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Tech NewsExtremely Bad Reasons Why Waterless Urinals Were Illegal
We take it for granted that urinals flush. With each pull of the lever, gallons of clean water come to whisk away a few ounces of pee. If you think about it, it’s actually pretty wasteful, and the current drought is convincing facilities to consider waterless urinals. But these waterless bathroom contraptions have had to … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
ScienceHealth
Papuan Tribe That Ate Brains Developed Resistance to Some Brain Diseases
The story of kuru, as classically told in biology textbooks, is a tragic one. The Fore population in Papua New Guinea ate the brains of their tribe members as an act of mourning, a ritual that allowed a misshapen protein to spread through the population. This caused the disease kuru, which killed as much as … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
This Biotech Startup Wants to Brew Yeast That Smells Like Perfume
Yeast labs have a distinctive smell—a bready scent familiar to bakers and brewers. But the frozen test tube of yeast I held at Ginkgo Bioworks had a fragrance crisp and pear-like. It was definitely yeast, but it had been genetically engineered to smell like no yeast has ever smelled. Its headquarters—or foundry, as the company … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
75 Million-Year-Old Blood Cells Found in Dinosaur Fossils
Dinosaurs fossils, we’ve all been taught, consist of bone—their flesh, skin, and organs having decayed long ago. But a new discovery might upend that assumption: Scientists have found evidence of blood cells with the protein intact in eight fossils which were not even particularly well-preserved. Soft-tissues have been discovered in dinosaurs before, but the results … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Should Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Just Be Dumped In the Ocean?
There is no permanent solution for Fukushima’s radioactive water, which has been leaking out of storage tanks again and again. Could the best option actually be just letting all into the ocean? Over at Nautilus, Eliza Strickland has a snappy summary of the problem with Fukushima’s radioactive water, which is at 620,000 gallons and counting. … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
How Bird Poop Changed the Design of Southern California’s Power Grid
Ever since humans started building tall things, birds have been pooping on them, including high-voltage power lines. In the 1920s, Southern California power grid was beset by streams and streams of bird poop. In the recent issue of Environmental Humanities, history of science professor Etienne Benson traces the impact of birds on Southern California’s power … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Secret Molecular Barcodes Could Be Used to Fight Counterfeits
French scientists have created the first synthetic polymers that can store information as bits of 0s and 1s. You might think of it as a highly simplified version of DNA, another molecule that is very, very good at storing information. These new polymers could one day replace DNA in the burgeoning field of molecular barcoding. … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
The US Is Cutting Down Its Forests to Feed Europe’s Biomass Fuel Craze
Since 2012, the US has held the title of world’s number one wood pellet exporter. What’s the big deal with wood pellets? Well, Europe has very keen on replacing coal with more environmentally friendly wood pellets—except, well, depending on who you ask, wood may not be that great either. The Washington Post has a fascinating … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
ScienceHealth
A $25 Blood Test Could Detect Every Virus That’s Ever Infected You
Every time a virus gets you sick, your immune system keeps a record. This essentially becomes a kill list that lets your body recognize and readily dispatch of any virus that tries to invade again. Scientists have now created $25 test blood test that prints out this list—an easy and cheap way to find out … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech NewsScientists Grew a Rat Limb in the Lab
The dream of regrowing limbs? It’s just gotten one step closer. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have grow a rat forearm out of living cells in the lab. A primate limb may be next. As New Scientist explains, the lab-grown limb makes use of an existing technique called “decel/recel,” short for decellularization and recellularization. It’s … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
SciencePhysics & Chemistry
A Stealth Energy Startup Just Made a 10x Improvement to Its Fusion Tech
Tri Alpha Energy does not have a website. Its office in California is unmarked. But this stealth company apparently has hundreds of millions in cash. And now it has something to show for it, reportsScience: The company claims it’s gotten ten times better at containing high-energy particles necessary for fusion energy. But before we rev … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
The Secret 1949 Radiation Experiment That Contaminated Washington
The physicists who invented the nuclear bomb worked out of Los Alamos in New Mexico, but the people who did the dirty work of making the bombs were in Hanford, Washington. Throughout the Cold War, Hanford churned out plutonium for our nuclear arsenal. It was also, conveniently, a place to experiment with radiation. Today, Hanford … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
ScienceBiology
This Seal Has a Sensor on Its Head for Gathering Data About Antarctica
It is not easy for a human to traverse the deep, cold waters of Antarctica. It is easy, however, for seals to swim through them. For the past decade, scientists have been turning elephant seals into live, swimming sensors to monitor those waters. Now, the data’s going public. The Marine Mammals Exploring the Oceans Pole … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech NewsI Was A Test Subject For Brain Experiments
The summer after I graduated from college, I took an RA job on campus that gave me a lot of free time, but not much pay. So I did the natural thing one does at a research university: I signed up to be a guinea pig for neuroscience experiments. There were a wide range of … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Sunlight and Graphene Could One Day Power a Spaceship
Graphene, already a plenty weird wondermaterial, has an unexpected new property that could one day play a role in space exploration: When hit with light, it propels forward. Huh! Scientists accidentally stumbled across this discovery when studying graphene sponges, crumpled up versions of the single-atom thick sheets of carbon. As the team used a laser … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Google’s Inbox App Is Now Available For Everyone
Inbox, aka Google’s attempt at fixing the cesspool that is email, is no longer invite only. You can download it right now at the Apple or Google Play store. To mark the occasion, Google’s also pumped out some new features, including the super duper important “undo send.” We weren’t blown away by Inbox when we … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Dust from Asteroid Mining Could Turn Into Another Space Junk Hazard
There is gold out there on asteroids. Silver and platinum and titanium, too. And if we’re seriously going to mine asteroids, it might be easier to tow them closer to Earth. But that could be serious trouble for satellites, according to new calculations by astrophysicists. NASA was recently considering an Asteroid Redirect Mission, where it … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Amateur Satellite Trackers Found the Secret X-37B Space Plane in Orbit
The U.S. Air Force’s supersecret X-37B was launched into orbit for the fourth time last week, and amateur satellite watchers have promptly identified its secret orbit—also for the fourth time. There is, you see, a small army of amateurs who keep track of over 300 spy satellites, often with little more than a pair of … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Saving the Last of the World’s Glaciers By Sending Them to Antarctica
Glaciology is in the middle of a slow-moving crisis. As the climate warms, glaciers are shrinking and then disappearing. So scientists have come up with a plan to put ice cores from melting glaciers in the most permanent cold storage possible on Earth—in Antarctica. Glaciologists extract ice cores from glaciers all over the world to … Continued
By Sarah Zhang
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