Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.
This week's featured story comes from Michigan Radio.
It's Dream Cruise weekend on Woodward Avenue
Steve Carmody
Tony Michaels is the Dream Cruise executive director. He says in a time when more hybrid and electric cars are hitting the streets, he expects the popularity of the Dream Cruise will grow.
"It probably put more importance on the nostalgia for the people who own these older cars and keep them in great shape and keep them pretty much forever," says Michaels.
People are already feeling nostalgia for the gas-guzzling, fossil-fuel-burning past. I consider that to be a good thing. It means that era is about over.
More after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
Watch this space!
DarkSyde: This week in science
A Siegel: Energy Bookshelf: Power Hungry gushing of lies
FerrisValyn: NASA: Privatization vs Commercialization
Keith Pickering: Earth's plant life: dying on land, dying at sea
leftyparent: Five Themes of American Conventional Wisdom Part 2: Scientism and the Culture of Professionalism
RobertConnors: On Human Extinction
Slideshows/Videos
BBC: Smos satellite tracks Pakistan floods
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
Europe's "water satellite" has provided a different perspective on the floods in Pakistan.
The Smos spacecraft senses the wetness of soils, and its unique instrument has detailed how the earth became saturated in the monsoon rains.
...
Data from the European Space Agency's new Smos satellite has been processed to make a series of maps.
The four snapshots featured at the top of this page run from 17 July to 4 August.
Mother Jones: Why Should Baby Pandas Get All the Love?
Eric Sullivan
Photos of 11 not-so-cute endangered species.
The Guardian (UK): The week in wildlife
Toads rescued from extinction, sexing a sloth and radioactive boar - the pick of this week's images from the natural world
Astronomy/Space
IEEE Spectrum: Forgotten Soviet Moon Rover Beams Light Back to Earth
Rediscovering the 40-year-old robot could help astronomers put general relativity to the test
By Ariel Bleicher / August 2010
Sitting at his home computer on the evening of 22 April, Tom Murphy, an astrophysicist at the University of California, San Diego, logged into an observation session 1200 kilometers away, at Apache Point Observatory. From a pine-dotted ridge above the White Sands Missile Range, Russet McMillan, the on-site specialist, aimed the New Mexico observatory's telescope at a small patch of dust near the edge of the moon's face. Then, at Murphy's go-ahead, she fired a stream of laser pulses into the night sky.
The pulses—20 per second—shot toward the moon and, after little more than a second, bathed the lunar dust patch in a pool of green light. Another second passed. Then Murphy saw a blip in the data on his screen. It suggested that an unusually large number of photons had returned from the moon and were being recorded by the telescope's photodiode.
At first, Murphy thought the blip might just be an artifact of the instrumentation, a common disturbance caused by turning the detector on and off. But no matter how McMillan tweaked the instruments, the signal kept showing up. By the next morning after analyzing the data, he was sure the blip represented something much more significant: contact with the first robot to roam a surface beyond Earth. Until NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped photographs of the robot's tracks earlier that month, no one had been able to locate the Soviet rover Lunokhod 1 for nearly four decades.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Discovery News: The Moon is Shrinking, Like a Wrinkled Apple
Analysis by Ian O'Neill
The moon is a permanent feature in our skies, but is it as unchanging as it seems?
Scientists consider the Earth's only natural satellite to be a pristine environment, an "open book" where the history of the solar system is written. But according to new observations by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), there's more than just impact craters -- born from the violent early days of our developing star system -- written in the lunar landscape.
Reported in a new paper set for publication in the Aug. 20 issue of the journal Science, previously undetected landforms have been spotted by the LRO's high resolution camera. These landforms are known as "lobate scarps" and were first identified in photographs taken by the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions.
Evolution/Paleontology
Red Orbit: Humans May Be Responsible For Megafauna Extinction
Mankind most likely had a hand in the extinction of the giant animals known as "megafauna" according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
A team of Australian researchers, led by Australian National University School of Archaeology and Anthropology Professor Matthew Spriggs, found the leg bones of meiolaniid, or horned turtles, on the island of Efate.
However, they did not find any shells or skulls, and since the bones were dated back to just two centuries following the arrival of humanity, they suggested that the creatures were hunted for food.
