Discover magazine

Oct

2010

Tropical Animals May Get a Dangerous Metabolic Jolt From Climate Change

Discover, October 7 2010.

While the temperature effects of climate change are expected to be less dramatic in the equatorial regions, the cold-blooded tropical animals that live there may be in for a dramatic shock. A study published this week in Nature focused on these cold-blooded animals–including insects, amphibians, and lizards–whose body temperatures are not constant, but instead rise and fall with the temperature of their environment.

The researchers found that these creatures show great increases in their metabolism from slight changes in temperature; the metabolic increases were on the order of twice that of warm-blooded animals. Read More >

Oct

2010

Alcohol Makes You Think Everyone Is Out to Get You

Discover, October 7 2010.

Drunk fights are a typical occurrence at some bars–but why does drinking make us more likely to fight? Kate Shaw over at Ars Technica gives us a good example of a typical confrontation:

If you’ve ever had one (or ten) too many drinks at a bar, you’re probably familiar with this scenario: a drunk guy stumbles past you, spills a beer all over you, and you get angry. You’re convinced he did it on purpose, and you start fuming. Read More >

Oct

2010

Robo Tanks to Guard Nuclear Facility. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Discover, October 6 2010.

Who needs people to guard a nuclear weapons facility when you can build an autonomous robot to do it? Or, at least that’s what the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was probably thinking when they ordered up three robo-tanks to take on the task of watching over the Nevada nuclear test site.

The first of the robots, named the Mobile Detection Assessment Response System (MDARS), just started working, according to Wired’s Danger Room, where we saw the story. Two more are scheduled to start their work in other remote locations on the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS, which is basically in the middle of the desert) within the next six months. Read More >

Oct

2010

Toxic Sludge Floods Hungarian Countryside, Threatens the Danube River

Discover, October 6 2010.

It was a deadly accident and an ecological disaster. On Monday, a reservoir at a Hungarian aluminum refinery ruptured, sending a wave of toxic sludge across three counties (click image to see a map of the area).

The spill sent 185 million gallons–a mini-tsunami–of caustic red mud flooding over 16 square miles of the countryside, killing four and sending 120 more to the hospital with chemical burns from the mud, which is an industrial waste product. Read More >

Oct

2010

Thrifty Brits Make Natural Gas out of Sewage and Beer-Brewing Leftovers

Discover, October 5 2010.

How to make natural gas? Flush the toilet, and wait three weeks. At least that’s the plan for homes involved in the Didcot Renewable Gas Project, which will be recycling residents’ waste into renewable natural gas, aka “biogas”.

Gearóid Lane, managing director of communities and new energy at British Gas, said: “This renewable gas project is a real milestone in Britain’s energy history, and will help customers and the environment alike. Renewable gas has the potential to make a significant contribution to meeting the UK’s energy needs. Gas from sewage is just one part of a bigger project, which will see us using brewery and food waste and farm slurry to generate gas to heat homes.” Read More >

Oct

2010

Climate Change Activists’ Head-Exploding Ad May Have Gone a Bit Far

Discover, October 5 2010.

In a move that some are calling a misguided publicity stunt, the environmental activist group 10:10 Climate Change Campaign produced and released a gory and disturbing short film, similar to Plane Stupid’s “Polar Bear” video, to promote the climate change action day scheduled for October 10, 2010 (or 10/10/10).

In the video, people who don’t pledge themselves to 10:10’s cause (including school children and Gillian Anderson) are exploded into red, chunky goo with the press of a button. It was released last week and has resulted in a media backlash, including Sony’s retraction of support of the cause. It even inspired a cartoon. Read More >

Oct

2010

It’s a Rat! It’s a Toy Car! It’s RatCar?

Discover, October 5 2010.

While this contraption looks similar to a doggy wheelchair or a pair of prosthetic legs for your favorite pet, it’s actually much more sophisticated. This rat is hooked up to a prototype of a thought-guided robot wheelchair.

The robot-rat setup, known as Ratcar, is guided by transmissions from the rat through mini-electrodes implanted in its brain. The animal-robot hybrid was developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo, who explained its purpose to IEEE Spectrum:

“We wanted to develop a brain-machine interface system aiming for future wheelchairs that paralyzed patients can control only with thought,” says Osamu Fukayama of the university’s Medical Engineering and Life Science Laboratory. Read More >

Oct

2010

Google Street View Goes to Antarctica, Brings Maps to the Penguins

Discover, October 1 2010.

Google’s expansion of its Street View project to all seven continents has the sweet reward of allowing you to visit Antarctica while sitting on your couch in your leopard-print snuggie. (They also filled in the holes of Ireland and Brazil, but much as we love those countries, Antarctica is still more exciting.) Ed Parsons, Google’s geospatial technologist, told The Guardian that this feat was “hugely significant” to the Goog:

“One of the challenges we wanted to crack is to go to these remote places, and one of geo team at Google went to Antarctica so he took some kit and took some imagery. It’s called Street View, but there aren’t many streets in Antarctica,” he said. “This allows people to understand the contrast between New York Times Square and being on the edge of a glacier looking at penguins.” Read More >

Oct

2010

Ig Nobel Awards Honor Pioneering Work on Bat Fellatio, Whale Snot, & More

Discover, October 1 2010.

The list of wacky science discoveries from the Ig Nobel awards announced last night includes teams who made strides in vital fields like bat fellatio and curing diseases via roller coaster rides. The awards are given out every year for discoveries that made us both laugh and think.

Here’s a full list of the winning teams and projects. Read More >

Oct

2010

U.S. Apologizes for Deliberately Infecting Guatemalans With Syphilis

Discover, October 1 2010.

The United States government officially apologized to Guatemala today for unethical medical experiments conducted by American researchers in the country over 60 years ago, in which unwitting subjects were deliberately infected with syphilis.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said they were, in their words, “outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health.” Read More >