May 28 Should Henceforth Be Known As Thales Day

!----> Partial Solar Eclipse Thousands of Chicagoans will next week to celebrate the 2,600th anniversary of science. Thales of Miletus, "Father Of Science" Obviously it’s pretty hard to pin down the exact date when science got its start. But the Chicago Science Fest organizers are giving the honors to May 28, because on this day in 585 B.C., a Greek philosopher...

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How Delaying A Subway Train Fixes A Subway Delay

!----> Video of A Subway Delay Story To a harried subway passenger, learning that there's a delay ahead can trigger groans, rolled eyes, or mere stoic despair. But commuters might be even more annoyed if they realized the track ahead was perfectly clear: Sometimes, the system holds a train in place to fix a delay behind it. In this 8-bit , the explains how slowing down one train can actually reduce the total delay on the line. It all has to do with maintaining an even gap between trains. Otherwise, a small delay will swell...

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Murder Suspect Identified By DNA Left On Pizza Crust

!----> Cheese pizza, extra DNA. In what has been called an four people were murdered on May 14 in a mansion in Washington, D.C. At first glance, the crime appeared to be motivated by money and seemed to be random, so investigators didn’t have much information to go on when trying to identify a suspect. But then, a stroke of luck: Police uncovered a box of Domino’s pizza, one of two that was delivered to the house...

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You Could One Day Be Identified By Your Unique 'Brainprint'

!----> A person hooked up for an electroencephalogram (EEG). Sometimes, other people interpret your words differently than you may have intended--like you’re not on the same wavelength. Turns out that the neuroscience backs up that idea; words elicit unique neurological responses in different people's brains, according to a published in the journal Neurocomputing. This revelation could lead to a whole...

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This Futuristic Concrete Heals Itself With Built-In Bacteria

!----> Concrete Concrete has been a go-to building material since . It’s durable, easy to make, and relatively inexpensive. There’s just one problem: It has a tendency to crack. There are a lot of different reasons that concrete cracks, but in general, it gets stressed either from the load its carrying, the weather, or other natural forces, and it fractures under the pressure. Regardless, cracked...

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Why Does Mold Come In So Many Colors?

!----> Jason Schneider The amazing diversity of colors produced by molds and other fungi can vary regionally, says Sara Robinson, a researcher at Oregon State University. Blues and greens are prevalent in the Pacific Northwest, whereas oranges are more common in the Amazon. But the raison d’être of this rainbow of melanins, carotenoids, and other pigments isn’t always clear. Some of the species Robinson...

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Looking for Dark Matter Under A Mountain

!----> Darkside 50 Enrico Sacchetti A mile beneath Italy’s Gran Sasso mountain lies the DarkSide-50 detector. The three-story cylinder was built to search for our universe’s most mysterious substance: . “We know it exists in our galaxy and roughly how much there is,” says Princeton physicist Peter Meyers. “What we don’t know is what it is.” The most promising lead is --weakly interacting massive...

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Will The Milky Way Get Strangled To Death?

!----> A Spiral Galaxy Just like lifeforms here on earth, galaxies can die. And it isn't always pretty. A published in Nature suggests that most galaxies die by strangulation. A galaxy is pronounced dead (or quiescent, which doesn't sound as dramatic) when it stops producing stars. Star production requires the presence of gases like , which get turned into heavier elements or metals as a star forms....

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You Can Go To Jail For Doing Citizen Science In Wyoming

!----> Buffalo in Wyoming The Internet since on Slate that a new law in Wyoming would make collecting data illegal. Illegal, that is, if you collected those samples with the intention of turning them over to a federal or state agency that could actually take action if there was a problem. The law got its start after a sued an environmental group for trespassing on their land to obtain water samples...

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Nepal Hit By Another Large Earthquake

!----> Aid Distribution Nepalese people carry disaster relief kits on May 5, 2015, 10 days after the first major earthquake struck. Just over two weeks ago, a large earthquake , killing people, and literally . This morning, the earth moved again, the shaking reaching a substantial magnitude of 7.3 on the . Today's quake was larger than the many aftershocks that have rattled the region...

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After Major Nepal Earthquake, Himalayas Drop Several Feet

!----> Himalayas Moving a mountain is considered about as possible as emptying an ocean with a teaspoon. Sure, over time, the rocky peaks of a mountain can be worn down and moved by millions of years of weathering and erosion, but moving it in one fell swoop? Impossible. Or not. In the aftermath of the , scientists at the German Aerospace Center looked through data collected by the Sentinel-1a satellite,...

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Silver Makes Dead Bacteria Act Like Zombies

!----> / Chemists in Israel have discovered the walking dead of the microbial world. It turns out that bacteria slayed by silver can even after they're dead as a doornail. Silver has been used as an antimicrobial agent for centuries. Bacteria absorb the silver particles, which is toxic to the cells. Unlike antibiotics, bacteria cannot develop a resistance to silver. In the experiment, researchers exposed...

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Crater Wall Collapsing Into Lava Lake Creates A Beautiful Explosion [Gallery]

!----> Last week, we showed you what happens when a . But that only raises the question, what happens when more rocks fall into a lava lake? Kilauea is here to sate your curiosity. The Hawaiian volcano, whose lava flows just a few months ago, is now capturing attention for its lava spurting out in a different location--its summit. In the middle of Halema'uma'u Crater, a lava lake has been steadily rising since April 22, spilling out onto the crater floor last week. That's exciting enough, but on Sunday, part of the crater wall managed...

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Smart Plankton-Like Particles Could Swim Upstream In The Human Body

!----> Smart nanoparticles in hydrogen peroxide solution From to based on frog’s skin, the natural world has long been an inspiration to engineers. For those designing implantable medical devices, incorporating elements of the natural world has been even more challenging. Now an international team of physicists has developed microparticles that move like microorganisms in the body and are able to swim...

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