According to BBC News, "It is one of the first cases that clearly shows that humans played a role in the demise" of megafauna, including wooly mammoths and the elephant-sized megatherium sloth.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
The Guardian (UK): 'Zombie ants' controlled by parasitic fungus for 48m years
Earliest evidence of fungus that takes over ants' behaviour for its own ends found by scientists
Ian Sample, Science correspondent
The oldest evidence of a fungus that turns ants into zombies and makes them stagger to their death has been uncovered by scientists.
The gruesome hallmark of the fungus's handiwork was found on the leaves of plants that grew in Messel, near Darmstadt in Germany, 48m years ago.
The finding shows that parasitic fungi evolved the ability to control the creatures they infect in the distant past, even before the rise of the Himalayas.
The Guardian (UK): Carnivorous 'terror bird' pecked its prey to death
At 1.4m tall, Andalgalornis steulleti stalked South America 6m years ago and used its hooked beak to attack its victims
Monica Desai
A flightless meat-eating bird that stalked South America 6m years ago overcame its prey by pecking the creatures to death with its huge skull and hooked beak, researchers say.
The bird, which resembled an emu, landed precision jabs on its victims, before withdrawing to a safe distance then attacking once more. Once its prey was dead, Andalgalornis steulleti, a species in the phorusrhacidae family or "terror birds", moved in and swallowed its victim whole or used its beak to tear morsels of flesh from the carcass.
"They used their good vision to make surgical strikes," said Lawrence Witmer, a paleontologist and co-author on the study at Ohio University. "Like Muhammad Ali, they would attack and retreat."
Biodiversity
The Guardian (UK): Communities take action to save plants
Communities are swapping local vegetable and plant varieties to save foods from extinction and fight the effects of climate change
Ruth Stokes
One variety of crop is lost every day, according to the Global Diversity Crop Trust (GDCT). Yet biodiversity experts are warning that seed banks around the world – which preserve plant life under threat of extinction – are vulnerable in the face of budget cuts. In Britain, the UK government is calling for up to 40% cost reductions across its departments, and the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership at Kew, for example, is uncertain how much support it will receive in the coming year.
UK gardeners, though, are taking action. By saving seeds from homegrown vegetables and sharing them at seed swap events, communities are preserving rare varieties and helping to save foods from extinction.
The Guardian (UK): Urban bees fare better due to varied diet, research reveals
Honeybees in towns and cities enjoy a more diverse diet than their rural counterparts because of the wider range of flowers
Alison Benjamin
Honeybees in towns and cities enjoy a more diverse diet than their rural counterparts, experts said today. The urban bees find a richer diversity of pollen because they visit a much wider range of flowers than bees foraging in the countryside.
At Kensington Palace in London, where the Duke of Gloucester is keeping bees, samples of pollen carried back to the hives this summer contained large amounts of pollen from rock rose, eucalyptus and elderberry. In contrast, pollen samples taken from hives at Nostell Priory in Yorkshire and Barrington Court in Somerset were heavily dominated by just one crop – oilseed rape.
The National Pollen and Aerobiology research unit at the University of Worcester conducted the pollen analysis. Professor John Newbury, the head of the Institute of Science and the Environment, which includes the unit, said the samples provided a snapshot of the flowers honeybees are feeding on, at what time, and where.
Biotechnology/Health
IEEE Spectrum: A Laser Pacemaker
Pulses of light may replace electrical stimulation in some medical devices and experiments
By Sandra Upson / August 2010
18 August 2010—A living quail embryo's heart can be forced to beat to the pulse of a laser, new research shows. The optical-pacing technique may allow scientists to investigate the origins of genetic defects in the heart and may help create a new class of medical devices.
Biomedical engineers at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, and Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, used a laser beam with a 1.875-micrometer wavelength to force the quail embryo's heartbeat to speed up, changing the way that blood splashes against the walls of the heart. Having shown that they can control the pace of the organ with infrared light, the researchers now hope to test how different heart rates may trigger genetic defects that can later lead to heart failure.
The Guardian (UK): Parkinson's disease linked to gene mutation
Some people may be more susceptible to Parkinson's disease because of glitches in their immune systems, scientists say
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Some people may be more susceptible to Parkinson's disease because of glitches in their immune systems, scientists say.
A study of patients with the brain disorder found they were more likely than healthy people to carry a gene mutation thought to disrupt how the immune system works.
The finding suggests some cases of the disease could be caused by the immune system running amok and attacking healthy tissues or failing to fight infections that leave people susceptible to the condition.
