Discover magazine

Oct

2010

NASA and Etsy Team Up to Get Their Space Craft(ing) On

Discover, October 15 2010.

NASA threw down the space-crafting gauntlet for Etsy crafters a few weeks ago, challenging them to create and submit their own NASA-inspired art:

Entrants share an original handmade item or work of art inspired by NASA and NASA’s programs, such as the Space Shuttle Program and human spaceflight, aeronautics, science and exploration of the universe.

The challenge is part of NASA’s effort to reach out to the female members of the younger generation; Etsy’s user base is 96 percent women, and most are under 35. The contest’s grand prize winner will get a $500 shopping spree on Etsy, and a trip to attend the launch of the space shuttle Endeavor in February 2011. Read More >

Oct

2010

2 New Ways to Kick Heroin: A High-Blocking Injection, a Long-Lasting Implant

Discover, October 15 2010.

Two new long-lasting options for treating opioid abuse could help heroin addicts avoid relapses. The new drugs solve a problem with the current treatments for opioid addiction.

These drugs, called methadone and buprenorphine, are really just replacement addictions, and their use needs to be closely monitored; patients take them daily at a clinic, because they can be abused by crushing up the pills and injecting them. Read More >

Oct

2010

What’s That Flavor? I Can’t Taste It Over All This Noise

Discover, October 14 2010.

White noise doesn’t just drown out other noises, it drowns out taste too, says research in the appropriately named Journal of Food Quality and Preference. This could help explain why airplane food tastes so bland, why we eat more with the TV on, and why space tourists need such strong beer, the study’s first author told BBC News:

“There’s a general opinion that aeroplane foods aren’t fantastic,” said Andy Woods, a researcher from Unilever’s laboratories and the University of Manchester. “I’m sure airlines do their best – and given that, we wondered if there are other reasons why the food would not be so good. One thought was perhaps the background noise has some impact.” Read More >

Oct

2010

Plastic Chemical BPA Is Officially Toxic in Canada

Discover, October 14 2010.

The Canadian government today declared bisphenol A, a chemical in plastics also known as BPA, to be toxic.

A scientific assessment of the impact of human and environmental exposure to bisphenol A has determined that this substance constitutes or may constitute a danger to human health and the environment.

The chemical has been linked to heart disease, impotence, and diabetes, while animal and cell culture experiments have shown that it can mimic the female hormone estrogen. It is found in some plastic containers, and some food cans are lined with it. While Canada is forging ahead, most other governments are dithering about whether or not the chemical poses a health threat. Read More >

Oct

2010

X Marks the Spot of a Dramatic Asteroid Collision

Discover, October 14 2010.

Out in the asteroid belt beyond Mars, two asteroids rendezvous-ed in the darkness, with explosive results. Atomic bomb level explosive. These two asteroids, one probably 400 feet wide and the other, smaller asteroid around 10 to 15 feet across, collided sometime in early 2009.

This is the first time we humans have observed an asteroid impact right after it has occurred, and the first time a resulting x-shape has been seen. Researchers aren’t sure what caused the novel shape, and they were surprised by how long the dust tail has lasted. The analysis of the finding, originally announced earlier this year, is published in Nature this week. Read More >

Oct

2010

Punching Robot Totally Breaks Asimov’s First Rule

Discover, October 14 2010.

How much harm would a robot cause, if a robot could cause harm? Ok, admittedly that’s not as good of a tongue twister as the woodchuck chucking wood, but it’s a legitimate question being posed by researchers in Slovenia. In Slovenia, where electronic gadgets smack you.

Borut Povše at the University of Ljubljana has been testing the punching ability of an industrial-strength robot, inflicting everything from mild to unbearable pain on six of his colleagues and measuring how much they said it hurt. Povše told New Scientist’s Paul Marks that robots need to learn their limits to safely work side by side with humans. Read More >

Oct

2010

Obama Administration Lifts Deep-Water Drilling Moratorium

Discover, October 13 2010.

On Tuesday the U.S. government repealed the six-month ban on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, enacted in May in response to BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“We are open for business,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters in a phone call Tuesday afternoon, adding, “We have made, and continue to make, significant progress in reducing the risks associated with deep-water drilling.” Read More >

Oct

2010

The Platypus Can Poison You 80 Different Ways

Discover, October 13 2010.

The platypus is a bit like a fruitcake. Shove a bunch of leftover genes in there, mix it up and send it to your relatives see what kind of animal you get.

That’s kind of the approach evolution used when designing this odd creature’s venom; scientists have just determined that the venom contains over 80 different toxins in 13 different classes. The poison can kill small animals, and can leave humans in pain for weeks. The venom is delivered through a barb on the male’s foot–it’s thought that the fellas use the poison during mating season to show dominance. Read More >

Oct

2010

Does a 200-Year-Old Gourd Contain the Blood of a Beheaded King?

Discover, October 13 2010.

Dried blood on a handkerchief, a $700,000 gourd and one dead king. A forensic murder mystery? Nope, just another genetics paper. I mean, it is gourd season, what did you expect? The dead king in question is Louis XVI (the last of the French kings), who was ceremoniously beheaded on January 21st, 1793. After the beheading, attendees rushed the stage and dipped their handkerchiefs in the royal blood.

Over two hundred years later, some of that blood may have been found–dried to the inside of a decorative gunpowder gourd. The story goes that one of the attendees rushed home and stuffed the bloody handkerchief into the gourd for safekeeping. In a study published in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics, researchers analyzed some of the dried blood scraped from the inside of the gourd to find out if it really could be the king’s blood. Read More >

Oct

2010

2 Ways to Keep an Eye on Illegal Logging: Watch on Tiger-Cam; Bug the Trees

Discover, October 12 2010.

Motion-activated cameras have been used to catch bad nannies and adulterers for years. But in the forest, a high-tech, heat-detecting nannycam has caught video not just of the rare tigers that were its intended targets, but also of some unexpected forest-dwellers: illegal loggers. In the video to the right, you can see a rare Sumatran tiger (one of only 400 left in Indonesia) strolling up to the forest spy camera and saying hello in Indonesia’s Riau Province. Seven days later a beast of a very different kind awakens the camera: a bulldozer leveling the forest. The next day, another tiger passes by the spot, across the front of the clear-cut forest. The forests are being cleared for palm oil plantations, according to the WWF:

“Because of its status, both as a protected area and limited production forest, the area cannot be developed as a palm oil plantation, therefore any forest clearance, including bulldozing activities to clear the path, strongly indicates this excavation was illegal,” said Ian Kosasih, director of WWF-Indonesia’s forest and species program. Read More >