Prepare to Be Hypnotized By These Delicate Paper Robots
As far as plant names go, the sleepy plant—or shy plant, or shameplant, known more formally as Mimosa pudica—is hard to beat. Touch one of its leaves and it curls up like it’s embarrassed, the leaflets folding in on each other. It’s hypnotic and, well, kind of a surprising response for an organism without a…
Don't Fear the Robot Overlords—Embrace Them as Coworkers
Click:Chlorine tablets supplier at discount In a chilly warehouse just outside of Boston, the brute toils away. It’s 600 pounds of orange and black metal and whirring motors, a massive robotic arm that picks up car parts and places them on a table. Like its ancestors have done for decades, this industrial robot does the…
Ditch the Super Bowl for a Who's Who of Superb Owls
This Sunday, the subreddit /r/superbowl will host a gathering of hoo-ligans. They’ll be fans of the Nocturnal Flying League. Real birds of a feather. Starting at 6 pm ET, the Superb Owl community will kick off an Ask Me Anything with biologist James Duncan, who has spent his entire adult life studying owls and a…
A New Robot Tracks Sick Bees Wearing Tiny Coded Backpacks
Science hasn’t been giving us a tremendous amount of good news these days. We’re speeding toward climate catastrophe, for one. We’ve screwed up the environment so badly, it’s hard to even call it an environment anymore. And that’s coming back to bite (or sting) us: Bee populations, which we rely on to pollinate our crops,…
New Satellite's Lasers Will Track Tiny Changes in Polar Ice
For almost a decade, NASA hasn't had a satellite watching the planet's melting sea ice. That's slated to change with tomorrow's planned launch of the $1 billion ICESat-2 satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California. Once it settles into orbit 310 miles above the Earth, the satellite will start collecting data using a specially…
Scientists Are Developing a Unique Identifier for Your Brain
Michaela Cordova, a research associate and lab manager at Oregon Health and Science University, begins by “de-metaling”: removing rings, watches, gadgets and other sources of metal, double-checking her pockets for overlooked objects that could, in her words, “fly in.” Then she enters the scanning room, raises and lowers the bed, and waves a head coil…
The Sea May Be Absorbing Way More Heat Than We Thought
Editor’s note, 11/14/18: The journal Nature is reviewing corrections to the study outlined in this story. They are related to the uncertainty in the authors’ measurements. We will update this story with new figures when they become available. The story appears below in its original form. If you ever meet a climate scientist, give them…
Meet the Woman Who Rocked Particle Physics—Three Times
In 1963, Maria Goeppert Mayer won the Nobel Prize in physics for describing the layered, shell-like structures of atomic nuclei. No woman has won since. Quanta Magazine About Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering…
An Ebola Outbreak in a War Zone Is About as Bad as It Gets
In July, a 65-year-old woman running a high fever checked into a hospital in the province of North Kivu, along the Democratic Republic of Congo’s border with Uganda. She was later discharged and returned home to her remote town, only to die a few days later. By the time health officials checked in on the…
Your Weather Tweets Are Showing Your Climate Amnesia
Every time someone in a position of power (for example) says that a cold snap in winter proves that climate change is not a thing, a dutiful chorus responds with a familiar refrain: Weather is not climate. Weather happens on the scale of days or weeks, over a distance relevant to cities or states. Climate…