The study is the first to use evidence from the human genome to confirm the long-held suspicion that the immune system plays a role in the disease.
The Guardian (UK): Artificial meat? Food for thought by 2050
Leading scientists say meat grown in vats may be necessary to feed 9 billion people expected to be alive by middle of century
John Vidal, environment editor
Artificial meat grown in vats may be needed if the 9 billion people expected to be alive in 2050 are to be adequately fed without destroying the earth, some of the world's leading scientists report today.
But a major academic assessment of future global food supplies, led by John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, suggests that even with new technologies such as genetic modification and nanotechnology, hundreds of millions of people may still go hungry owing to a combination of climate change, water shortages and increasing food consumption.
In a set of 21 papers published by the Royal Society, the scientists from many disciplines and countries say that little more land is available for food production, but add that the challenge of increasing global food supplies by as much as 70% in the next 40 years is not insurmountable.
Although more than one in seven people do not have enough protein and energy in their diet today, many of the papers are optimistic.
The Guardian (UK): Lou Gehrig killed by baseball not Lou Gehrig's disease, study findings suggest
Player who gave his name to a type of motor neurone disease more probably died due to brain trauma
Chris McGreal in Washington
Lou Gehrig, a heroic slugger for the Yankees baseball team, was famed for brushing aside repeated fractures and batting after nearly being knocked unconscious, before giving his name to the disease that was said to have killed him.
But a new study suggests that the player may not have died of Lou Gehrig's disease, formally known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease. Instead, it may have been the baseballs bouncing off his head that claimed his life in 1941.
According to a paper to be published tomorrow in a leading journal, Gehrig and a string of American football players and soldiers recorded as dying of ALS, may instead have died due to brain traumas.
Climate/Environment
Physorg.com: Study reveals UK upland waters are recovering from acid rain
(PhysOrg.com) -- Upland waters damaged by acid rain are beginning to recover according to UCL research published today.
Academics from the UCL Environmental Change Research Centre (ECRC) undertook the study for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
The report’s conclusion is based on data from the Acid Waters Monitoring Network (AWMN), a Defra - and Devolved Authority - funded research network of 22 lakes and streams that have been studied closely by scientists over the last 22 years.
However, while the evidence for chemical recovery is strong, the report suggests there is a long way to go before the plant and animal communities in these systems will be restored to full health, and there is concern that other factors, such as climate change, might mask, slow down or even prevent a full recovery.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Geology
Agence France Press via Discovery News: Los Angeles 'Big One' Could Come Sooner Than Expected: Study
Strong earthquakes along the San Andreas fault in southern California are more frequent than previously thought, so the dreaded "Big One" could be just around the corner, US researchers said Friday in a study.
University of California at Irvine and Arizona State University scientists examined the geological record stretching back 700 years along the fault line 160 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of Los Angeles.
They found that strong earthquakes -- between 6.5 and 7.9 magnitude -- shook the area every 45-144 years, instead of the previously established 250-400 years.
Since the last big 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck southern California in 1857, or 153 years ago, scientists believe the next "Big One" could happen at any time.
Psychology/Behavior
Discovery News: Ovulation Changes Women's Behavior
Knowing how ovulation affects them could help women make smarter choices about dating, shopping and more.
By Emily Sohn
When a woman is ovulating, her behavior changes in a startling number of ways from the way she walks, talks and dresses to the men she flirts with, according to new research.
The findings might offer some practical tips for women to boost their online dating prospects; for scientists to develop new kinds of ovulation detection kits; or for marketers to target sales of clothes and jewelry. The work also suggests that going on or off the birth control pill might influence a woman's choice in men.
Why does ovulation change women's behavior in such subtle yet fundamental ways? Experts propose that it's an innate and subtle strategy to both attract the most desirable guys and convince them to stick around for the long haul.
Discovery News: How Rare Are Female Child Killers?
The recent confession of a 29-year-old mother to suffocating her two toddlers is not as rare as many might think.
By Benjamin Radford
Murder charges are being brought against a woman who admitted she suffocated two of her children. The two boys, ages one and two, were found in a car submerged in a river in South Carolina on Monday, Orangeburg County Sheriff Larry Williams said in a news conference Tuesday.
Shaquan Duley, 29, told police she smothered her toddler sons at a motel by placing her hands over their mouths. Williams said the children were dead before Duley put them in their car seats and drove them to the river.
"She just wanted to get rid of the children, as sad as it may be," Williams told reporters.
