The neat little guy, IMAGE, sent us back a lot of real photographic gems of our little mudball and information that added to our scientific understanding of our world. It showed us the unique qualities of the protective, living shield our core generates, and how it interacts with our … Read more