Tag Archives: science news

The Blood Countess was right… sort of.

05 Monday May 2014

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Did you hear? A new study is showing that Swapping Young Blood for Old Reverses Aging. Essentially, scientists injected the blood of younger mice into elderly mice, and found that many age-related infirmities were reversed. Scientists have high hopes that this discovery could be used on humans to similar effect, especially when it comes to Alzheimer’s and heart enlargement.

We’ll have to recruit vampire cats to kill all the vampire mice that are sure to be bred through this program.

This is awesome, but didn’t someone already discover this? Ah yes, the Blood Countess. She was the most prolific female serial killer in history, and she bathed in the blood of virgins to keep herself young. Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed and four collaborators were convicted for the murder and torture of 80 different girls, but accusations ran as high as 650.

…Okay, so the staying young and even the bathing in virgin blood thing were never actually proven, but still. Does this sound like a coincidence to you? ;)

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Interspecies Love

01 Thursday May 2014

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When a National Geographic photographer is confronted with a leopard seal, the seal reveals a heartwarming look at nature.

I For One Welcome Our Vegetal Overlords

14 Monday Apr 2014

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Bionic Plants: Turning Plants Into Energy Producing Factories
First we turn plants into batteries. Before you know it, they’ll go all super-species on us and take over.

Seriously though, this article is pretty awesome. IFLS does the usual layman breakdown (although it’s a tad more technical than many of her others.)

TL;DR? They’ve figured out how to turn plants into energy-producing units. There were some fancy science-problems stopping them from doing this before, but they’re figuring it all out and it could be feasible as an energy source. It’s still in early stages, but to me, this sounds a lot more sustainable than most of the stuff we’ve got going on right now. More plants: yay!

happy flower battery

The plants will be so happy to serve us… until they’re not. :o

Driving On Air

24 Monday Mar 2014

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New Hybrid Car Runs On Air!

What does this world have tons of? Air! Talk about a renewable resource. Of course, it’s rarely as simple (or cheap) as it sounds. IFLS does a good job (as usual) of breaking down the science, so if you’re curious, take a read.

But sometimes I wonder if oil’s grasp on the world will ever loosen. There are all kinds of hybrid vehicles operating on different sources of energy out there, but it seems like they’re all just too expensive. The problem is this – they need infrastructure to be feasible. So do gasoline-powered vehicles, but since theirs is already in place, let’s face it, it’s “cheaper.” Like with electric cars, I see the plug-in problem here. How does one recharge without plugging in at some point, and where/how are we going to get the resources wide-spread enough for it to be feasible? It’s great to hear that hybrid technology is becoming (at least a bit) more cost-effective, but I have to wonder.

Are we waiting for an apocalypse to overhaul everything? :P

So what do you think? Will we be seeing a new kind of vehicle (not necessarily air-powered) widespread on our roads in the future? What form do you think they’ll take, if they do?

And where are our flying cars?

Revolutionizing Reading?

10 Monday Mar 2014

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So I ran across THIS article. As always, IFLS does an amazing job of breaking down and explaining things, although really, this one isn’t too complicated.

Basically, there’s this new thing called Spritz. Basically, the people who made Spritz want to revolutionize reading.

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.

When I saw IFLS’s title, “Read a Novel in 90 Minutes With a Smartphone App,” I was skeptical. How was an app going to make people read faster? Well… I’m somewhat convinced.
I already read faster than the statistical average (I don’t know how much faster), so when I tried the first “level,” it actually felt frustratingly slow to me. But then it picked up speed, and then some more, until I had to go back a “level” and repeat it a couple times before moving ahead. This thing has potential.

I strongly urge you to check this Spritz thing out. (Link is to their homepage, which has a demo.)

However, I did run into two problems. One: blinking.

The Doctor: “Don’t Blink. Blink and you’re dead. Don’t turn your back. Don’t look away. And don’t blink. Good Luck.”

If you get distracted, get something in your eye, or blink too slowly, you can miss a LOT in a very short period of time. What will they do about this? Use the camera to track where your eye is looking and pause if it looks away? (That’s kinda creepy, but okay.)

Problem two: Lag.

My internet happened to be kinda iffy when I went to their page, and even slight lag was making me miss whole words, often multiples in a row. So processing speed would be a BIG deal for this app.

Regardless, it’s fascinating stuff with potential. I hope they get what they need to fund and develop this app to all it can be.

So, what do you think? Would you try this for something novel-length? Do you think this app has a future? Let me know in the comments!

I, for one, welcome our fishy overlords.

06 Thursday Mar 2014

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What horrors will fish unleash with their newfound power?

What is the most terrible (or hilarious) fish-pocalypse can you come up with?

We’ll have to develop similar apparatuses (apparati?) for dolphins to protect us. Unless they leave us before the fishpocalypse (So long and thanks for all the fish?)

Happy Face Thinking

03 Monday Mar 2014

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So I stumbled across this article: Emoticons Are Reshaping Our Brains, We Now Process :-) As A Human Face
Essentially,

A study in Social Neuroscience posits that, since they were introduced two decades ago, emoticons have begun to actually reshape our brains—but only some emoticons.

By way of background: When a human views another human’s face—even if it’s upside-down—a particular part of the brain is activated.

…Before 1982 there would be no reason that ‘:-)’ would activate face sensitive areas of the cortex but now it does because we’ve learnt that this represents a face.

I personally go for no nose.

At any rate, there’s definitely something to this. I’ve used a startling array of emoticons since I discovered the internet, including (but not limited to): :) ;) :D ^_^ ^_~ o.o O.o :( :P >.< XD XP =^..^= and orz. ("orz" is a little guy kneeling on the ground pounding his head on the floor. Do you see it? DO YOU?)

How amazing are our brains that they can change and adapt like this?

Also, an amusing argument about smilies: Should Smilies Have Noses: The Great Emoticon Debate

So how about you? Are all my above emoticons familiar to you? Nose or no nose?

We Live On The Holodeck

16 Monday Dec 2013

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nebulaIs The Universe a Hologram? Physicists say it’s possible.  I’ve always been fascinated by the multitude of theories that proliferate in the scientific community that try to explain the nature of the universe, and even more controversially,  its origins.  Now, I have my own opinions on the matter, but since they’re rather controversial and that’s not what I want my blog to be about, I’m not going to go into them.  Suffice to say, I’m a Christian, and many of my beliefs stem from there.

No, here I want to look at articles and theories like the ones from the article linked above from a perspective totally different from what’s “right.”  Instead I want to regard it from a position of awe.  Let’s face it: we don’t have any solid idea what the universe really is or how it works.  It’s possible we’re not even capable, as human beings, of full comprehending it.  But every time I see science advancing (or at least expanding) in this area of research, I’m drawn in, fascinated and inspired.

What I find interesting about the article is that they touch on the idea that the universe is a hologram (and how it could explain so much about science if it is), but they don’t reflect on what that would mean.  So if it’s a hologram, WHY is it a hologram?  Was it designed to be that way?  Is it just that way through some fluke of the universe?  HOW is it a hologram?

This is why I keep tabs on science news.  How amazing is this world we live in?  What amazingly inventive idea will we come up with next?  And how might our world surprise us by (at least seemingly) verifying some of the most bizarre of them?

So the universe is a hologram.  What happens if someone turns it off? :P