Category Archives: Other science
Humming in the Rain
Hummingbirds don’t mind the rain
Hummingbirds manage to maintain complete control over their aerial position, even when their tiny bodies are being hammered by raindrops.
Do Not Bite the Tweezer That Feeds You
I couldn’t tell if this was cute or horrifying.
Boom, Boom, Out Go the Lights
NASA Earth Observatory: The Derecho
These before and after images from NASA’s Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite show the power outages in the clear skies over Washington, DC and Baltimore that occurred as a result of a rare, fast-moving thunderstorm system on Friday, June 29th
I’m in one of the very dark areas, that’s very bright in the “before” picture, west of DC.
A Zero-Sum Game
Causes of death: 1900 and 2010
Interesting chart; one can see where we’ve made significant progress in reducing diseases like tuberculosis and making the world safer so that accidents account for fewer deaths per unit population. Fewer deaths implies progress. But an increase is not so clear.
We’re doing great on kidneys, but hearts not so much.
As they might say up in New England, you can’t get there from here. Death is a zero-sum game; sorry if this comes as a surprise, but everybody dies. So if you are going to drastically reduce the number of deaths by one method, then those people will eventually die via another. If you eliminate childhood diseases then average lifespans will increase and those spared will die of something else. I can recall a comment in a medicine-related blog post recently, wherein the commenter claimed that something is wrong with the system because the instances of cancer were increasing, as this chart shows. But given some probability of getting cancer as an adult, you expect that increase: if your chance is 25%, then (roughly speaking) every four childhood deaths prevented should give you an additional adult cancer death. Similarly for heart-related deaths. The chart also doesn’t tell you at what age the deaths occurred (though the decrease in rate implies that death is occurring later, on average). So a heart attack that killed a person at 50 in 1900 might translate into avoiding or surviving that attack in modern times, and finally succumbing to heart disease at 70 or 80. That would not be a lack of progress. You simply can’t glean the necessary details from the graph.
That's the One, Officer!
The derecho that nailed, among other places, northern Virginia on Friday night. My abode’s power has been out for more than 48 hours now.
Firefly, not the TV Show
I used to love catching fireflies as a kid, but they didn’t seem to be around as much as I got older. I assumed it was a byproduct of spraying for mosquitos.
Were We Vealed in the First Place?
America Revealed: Pizza Delivery
AMERICA REVEALED takes viewers on a journey high above the American landscape to reveal the country as never seen before. Join host Yul Kwon (Winner of “Survivor: Cook Islands”) to learn how this machine feeds nearly 300 million Americans every day. Discover engineering marvels created by putting nature to work, and consider the toll our insatiable appetites take on our health and environment. Embark with Kwon on a trip that begins with a pizza delivery route in New York City, then goes across the country to California’s Central Valley, where nearly 50 percent of America’s fruits, nuts and vegetables are grown, and into the heartland for an aerial look at our farmlands. Meet the men and women who keep us fed – everyone from industrial to urban farmers, crop-dusting pilots to long-distance bee truckers, modern-day cowboys to the pizza deliveryman.
I'm Also A Drachma Short
June 19, 240 B.C.: The Earth Is Round, and It’s This Big
Eratosthenes knew that at noon on the day of the summer solstice, the sun was observed to be directly overhead at Syene (modern-day Aswan): You could see it from the bottom of a deep well, and a sundial cast no shadow. Yet, to the north at Alexandria, a sundial cast a shadow even at the solstice midday, because the sun was not directly overhead there. Therefore, the Earth must be round — already conventionally believed by the astronomers of his day.
What’s more, if one assumed the sun to be sufficiently far away to be casting parallel rays at Syene and Alexandria, it would be possible to figure out the Earth’s circumference.
You Can Call Me Al
It takes far less energy to recycle an aluminum can than to make one from scratch – recycling 40 Aluminum cans is the equivalent of saving a gallon of gasoline. One problem is that not all of the can is Aluminum.
[R]ecycling the cans turns out to be harder than it looks, because the basic soft drink or beer can is actually made of two kinds of aluminum. The bottom and sides are made from an aluminum sheet that is strong enough to be stamped into a round shape without tearing. For the top, which must be stiff enough to help the can retain its shape and withstand the bending force when it is opened, can makers blend aluminum with magnesium.