Bone Health - Another Reason To Crack A Cold One
Researchers from the Dept. of Food Science and Technology at the University of California, Davis have found that beer is a significant source of dietary silicon - a key ingredient for increasing bone density - and suggest that moderate beer consumption may even help to prevent osteoporosis.
A Look Back on the History of 3D Technology
With the record breaking release of Avatar, we were inspired to gather some 3D notables from all over the map. Photography, film, science and industry are represented over a span of 172 years. While the list is by no means comprehensive, it includes some great advances in 3D work such as the first 3D printer to print a copy of itself!
George Whiteside's TED Talk on Postage Size Lab Test for Nearly No Cost
George Whiteside's biography on TED mentions a remarkable list of accomplishments. 950 scientific articles coauthored, he's co-founded a dozen companies and has 50-plus patents with his name on them. This talk focuses on a postage stamp sized device that doesn't require the assistance of a medical technologist or the drawing of blood.
Hubble Captures Mysterious X-shaped Debris Pattern
Recent images captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal a unique X-shaped pattern of debris and dust approximately 460 feet in diameter and 90 million miles away from Earth. While such a formation has never been observed before, the appearance suggests a high energy collision between two asteroids, with debris being swept back into a tail by solar radiation pressure.
Primordial Soup Recipe Gets "Gassed" by New Chefs
First proposed in 1929 by J.B.S. Haldane in his essay on the origin of life, the "soup theory" suggested that life as we know it was the result of UV radiation converting methane, ammonia and water into the first organic compounds in the early earth oceans. The first cells grew by fermenting this organic primordial soup to generate energy in the form of ATP.
Climate Change Simulations Forecast Negative Affect on Millions of Waterfowl
The loss of wetlands in the prairie pothole region of central North America due to a warmer and drier climate will negatively affect millions of waterfowl that depend on the region for food, shelter and raising young, according to research published today in the journal BioScience.
Phorid Flies Used to Control Invasive Fire Ant Populations - Video
The image you are seeing is the result of a specialized phorid fly laying its egg in the head of a fire ant, which eventually kills its host. This video from Discovery News was posted in 2008, and chronicles one entomologists efforts to combat invasive fire ant populations that originate in Brazil and are spreading throughout the Southern United States.
Microbes Produce Fuels Directly from Biomass
A collaboration led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has developed a microbe that can produce an advanced biofuel directly from biomass. Deploying the tools of synthetic biology, the JBEI researchers engineered a strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from fatty acids.
Welcome to a Blog About Science and Design
Some people do not believe that art and science go hand in hand. I consider people that spend their lives devoted to science a kind of artist, the kind that are revealing natural art to the masses by the research and the discoveries they make. It is easy to see this if you spend a few minutes looking through a National Geographic or Seed Magazine.
Competative Sperm are Cooperating for Success
How difficult it must be to have to face off as a sperm! From the moment you arrive you are racing along in a wave of competitors. Now complicate that with the fact that your host mammal has been making the rounds! Live together die alone (if you know what that means its our secret) is apparently the biological answer.
