A newly published study has been interpreted by some as a sign that search engines are damaging people’s memory skills. In fact, it seems more of an indication that the brain makes a smart use of its resources. The study carried out by researchers at Columbia, Wisconsin and Harvard Universities, and published in Science, involved […]
Science has long been a field dominated heavily by men, so seeing the first Google Science Fair award its highest honors to three young women with an interest in the workings of biology gave me a serious case of warm fuzzies. The top three awards, one in each age group, and an overall Grand Prize […]
There are so many interesting bits of space stuff floating about the Innerwebz this week! Planets and moons and asteroids (with moons?!), oh my. Here’s brief rundown of each with links to in-depth articles if you’re of the space geek set. Our Eighth Planet is so Grown-Up! Tomorrow, June 12, we celebrate Neptune’s first birthday. […]
Check out this cool optical illusion called “The Flashed Face Distortion Effect”. Please note that the faces featured in the video have not been altered in any way. We describe a novel face distortion effect resulting from the fast-paced presentation of eye-aligned faces. When cycling through the faces on a computer screen, each face seems […]
The Sagan Series just released an inspiring new video paying homage to NASA’S final space shuttle flight. Check it out: [Youtube]
In the following video, Carl Sagan explain the concept of “time dilation” and how it would affect us if people would be able to travel at the speed of light. Check it out: [Via]
We’re big fans of the Symphony of Science series here at [GAS]. The latest installment, “Children of Africa”, follows the rise of humankind from the moment “in a parched African landscape Man first put his foot to the ground” until they “flung themselves and their machines into interplanetary space.” A musical celebration of humanity, its origins, […]
A chimpanzee has thrown doubt on the idea that only human brains are specially adapted to process speech. The appropriately-named Panzee, now aged 25, is able to make out 128 different spoken words, even when the words are distorted or incomplete. Panzee was raised by humans since she was eight days old, and has always […]
Sometimes when a daddy donkey and a mummy zebra love each very much… China’s Xiamen Haicang Zoo is celebrating the arrival of a baby donkra, the result of a cross-breed of a male donkey and a female zebra. It’s a relatively rare cross compared to the more common combination of a male zebra and female […]
In the following video, Bill Hammack, the engineer guy, takes apart a coffee maker to show how hot water is pumped through it using a “bubble pump.” The use of this pump reflects an engineer’s choice to have only one heating element to lower the cost. [Youtube]