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MOVING DAY IS NEAR!
Published on 2011-10-04 15:06:00
STAY TUNED...I'll let you know my new url at informedbynature.org.... casey on twitter click here > read more
Rainbow Campfire Makes You Think You're Hallucinating
Published on 2011-08-03 13:19:00
What's better than a nice, wholesome campfire in summer? Psychedelic flames! Toss 2 or 3 unopened packets of Mystical Fire into your inferno, and watch the rainbow dance around as if you were on acid. Stairway to Heaven, man, I can see the music. Outside, it looks like a bunch of little Sweet-tarts packets, but inside is a crushed mix of metal salts like strontium nitrate for red color and copper carbonate for blue color--the metal makes the hue, and the salt changes the flame temperature. But [..] > read more
Genetic Study Complicates a Classic Case of Mimicry
Published on 2011-07-29 16:12:00
It's hard to believe that these 3 Heliconius butterflies are completely different species. They have very similar wing shape, color, and patterns, and are all perched on passion flower vines, their food source and a cozy place to lay their eggs. Heliconius have a good reason for resembling each other: predators know that bright butterflies make a really foul-tasting meal (the good-tasting ones just mimic the bad-tasting ones so they won't get eaten.) Evolutionary biologists have studied Heliconi [..] > read more
Treehoppers: the Princess Beatrice of the Insect World
Published on 2011-07-15 11:03:00
Insects called "treehoppers"sport hats as crazy as Princess Beatrice, except it's possible the insects are more fashion-forward. They're much more beautiful to my taste, anyway. Treehopper hats are actually thorn-like projections of their own body, and are permanently attached between their head and wings (the body is the small yellowish legs and light brown midsection below this Cladonota species' expressionistic "C") You'd think these oddly large and awkwardly shaped pronouncements would be t [..] > read more
Doggelganger uses facial recognition software to find your canine look-alike
Published on 2011-06-09 09:32:00
If you've ever wondered what kind of dog you'd be, there's a new website for you: Doggelganger uses facial recognition software to match you with your doggy twin. "Pedigree's New Zealand branch hired design agency Colenso BBDO to come up with a new > read more
Moving sculpture of tiny magnets
Published on 2011-06-08 09:21:00
moving objects No. 92 - 103 from pe lang on Vimeo.casey on twitter click here > read more
Writing about physics on the web
Published on 2011-06-07 09:03:00
A conundrum posed by SciAm editor George Mussum: why do magazine readers love cosmology/physics stories, while these same topics come in last on the web rankings? My answer--web stories are often shorter and therefore skimp on the the little details > read more
Lioness steals camera, makes a film
Published on 2011-05-31 17:47:00
Shot at Tswalu Kalahari Game Reserve by this team of artists, the camera was left on the ground to record lion movements close to the fence. A curious lioness picked up the camera and made the video hers.casey on twitter click here > read more
Sea Creature Kites
Published on 2011-05-27 08:19:00
Stingray Kite, world's largest kite, France Some Unknown Kite Festival somewhere Driffield Kite festival Berkeley Kite Festival, CA Semaphore Kite Festival, Australia What happens if your hooker kite gets bitten by my shark kite. casey o > read more
LeafSnap: An Electronic Field Guide
Published on 2011-05-20 13:23:00
I grew up in the woods, surrounded by deciduous trees. As years went on, the Dogwoods, Oaks, and Magnolias became as familiar as good friends, but now that I live in Southern California, I'm totally naive again. Enter--LeafSnap app: an iPhone a > read more
Illusion Comes to Life: the Science of 3D
Published on 2011-05-18 09:13:00
How does our brain make us see a rose pop out of this flat splotch of red paint? It starts out as an oblong red blob. The outer lines of the blog converge in the distance, so my eyes tell my brain that it's about 25 feet back-to-front. As > read more
Jello Science—aka Freaky Collagen
Published on 2011-05-16 10:23:00
Jello uses gelatin, of course, for its bouncy texture, which you might not guess is made of animal bone and skin (specifically, a protein called collagen which also makes up a third of the human body.) When you make Jello, you have to boil it to brea > read more
Sleep Consolidates Your Memories
Published on 2011-05-11 08:08:00
Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi and moderator Alan Aldacasey on twitter click here > read more
Face Transplants: How The Hell...
Published on 2011-05-10 09:22:00
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FULL OR EMPTY BEER: WHICH IS THE BEST WEAPON?