The case is sensational and horribly tragic. But how rare is it?
Archeology/Anthropology
BBC: Queen of the Inch to be re-interred
A 4,000-year-old skeleton, known as the Queen of the Inch, is to be re-interred in the tiny island of Inchmarnock in the Firth of Clyde.
The grave was found by a farmer in the 1950s as he ploughed a field.
Preserved in an ancient cist, the remains included a necklace and dagger.
Despite being examined by archaeologists and reburied in the 1960s, the skeleton was recently exhumed and studied using modern research techniques.
The Independent (UK): Grave reveals grim lives of Cromwell's men
By Jonathan Brown
Rare evidence of the harsh lives and squalid deaths of soldiers fighting for what was to become Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army has been unearthed in a series of mass graves.
More than 100 well-preserved skeletons have been found stripped of their clothes and possessions before being piled hurriedly into pits on the outskirts of York, where they have remained undiscovered for four centuries.
The forgotten Roundhead army was discovered by archaeologists investigating a medieval church. The find will give scholars a unique insight into the privations endured by the 30,000 men who laid siege to the city in 1644.
Philadelphia Inquirer: Deaths of Irish workers in Chesco in 1832 may be murder, researchers say
By Kristin E. Holmes
Inquirer Staff Writer
Before his research team's latest discovery, historian William Watson only suspected that something sinister had happened in Chester County when a group of Irish railroad workers died mysteriously in 1832.
Now, the Immaculata University professor is more certain: It probably involved murder.
At least six of the 57 men who traveled from Ireland to work on the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad were likely killed in the midst of a cholera epidemic, researchers say.
Traverse City Record-Eagle (Michigan): Diver says he found Westmoreland shipwreck
BY ALEX PIAZZA apiazza@record-eagle.com
LAKE ANN — Ross Richardson set out on yet another search in what had become a series of personal expeditions for one of the Great Lakes' noted shipwrecks.
The Lake Ann real estate agent and avid diver traversed the water near the Sleeping Bear Dunes for years, but never tracked down the elusive Westmoreland — a vessel that foundered near South Manitou Island in a Lake Michigan winter storm on Dec. 7, 1854.
Idaho State Journal: Artifacts uncovered at project sites illuminate Idaho's past
BOISE - 'The artifacts tell us so much about the lives of the people who were here before us.'
Every highway has a story behind it. Or beneath it. Why was it built? Why in that spot? What was there before? As the Idaho Transportation Department found out, the answers are often surprising.
Fragments of long-ago cultures often lay dormant for centuries under ground - until a new highway project begins, and the dirt reveals hidden treasures. In Idaho, there were Native American tribes such as the Nez Perce and the Bannock, Spanish and French explorers, early pioneers, Chinese miners and railroad workers.
The Nation (Thailand): Nationalists risk making us a laughing stock
By Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation
Published on August 19, 2010
Nationalists, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva amongst them, should stop their rhetoric that the Kingdom has never accepted the French-made, 1:200,000-scale Thailand-Cambodia border map, otherwise it could turn the country into an international laughing stock.
The map was a key piece of evidence used by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in reaching its ruling in 1962 that the Hindu temple of Preah Vihear was situated in territory under the sovereignty of Cambodia.
The nationalists have demanded that Abhisit's government revoke the memorandum of understanding on boundary demarcation signed with Cambodia in 2000 on the grounds that the pact recognised a map that in their view Thailand had never accepted.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
io9.com: Ultraviolet light reveals how ancient Greek statues really looked
By Esther Inglis-Arkell
Original Greek statues were brightly painted, but after thousands of years, those paints have worn away. Find out how shining a light on the statues can be all that's required to see them as they were thousands of years ago.
Although it seems impossible to think that anything could be left to discover after thousands of years of wind, sun, sand, and art students, finding the long lost patterns on a piece of ancient Greek sculpture can be as easy as shining a lamp on it. A technique called ‘raking light' has been used to analyze art for a long time. A lamp is positioned carefully enough that the path of the light is almost parallel to the surface of the object. When used on paintings, this makes brushstrokes, grit, and dust obvious. On statues, the effect is more subtle. Brush-strokes are impossible to see, but because different paints wear off at different rates, the stone is raised in some places – protected from erosion by its cap of paint – and lowered in others. Elaborate patterns become visible.
