Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
At the Javits Center in Manhattan last Saturday, hundreds of teenagers milled about in sneakers and safety goggles, tinkering with the robots they had brought to the FIRST Robotics Competition New York City Regional. Requests for parts (dowel rods, PVC pipe) boomed out over the PA system. Parents lingered near each team’s staging area, sporting…
Remember last week’s video about the trouble with Star Trek’s transporter (a.k.a. a “suicide box”) by CGP Grey, delving into whether the teleported version of yourself would really be, well, you? Henry Reich of Minute Physics has posted a video response with his own resolution to the logical paradox. You know what that means…. NERD…
So, remember 2013 TX68? That 100-foot wide asteroid that was set to zip past Earth at a distance of something between 15,000 and 3 million miles? Sometime Tuesday in fact? Turns out, that already happened on Monday morning, NASA scientists revealed today. At around 8:42 a.m. EST, 2013 TX68 passed Earth about 2.54 million miles…
While several influential journals, including Science and Nature, have a stated policy of treating preprints on an equal footing with papers that have not been posted elsewhere, few biologists have chosen an option they fear will handicap already slim prospects of acceptance. Some journals have a policy of not considering preprints. And others, like Cell,…
Photo Credit Yann Kebbi AS the director of the human brain bank at the National Institute of Mental Health, I am surrounded by brains, some floating in jars of formalin and others icebound in freezers. As part of my work, I cut these brains into tiny pieces and study their molecular and genetic structure. My…
Image Credit: Marvel Captain America may get all the glory when it comes to saving the fictional world of the Marvel Universe, but our real world desperately needs saving too. And it’s going to require more than an indestructible shield. To save our planet, we’re going to need science. That’s why Marvel Studios, in partnership…
Early Saturday morning 65 women — aged 25 to 70 — arrived at a 5,000-square-foot former garage space in Brooklyn to compete in a female-only weightlifting competition. The Iron Maidens Raw Open was founded five years ago at Crossfit South Brooklyn to give women a place to compete in three powerlifts: the deadlift, squat and bench…
Canadian couple David and Collet Stephan have pleaded not guilty to charges that they “failed to provide the necessities for life” to their 19-month-old Ezekiel, who died of untreated meningitis four years ago. According to the CBC, prosecutors have claimed that the couple attempted to treat their son with home remedies rather than take him…
Photo Credit Irene Rinaldi Honolulu — OVER the past two decades as a professor, I’ve grown thousands of plants, studying how their biology shifts in response to our changing environment. Soon I’ll begin to design and build my fourth laboratory; I’ll teach classes and take on more staff members, as I do every year. Like…
It’s time! This week, news that Hamburg banned coffee pods from government buildings set off a larger conversation about why we’re still giving our money to companies like Keurig and Nespresso. Let’s be honest: It’s time for the whole world to stop buying coffee pods. The news from Hamburg comes a year after Keurig announced…