© Andrzej Krauze
"At about four in the morning, I remember playing different tastes to people on a piano in the room we were working in," she says. For instance, "to great amusement, during breakfast I played people the taste of eggs."
Science & Technology
Researchers investigate the unusual association of musical sounds with tastes or colors through the lens of another perceptual quirk.
A few years ago, UK composer and technology reporter LJ Rich participated in a music technology competition as part of a project with the BBC. The 24-hour event brought together various musicians, and entailed staying awake into the wee hours trying to solve technical problems related to music. Late into the night, during a break from work, Rich thought of a way to keep people's spirits up.
"At about four in the morning, I remember playing different tastes to people on a piano in the room we were working in," she says. For instance, "to great amusement, during breakfast I played people the taste of eggs."
"At about four in the morning, I remember playing different tastes to people on a piano in the room we were working in," she says. For instance, "to great amusement, during breakfast I played people the taste of eggs."
© Morsa Images | Getty Images
While it may be the stuff of science fiction today, the advancement of nanotechnology in the coming years will make it a bigger threat to humanity than conventional nuclear weapons, according to an expert. The U.S., Russia and China are believed to be investing billions on nanoweapons research.
"Nanobots are the real concern about wiping out humanity because they can be weapons of mass destruction," said Louis Del Monte, a Minnesota-based physicist and futurist. He's the author of a just released book entitled "Nanoweapons: A Growing Threat To Humanity."
One unsettling prediction Del Monte's made is that terrorists could get their hands on nanoweapons as early as the late 2020s through black market sources.
© Nature.com
A new report issued by the National Academy of Sciences says U.S. regulatory agencies need to prepare for new plants, animals, and microbes that will be hitting the market in the next five to 10 years. The new products, the report says, could overwhelm regulatory agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration.
"All of these products have the potential to be beneficial, but the question to me is, how do they compare to the alternative?" says Jennifer Kuzma, co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee that prepared the report.
Comment: God's red pencil? CRISPR and the myths of precise genome editing
Why is this discussion of precision important? Because for the last seventy years all chemical and biological technologies, from genetic engineering to pesticides, have been built on a myth of precision and specificity. They have all been adopted under the pretense that they would function without side effects or unexpected complications. Yet the extraordinary disasters and repercussions of DDT, leaded paint, agent orange, atrazine, C8, asbestos, chlordane, PCBs, and so on, when all is said and done, have been stories of the steady unraveling of a founding myth of precision and specificity.
Nevertheless, with the help of industry propagandists, their friends in the media, even the United Nations, we are once again being preached the gospel of precision. But no matter how you look at it, precision is a fable and should be treated as such.
The issues of CRISPR and other related new "genome editing" biotechnologies are the subject of intense activity behind the scenes. The US Department of Agriculture has just explained that it will not be regulating organisms whose genomes have been edited since it doesn't consider them to be GMOs at all. The EU was about to call them GMOs but the US has caused them to blink, meanwhile the US is in the process of revisiting its GMO regulatory environment entirely. Will future safety regulations of GMOs be based on a schoolboy version of genetics and an interpretation of genome editing crafted in a corporate public relations department? If history is any guide it will.
© REUTERS/ John Williams/U.S. Navy
On March 16, Lockheed Martin said that its new solid-state fiber laser can slice through targets with a record-breaking 58 kilowatts of direct power, and that in a matter of months it will deliver its High Energy Laser Mobile Test Truck (HELMTT) to the US Army for testing.
© INAH TV / YouTube
Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology (INAH) say the bones of the prehistoric mammoth were discovered by chance in December 2015, during construction work near the town of Tultepec, approximately 40km north of Mexico City.
Since the discovery, archaeologists have been painstakingly preserving the fossilized bones. Crucially, the mammoth was found cut up into pieces, which may indicate that prehistoric humans lived in Mexico 14,000 years ago.
