Wednesday, September 30, 2009

High-heels Linked To Heel And Ankle Pain

Here is another "duh" science article, which must have been written by a man as every woman knows this without using the scientific principle to prove the thesis"high heels hurt your feet".

High-heels Linked To Heel And Ankle Pain

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Electric Fish Plug In To Communicate

Electric Fish Plug In To Communicate

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Saturday, September 26, 2009

"WHAT IT’S CALLED: The yellow boring sponge, or in Latin, Cliona celata. WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: Like a bright yellow, very small, porous, lumpy sea flower growing in a shoreline rock bed. Except it rarely grows alone. Usually you find clusters of them — each one no more than a centimetre and a half in diameter — spreading through the rock bed so they almost carpet it. It can be quite a pleasing effect to the human eye, but to nearby sea creatures it’s a wasp at a picnic.The boring sponge doesn’t get its name from being a bad storyteller. No, this is boring as in drilling — either into rocks or the shells of oysters, clams and other mollusks sometimes to the point of overwhelming them. So if you find an empty oyster shell covered with what look like pockmarks, chances are the oyster was plagued by a plague of boring yellow sponges. WHERE TO FIND IT: On both coasts of North America where it occupies low intertidal zones. It bores into the shells of other creatures in order to anchor itself and gain some protection. WHAT IT EATS: Various microscopic marine particles including plankton. It’s what’s known as a suspension feeder, meaning it draws water through its tiny pores and then filters out whatever organic material it can find. WHAT EATS IT: Sea slugs and, where they exist, different sea turtle species. HOW IT REPRODUCES: Sexually and/or asexually. It can manage both. Sexual reproduction occurs when one sponge releases sperm into the water. Currents carry the sperm to another sponge that has eggs to fertilize. The fertilized eggs are then released into the water where they develop into larvae. Then after a few hours or sometimes days, the larvae start looking for a suitable surface to settle on. When they find it, they attach themselves to that surface and metamorphose into juvenile sp"

Fanged frog, 162 other new species found - Science- msnbc.com

Fanged frog, 162 other new species found - Science- msnbc.com

Biodiversity’s winners and losers - Science- msnbc.com

Biodiversity’s winners and losers - Science- msnbc.com

Friday, September 18, 2009

custom DNA

This is very cool and something only science geeks might appreciate. Check out the link to this site.

How To Spell B-Y-U With DNA

ScienceDaily (2009-09-16) -- DNA origami just got a new "twist" from Brigham Young University researchers who use DNA strands of customized length to spell "BYU." The advance puts them one critical step closer to building nanoscale electronic circuits. ... > read full article

Thursday, September 17, 2009

what is a "smoot"

In school you learned how to measure things. There are 12 inches in a foot. There are 3 feet in a yard. But if someone asked you "how many Smoots are there in a bridge", you might be confused.

If you were to ask a student at MIT, they would know that a SMOOT is equal to 5 feet, 7 inches, which is the exact height of a student named Oliver Smoot- class of 1962.

Smoot, after finishing his courses at the prestigious university went on to become the chairman of the American National Standards Inst.

If you use the Google Calculator and type in a measurement in feet and ask it to convert this to Smoots, it will give you an answer. For example 10 feet is equal to 1.79104478 Smoots.

The members of a fraternity decided to measure a bridge and used Oliver Smoot because he was short and also had a cool name. They laid Smoot down and drew a line to mark where his head was. They did this over and over again until they had measured the distance across the bridge. The fraternity has painted the markings each year to commemorate the "smoot".

Science Of Motion Sickness -- Physiologists Investigate The Role Of Perception In Motion Sickness

Science Of Motion Sickness -- Physiologists Investigate The Role Of Perception In Motion Sickness

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Blind woman gets sight

A woman who has been blind for the last 10 years got her sight back after doctors (and here I kid you not) "implanted a tooth in her eye as a base to hold a tiny plastic lens." Following the procedure (which was developed in Italy), surgeons took out the patient's canine or the appropriately named "eye tooth", the surrounding bone and drilled a hole into it to put in a special kind of lens. Isn't that cool?

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Scary Music Is Scarier With Your Eyes Shut

This next story is just in time for Halloween and fits perfectly into the book that we are working on. Scary Science, a new book Scholastic Canada will be published later next year and has some really spooky activities. Watch for it!


Scary Music Is Scarier With Your Eyes Shut

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Levitation Mice

There's a phrase, "When pigs fly", which means that something is probably never going to happen. Good thing the phrase isn't "when mice fly", because that is something can happen. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have been experimenting with rodents and have managed to get these creatures to float in the air. By studying what happens to mice and their bones, researchers hope to find out what would happen to astronauts who will be on long space missions. Said doctors, "we first tried a fully conscious mouse and he didn't like it very much. He started to spin and got disoriented.", which is probably science speak for, "the mouse threw up." When sedated the mouse floated happily and even ate and drank.

Back to Work

Are you the kind of child who stood in line at midnight so that you could be one of the first fan to read the latest Harry Potter? Did you stay up all night reading the book? I'm often asked what kind of books I like to read. Let's put it this way- I'm the kind of adult who gets the first copy of new Dan Brown novel- the Lost Symbol. I cannot stay up late and read all night, but for the next few days, I have something fun to read.