Many a sudden change takes place on a spring day.
- Tilted Earth is at its ‘equal night of spring’.
- Hidden fossil, flying dragon.
- My – what long, needlepoint teeth you have: Fossil of ancient sea-going croc surfaces in eastern Oregon.
- A transatlantic team of number-crunchers announced they had built a theoretical structure in 248 dimensions, resolving a 120-year puzzle that could be used to test theories about the structure of the cosmos. More.
- 500 Hubble photos taken over a one-year period have been woven together to reveal at least 50,000 galaxies.
- In his testimony to the US House of Representatives, Dr. James Hansen delivered a withering critique of the way the White House has interfered with climate scientists at NASA. More.
- Cosmic Log‘s Alan Boyle takes a look at the caves on Mars. Nice photo of those Martian caves.
- The buzzing of bees can warn of nearby poisons.
- Paying attention to not paying attention: Researchers are studying a pervasive psychological phenomenon in which oh man we’ve got to finish doing the taxes this weekend …
- Monkey see, monkey do: study demonstrates that we can learn much better just by watching than previously thought.
- Can exercise make you smarter?
- Whether from a personally experienced aversive event or only an event that’s witnessed, human fears are acquired through similar neural processes.
- Infants are able to detect the ‘impossible’ at an early age.
- Playing music significantly enhances the brain.
- Laughter may boost altruistic behavior.
- Scientist finds the beginnings of morality in primate behavior.
- A group of organisms that has never had sex in over 40 million years of existence has nevertheless managed to evolve into distinct species.
- Enviro-cateclysm of the week: Rivers run towards crisis point.
- James Lovelock (think ‘Gaia hypothesis’) fears that Europe will soon become an uninhabitable desert.
- Over the past 25 years, global warming has led to a fall in the yield of some of the world’s most important food crops.
- Alarm raised over soaring level of bird extinctions.
- The £25 fridge gadget that could slash greenhouse emissions.
- Some scientists are eyeing odd climate fixes.
- Then there are the innovators like civil engineer Mike Strizki, who hobbled together the US’s first solar-hydrogen house.
- A floating house built out of trash in a reeking channel of a Rio de Janiero slum will be preserved as a model for recycling in a government anti-pollution campaign.
- Second Life offers virtual taste of schizophrenia.
- Full-mental nudity: the arrival of mind-reading machines.
- According to a secret FBI file, Marilyn Monroe was tricked into committing suicide.
- Bananas of mass destruction.
- FOIA documents reveal 185 sightings of big cats were reported to Scottish police between 2000 and 2006.
- Atlantis: Just the facts.
- The Seymore Hersh Mystery.
- Update: Gods of Spring: The Erotics of the Equinox.
Thanks, Rick.
Quote of the Day:
We’re taught history under neat subject headings: dates, people, movements that do remarkable things (like end slavery). The assumption is that what’s past – in terms of bullying policemen or grisly haircuts – is very much past, fit for nostalgic purpose, potentially relevant only as some BBC classic serial. And the assumption beyond that, 30 or 50 years on, is that human existence automatically involves the “progress” that politicians promise from every platform. Here’s a long march towards more of everything desirable: more burgers, more holidays, more medication, more sweet satisfactions.
But real life, when you examine content, not style, isn’t like that. Real life features greed, venality and Archie’s spiritual emptiness in unchanging quantities. And, even in material ways, “progress” can seem a surprisingly frail concept.
Peter Preston, Guardian columnist, in People like us.