Physics
Science News: Mining for missing matter
In underground lairs, physicists look for the dark stuff
By Ron Cowen
On an early summer morning in northern Minnesota, a crew of about a dozen waits by the top of mine shaft No. 8. Donning hard hats, the engineers and physicists pile into a creaky, double-decker elevator cage. It is pitch black for most of the three-minute descent. Ears pop, the cage floor vibrates and a giant motor dating from 1925 thunders overhead.
When the cage door slides open, the team is 713 meters below the surface. Directly ahead lies a maze of tunnels — an abandoned mine where laborers once extracted iron ore of uncommon purity. But the scientific crew takes a U-turn into a huge and unexpectedly spacious two-room cavern known as the Soudan Underground Laboratory.
The workers have journeyed deep into the Earth to plumb the darkest depths of the cosmos, hunting for the missing material believed to account for 83 percent of the universe’s mass.
Chemistry
Science News: Chlorophyll gets an ‘f’
New variety of photosynthetic pigment is the first discovered in 60 years
By Rachel Ehrenberg
A new kind of chlorophyll that catches sunlight from just beyond the red end of the visible light spectrum has been discovered. The new pigment extends the known range of light that is usable by most photosynthetic organisms. Harnessing this pigment’s power could lead to biofuel-generating algae that are super-efficient, using a greater spread of sunlight than thought possible.
"This is a very important new development, and is the first new type of chlorophyll discovered in an oxygenic organism in 60 years," says biological chemist Robert Blankenship of Washington University in St. Louis.
The newfound pigment, dubbed chlorophyll f, absorbs light most efficiently at a wavelength around 706 nanometers, just beyond the red end of the visible spectrum, researchers report online August 19 in Science. This unique absorbance appears to occur thanks to a chemical decoration known as a formyl group on the chlorophyll’s carbon number two. That chemical tweak probably allows the algaelike organism that makes chlorophyll f to conduct photosynthesis while living beneath other photosynthesizers that capture all the other usable light.
IEEE Spectrum: ISO Standards for Nanomaterials Published
POSTED BY: Dexter Johnson / Fri, August 20, 2010
It seems as soon as nanomaterials were commercialized there have been efforts to establish standards for classifying them.
The ISO has been working on this issue for some time, and last year we even received updates on the progress of the working group.
The organization has recently announced its publication of a new technical report, ISO/TR 11360 Nanotechnologies – Methodology for the classification and categorization of nanomaterials, which according to the ISO, "offer[s] a comprehensive, globally harmonized methodology for classifying nanomaterials."
Energy
Grist via The Guardian (UK): Americans don't know jack about saving energy
Many Americans think small behavioural changes such as switching off lights save more energy than they really do, says a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Jonathan Hiskes for Grist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Breaking: Americans don't know squat about how to save energy. A new survey quizzed people on what steps make the biggest difference in cutting energy use and found loads of confusion.
Participants greatly overrated low-impact moves like flipping off light switches and unplugging phone chargers. They underrated potential high-impact changes like weatherizing homes, buying high-performing appliances, driving higher-mileage vehicles, and switching from centralized A/C to room air conditioners.
If I hadn't been living next to The Woodward Dream Cruise all week and then found a story about it that had an environmental and energy angle, I would have featured this story.
IEEE Spectrum: Reducing World of Warcraft's Power Consumption
Taiwanese researchers' special take on virtualization means far fewer servers and less energy
By Yu-Tzu Chiu / August 2010
19 August 2010—Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft consume a lot of their players' time. They also consume a lot of energy, as more than a thousand servers can be required to create one game's virtual worlds. Last year, Yeng-Ting Lee, a 26-year-old online game fanatic, began to wonder if there was an easy way to reduce their energy consumption. Lee, who is a research assistant at the Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, in Taipei, Taiwan, says he has found a way to cut MMORPG power consumption in half. Last month he revealed the solution at the IEEE Cloud 2010 conference.
The Guardian (UK): Whisky: nectar of the gods, and now superfuel of the Ford Fiesta
Britain's finest export could soon be powering our cars
Euan Ferguson
Is there no bad news about whisky? Yes, admitted, it can lead you to odd places – specifically to a culvert off the M62 at dawn (twice, since you ask), wondering why your trousers are smouldering and there's a tired rodent in your mouth – but, in absolute general, it's our finest export, earns billions, its production takes place in the most uncontainably picturesque vistas, carried out by that perfect mix of wise, bearded geek-trolls and happy red-faced giants.
