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Category Archives: Other science
Beer for President
BeerSci: How To Brew A Beer In A Week
A couple of days ago, one of the PopSci.com edit staff asked me if it was possible to brew a beer in time for election day. That’s related to one of the most-often encountered questions I get about homebrewing: How long does it take to make beer? My standard answer is “approximately six weeks,” because here at BeerSci we tend to brew styles that benefit from that schedule, and we have a limited amount of space for non-essential equipment such as giant cylinders of CO2.
But it is entirely possible to brew a beer in seven days …
Once You Pop, You Can't Stop
The pulling action and the presence of deep parallel grooves led the team to realise that these marks were probably not indicative of actual eating, but repositioning of the prey. The scientists suggest that the frills were in the way of Tyrannosaurus as it was trying to get at the nutrient-rich neck muscles.
“It’s gruesome, but the easiest way to do this was to pull the head off,” explains Fowler with a grin. The researchers found further evidence to support this idea when they examined the Triceratops occipital condyles — the ball-socket head–neck joint — and found tooth marks there too. Such marks could only have been made if the animal had been decapitated.
I Know What You Did Last Summer, Based on Isotopic Ratios in Your Hair and Fingernails
[L]et’s follow a raindrop from the Pacific Ocean to Saltair Sally’s strand of hair. When water evaporates from the ocean, the heavier molecules containing deuterium and tritium and oxygen-18 do not evaporate as readily and are left behind in greater numbers. As droplets gather into clouds and eventually fall as rain, the heavier molecules fall first. This means rainwater in regions closer to oceans and large lakes is isotopically enriched compared with regions farther inland. Isotope levels are again fractionated in drinking water depending on whether it is drawn from wells or reservoirs (lighter isotopes more easily evaporate from the surface of reservoirs). Currently, scientists are busily creating maps of various isotopes’ distributions to assist investigators.
If Saltair Sally had been in Salt Lake City in the weeks preceding her death, the hair closest to her scalp would reflect the isotopic signature of Salt Lake City’s local water supply. If she had been in, say, Seattle instead, her hair’s isotopic composition would be different, giving investigators a valuable clue.
Cowboy Gil: Your Lower Intestine
Anatomically Correct Glass Sculptures
From the vascular system to brain and lung models, Farlow and his team of ten construct borosilicate glass structures representing the inner workings of the human body. With the addition of some tinted liquid being pumped through the translucent and hollowed out figures, one can even simulate blood flow or the passage of oxygen, making them ideal for teaching and learning.
Mesmerizing Glass Skeleton Radiates Krypton Light
The Portland-based sculptor took over 1,000 hours over the course of two years to complete this 78-inch tall glass replica of the human skeleton. Unlike a normal model of a skeletal frame, this structure is built out of a series of carefully crafted borosilicate glass tubes that are illuminated like one large anatomically shaped neon light when ionized krypton enters the hollow, transparent figure.
"Women's Work"
Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On (Hint: Sexism)
Interesting observation why businessmen weren’t on the laptop bandwagon early on:
Though Hawkins doesn’t quite say it. There is a distinct gendered component to this discomfort. Typing was women’s work and these business people, born in the 1930s and 1940s, didn’t scrap their way up the bureaucracy to be relegated to the very secretarial work they’d been devaluing all along.
Because — and here comes the psychological reason — they were not good at the work that their female employees had been doing. And that made them feel bad.
I'm With Stupid
Jurassic Park Impossible Because of Stupid Laws of Physics
It might be odd to think of DNA having a half-life, as it’s usually associated with radioactive material — but as it measures the time taken for half of something to decay, it makes sense to talk about old samples of DNA in the same way. For example, uranium-235, the fissile material that can be used in nuclear power plants (and nuclear weapons), has a half-life of 703.8 million years. DNA, by comparison, doesn’t fare so well — according to a study of 158 samples of moa bones between 500 and 6,000 years old, DNA appears to have a half-life of around 521 years.
Actually, anything driven by a simple probability is going to behave this way, where the rate of loss depends on how much you have. There are biological half-lives for some substances you ingest, which tells you how long it will take to metabolize or excrete that substance.
Harvesting an Ant Farm
Have you ever dreamed of shrinking yourself so you could go inside an ant colony and see exactly what they do in there? You may have owned an ant farm when you were a kid, but do ants really behave how they would normally within a clear plastic sheath only about 1 inch by 1 inch? Doubtfully. Playing with ants isn’t just for kids as Florida State University professor Walter Tschinkel shows us in just a moment. Tschinkel replicates the form of ant colonies by pouring molten aluminum into the tunnels, letting the metal harden, and then meticulously excavating the result.
Making a Fist Instead of the Heimlich
Study: Athletes Perform Better Under Pressure When They Make a Fist With Their Left Hand
According to the researchers, freaking out is primarily associated with the left hemisphere of the brain, while the right hemisphere deals more with mechanical actions. Meanwhile the cortex of the right hemisphere controls movements of the left side of the body, and the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body. So they figured that if you can purposely activate the right hemisphere — in this case, by making a fist or squeezing a ball with your left hand — it will improve physical performance and draw focus away from the ruminating left hemisphere.
If you’re old enough to remember: Joe Morgan of the Cincinnati Reds used to flap his arm when he was at-bat, a trick he said was a reminder, from one of his coaches, to keep his elbow up. I wonder if that ritual also could have had this distraction effect.
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