A conversation with Seattle
With the EU recommending a limited ban — effective as early as July 1, 2013 — on the class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids, the question becomes whether the U.S.’s EPA, which began a review of their use in 2012, will take the EU’s action as precedent. Continue reading EU May Ban Neonicotinoids for Bees — Will EPA Act Next?
If you go on the tour, you get to see inside both levels of the crew compartment. (Bring your iPod and listen to John Roderick sing “the crew compartment’s / breaking up” for maximum chills.) But your general admission is enough to get you into the room with the full-scale space shuttle trainer, and into the payload bay, where you can pretend to be crushed by the satellite hanging above your head. Continue reading Visiting the Space Shuttle Trainer at the Museum of Flight (Photo Gallery)
Pteropods are not cocktail party conversation, usually. They are tiny amuse-bouches of the sea. Many fish, including salmon, eat them, though; if they were to die off, the impact would be significant. Research on their sensitivity to ocean acidification is of sudden interest. Continue reading For the Latest Climate Change News, We Go to Pteropods & Guillemots
Earlier this year, The Oatmeal’s Matthew Inman, himself creator of an epic Tesla v. Edison comic, heard about the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, the rather aspirational (at the time) name of a 15-year-old non-profit that hoped to reclaim Wardenclyffe, where Tesla tried for 17 years to build a massive wireless communications tower. Continue reading Internet Makes Progress Building U.S. Tesla Museum
Tutankhamun was a shortlived pharoah who died in his teens. The puizzle is that his tomb is small, just four rooms, but in it was found a multitude of every item a king could need on his funerary journey, much of it sublime works of art in gold.
Reeves showed some of these, but zeroed in on the gold death mask, a gorgeous item which weighs in at ten-plus kilos. Continue reading Archeologist Reeves Reveals Tutankhamun’s Last Secret
“After the fifth dose of DTaP, the odds of acquiring pertussis increased by an average of 42% per year,” the study’s authors write. Said another way, the overall protection rate of the DTaP vaccine declines to 71 percent from 95 percent by the fifth year after the fifth shot.
For context, unvaccinated children have odds of getting whooping cough “at least eight times higher than children who received all five doses” of DTaP (CDC pdf). Continue reading Whooping Cough Vaccine (DTaP) Not as Long-Lived as Thought
At this year’s conference, part of the buzz was around a Kickstarter-powered lunar elevator from LiftPort. The idea is to leapfrog to the easy part: A lunar-based elevator doesn’t have to climb out of Earth’s gravity well, so the cable it climbs can be constructed from “off-the-shelf” materials available right now. Continue reading Space Elevator Race Still Waiting for a Super Strong Cable