And now it's going to power our cars.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
The Guardian (UK): GM crops: The EC allows politics to trump science
A decision to allow member states to go their own way on genetically modified crops is a failure both to science and to the EU's principles
Eoin Lettice
The recent decision by the European commission to give its member states the power to ban genetically modified crops on a state-by-state and crop-by-crop basis means that the EC has failed science and failed itself.
The EC plan announced in July is to give individual member states the freedom to "allow, restrict, or ban" the commercial cultivation of GM crops in their jurisdictions. The EU will still need to authorise the growth of these crops as it always has, however now individual member states can ban production even if the EU says they are safe to grow and consume.
On the one hand, the EC is putting its faith in what it calls its own "science-based GM authorisation system", and on the other, saying member states can ignore the science and plough on regardless with anti-GM bans.
Yale Environment 360 via The Guardian (UK): Radical transparency could lay bare the eco impact of our shopping
If information on the ecological impact of a product was easy to come by, many consumers would use it as part of their buying decision, says Daniel Goleman
Daniel Goleman for Yale Environment 360, part of the Guardian Environment Network
With climate legislation dead in Congress and the fizzled hopes for a breakthrough in Copenhagen fading into distant memory, the time seems ripe for fresh strategies — especially ones that do not depend on government action.
Here's a modest proposal: radical transparency, the laying bare of a product's ecological impacts for all to see.
Economic theory applied to ecological metrics offers a novel way to ameliorate our collective assault on the global systems that sustain life. There are two fundamental economic principles that, if applied well, might just accelerate the trend toward a more sustainable planet: marketplace transparency about the ecological impacts of consumer goods and their supply chains, and lowering the cost of that information to zero.
Science Education
Physorg.com: Turning school ground natural areas into environmental labs
Public school grounds will become environmental education laboratories when a 20-foot green and blue mobile technology trailer pulls into the parking lots at Creekside Middle School in Carmel, Ind. and dozens of other elementary and middle schools in nine Indiana counties this fall and spring.
Outfitted with interactive technology tools, web interface and sophisticated computerized mapping capabilities, the mobile resource vehicle brings the innovative, hands-on Discovering the Science of the Environment (DSE) mobile program from the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis to thousands of students in grades four through nine.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Science Writing and Reporting
The Guardian (UK): Book review: Impressions of Nature - A History of Nature Printing
In this book, author and printing history expert Roderick Cave explores the history of nature printing – the name given to the technique using the surface of a natural object – like a leaf – to produce the print.
The practice was developed in the Middle Ages to help those gathering medicinal plants, and evolved into a serious scientific process used to reproduce plants and build up collections of flora and fauna. During the 19th century, the technique drew on new photographic technology, and today, the long-standing art form continues to interest everyone from botanists to graphic designers and tattoo artists.
The Guardian (UK): Stuart Clark's top 10 approachable astronomy books
From Copernicus's struggles to tales of mad space exploration projects and the enduring mystery of black holes, the author of The Big Questions picks the best reads about 'this most noble of sciences'
Science is Cool
Don't Panic: The Future Is Not Bright
by Onjuli Datta
We’ve had some good news from the world of science this week: Stephen Hawking is pretty sure humanity is doomed. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million," he said. Humanity’s survival has always been "a question of touch and go", and our greed, mess, and all-round bad behaviour is not doing much for the cause. How’s that for a buzzkill?
Our destiny can’t be all bleak, though. Sure, the future’s going to be a dangerous one, but it’s also going to be... well, the future! Technology’s going to take off. Countries are going to make up. Everything’s going to be alright. Or not. Right now predictions about our lives and how they’ll change are widespread, and not all of them are glittering. Here’s a bit of what to look forward to.
AOL News: Robot Explorer Set to Reveal Great Pyramid's Secrets
(Aug. 17) -- Archaeologists attempting to unlock the secrets of the Great Pyramid of Giza have a new helper: a drill- and camera-toting robot designed to peer into the magnificent structure's unexplored nooks and crannies. It's hoped that this high-tech explorer -- built by researchers at England's Leeds University, together with France's Dassault Systemes and U.K. robotics firm Scoutek -- will aid Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities in their decades-long attempt to unravel one of the pyramid's most enduring mysteries.
Pyramids--cool. Robots--really cool. Robots exploring the pyramids--that's so cool that it should be a science fiction movie.
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