© YouTube/Thunderbolts Project (screen capture)
But the hypothesis of the neutron star was not a predictive theory that was composed and then verified through observation — rather, it was invented in the 1960's, after the completely unexpected discovery of radio pulses from the constellation Vulpecula. Today, we report on the latest in a string of "baffling" discoveries that in effect falsify the neutron star hypothesis, and we explore theoretical alternatives in the Electric Universe and plasma cosmology.
Study finds no big differences in microbiomes of babies born vaginally or by C-section
Babies are born germy, and that's a good thing. Our microbiomes — the microbes that live on and in us — are gaining cred as tiny but powerful keepers of our health.
As microbes gain scientific stature, some scientists are trying to answer questions about how and when those germs first show up on babies. Birth itself may be an important microbe-delivery event, some researchers suspect. A trip through the birth canal can coat a baby with bacteria from his mother. A C-section, some evidence suggests, might introduce different bacteria, at least right after birth.
© PHDG/istockphoto
Whether a baby is born vaginally or by C-section may not be a major determinant for babies’ microbiomes, a new study suggests.
Whether a baby is born vaginally or by C-section may not be a major determinant for babies’ microbiomes, a new study suggests.
As microbes gain scientific stature, some scientists are trying to answer questions about how and when those germs first show up on babies. Birth itself may be an important microbe-delivery event, some researchers suspect. A trip through the birth canal can coat a baby with bacteria from his mother. A C-section, some evidence suggests, might introduce different bacteria, at least right after birth.
© NASA
Uzboi Vallis is situated in the Margaritifer Sinus quadrangle (MC-19) region on Mars, believed to have been formed by water that once existed on the planet.
The dramatic layers of rust-hued rock likely formed when the valley's drainage was blocked by a large impact that hollowed out the planet's Holden Crater.
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
These five images from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show different Martian features of progressively greater size and complexity, all thought to result from thawing of seasonal carbon dioxide ice that covers large areas near Mars' south pole during winter.
These five images from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show different Martian features of progressively greater size and complexity, all thought to result from thawing of seasonal carbon dioxide ice that covers large areas near Mars' south pole during winter.
Researchers using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) report the first detection of cumulative growth, from one Martian spring to another, of channels resulting from the same thawing-carbon-dioxide process believed to form the spider-like features.
The spiders range in size from tens to hundreds of yards (or meters). Multiple channels typically converge at a central pit, resembling the legs and body of a spider. For the past decade, researchers have checked in vain with MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera to see year-to-year changes in them.
"We have seen for the first time these smaller features that survive and extend from year to year, and this is how the larger spiders get started," said Ganna Portyankina of the University of Colorado, Boulder. "These are in sand-dune areas, so we don't know whether they will keep getting bigger or will disappear under moving sand."
Dunes appear to be a factor in how the baby spiders form, but they may also keep many from persisting through the centuries needed to become full-scale spiders. The amount of erosion needed to sculpt a typical spider, at the rate determined from observing active growth of these smaller troughs, would require more than a thousand Martian years. That is according to an estimate by Portyankina and co-authors in a recent paper in the journal Icarus. One Martian year lasts about 1.9 Earth years.
"Much of Mars looks like Utah if you stripped away all vegetation, but 'spiders' are a uniquely Martian landform," said Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona, a co-author of the report.
Comment: Other incredible NASA images from Mars' south pole include these giant 'worm' like features:
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
The bizarre 'worms of mars': The polar cap is made from carbon dioxide (dry ice), which does not occur naturally on Earth.
The bizarre 'worms of mars': The polar cap is made from carbon dioxide (dry ice), which does not occur naturally on Earth.
© Michael Benson/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/Kinetikon Pictures
© Shutterstock
The "near Earth asteroid" - which was discovered by NASA earlier this year - will brush past on Friday.
NASA monitors "near Earth asteroids" or NEOs to predict possible collisions.
This particular space rock is dubbed 2017 EG3.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU.
Comment: Tasty letters? Sensory connections spill over in synesthesia