Published on 2011-04-28 10:13:00
It's likely that if I ever witness a barroom brawl that culminates in someone's head getting smashed with a beer bottle, I'm drunk too, and the gravity of the situation is lost to the spectacle of it all. But, if i was a sober witness to the cl > read more
PIC: MEGA SPIDER FOSSIL—THE LARGEST EVER FOUND
Published on 2011-04-20 09:39:00
The largest spider fossil ever found: an ancient relative of the golden orb spider. The white bar is 5mm. More... casey on twitter click here > read more
PHASE CHANGES IN ART: ICE MELTING AS A METAPHOR
Published on 2011-04-19 16:14:00
This week, MIT graduate students have created a temporary sculpture if there ever was one. IceWall is a wall made entirely of ice bricks which continue to melt and evaporate as it sits on campus, signifying traditions of ideas fading away and new gen > read more
MY BLOG WILL BE MOVING SOON
Published on 2011-04-06 13:23:00
Soon, Natural Selections will be moving to informedbynature.org....the website's not up yet, but will be in a few months. casey on twitter click here > read more
2,000 PING PONG BALLS IN ZERO GRAVITY
Published on 2011-04-05 15:45:00
casey on twitter click here > read more
NASA and Etsy Space Crafts Contest Winners
Published on 2011-04-04 18:02:00
NASA and Etsy joined up to run the 2010 Space Crafts Contest, a showcase for dozens of amazing space-themed crafts. From Etsy:The judges included NASA astronaut Steve Robinson, Susannah Locke of Popular Science magazine, Shaifali Puri of the NY > read more
Pick up a hard copy of the OPEN LABORATORY: the best science writing on the web 2010
Published on 2011-03-22 16:13:00
Yep, nothing's more fun than seeing how web writing stands up on the printed page. Buy a copy of OPEN LAB 2010 today and read what's been on other web-nut's minds for the past year and what kind of writing we value. This year's editor, Jason Goldman, > read more
PIC: Plasma plumes leaping up from the sun
Published on 2011-03-08 18:40:00
Crazy resolution on this pic of the sun taken by Alan Friedman, astrophotographer. More... casey on twitter click here > read more
SCI CAL, LOS ANGELES (March)
Published on 2011-03-08 14:57:00
MARCH 4TH NHM: First Fridays event (5PM) Call ahead for tix, res req. 9TH Caltech: Revealing the Cold Universe, lecture (8PM) Free 11TH USC: The future of climate change policy, symposium (9-3:30PM) Free > read more
ME AT 7AM THIS MORNING
Published on 2011-03-02 19:07:00
That's me at 7AM this morning--I mean--that's an Australian frilled lizard. casey on twitter click here > read more
High school student does some hard science with UCLA researchers
Published on 2011-03-01 17:10:00
If 8-year-olds can publish a scientific paper about bee behavior in the journal Biology Letters, then high school students ought to be capable of acting like full-fledged professional scientists, right? Alexander Jaffe proves it true. The Los Angele > read more
Informed by Nature: support for science outreach, education
Published on 2011-02-17 18:06:00
I've been dying to mention Informed by Nature on my blog, but couldn't really. Until now. For the last couple years, I've assisted in the development of their website dedicated to helping science outreach projects around the world GET FUNDED. It's > read more
Revival of the cell phone vs. the brain?
Published on 2011-02-15 19:39:00
I don't want to hear it again--cell phone waves are harmful to your brain...stick your face close enough for long enough and you'll turn to mush. But, there's a new paper out there that I'm afraid might catch on as fodder for the pseudoscience suscep > read more
PHOTO: A. afarensis had arched feet
Published on 2011-02-10 13:41:00
A. afarensis foot bone found in Ethiopia. Read about it at BBC News.casey on twitter click here > read more
VIDEO: How do we educate when we don't know what our world will look like tomorrow?
Published on 2011-02-10 13:00:00
Great lecture series produced and animated by RSA. This one, narrated by Sir Ken Robinson. 0:25 How do we educate our children so that they can participate in the economy given that we can't predict what it will be like next week? 2:20 Our current > read more
SCI CAL, LOS ANGELES (February)
Published on 2011-02-07 19:19:00
FEBRUARY 4TH NHM: First Fridays event (5PM) Call ahead for tix, res req. 4TH Caltech: Inside Planet Earth, film (10AM) Free 4TH Griffith Park Obs: All Space Considered, lecture various cosmology topics (7 > read more
Science news ROUNDUP: around the world
Published on 2011-02-01 14:27:00
Ancient medicines found in shipwreck, Italy. From Washington Post: ..Samples from two tablets analyzed at the Smithsonian's Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics reveal a dried concoction of about a dozen medicinal herbs, including celery > read more
Victorian infographic
Published on 2011-01-21 16:38:00
A beautiful display of river lengths and mountain heights worldwide, published in 1823 in an atlas titled, "New and Improved View of the Comparative Heights of the Principal Mountains and Lengths of the Principal Rivers In The World, The whole Judici > read more
Does blogging devalue science journalism?
Published on 2011-01-13 14:21:00
Last week, i had coffee with my sort-of mentor, a veteran science journalist who i admire greatly and never miss a chance to chat with. She read the blog article i posted at SciAm last month, liked it, but pressed me about my motives--"My only questi > read more
Scientist Caryn Babaian loves Leonardo da Vinci
Published on 2010-12-30 14:54:00
0:30 "I like to use art to communicate my ideas about nature and science....I like my students to be engaged with that art because i think art captures the elusive and diverse quality of life..." 1:35 da Vinci obsession: "what a wonderful human being > read more
SCI CAL, LOS ANGELES (January)
Published on 2010-12-28 15:13:00
JANUARY 3RD Caltech: Mars Science Laboratory, lecture (4-5PM) Free 5TH Caltech: Evolution, Risk, and Rational Decision, lecture (4-5PM) Free 7TH Nat History Museum: First Friday: The Science of Creativity > read more
HeLa, telomeres, and the death of my free time
Published on 2010-12-25 22:06:00
I haven't posted much lately. It's because I'm obsessively reading Rebecca Skloot's new book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and spending all my free time this week curled up with it (my husband is jealous.) Crazy wild events keep unfolding, an > read more
VIDEO: Elephants and camels and fractals, oh my!
Published on 2010-12-16 14:47:00
Thanks Krulwich and Otto!casey on twitter click here > read more
Check out my guest post at Scientific American
Published on 2010-12-06 10:35:00
Over the weekend, I wrote a guest post at the Scientific American website about "How to stop a hurricane." Needless to say, there are no guarantees. Here's an exerpt: ...Last year, fluid dynamics engineer Arkady Leonoy of the University of Akron sug > read more
ROUNDUP
Published on 2010-11-23 16:52:00
From around the web: This week's hot news item--HIV prevention that works. From Superbug blog at Wired: There’s huge news today in the results of a major drug trial for HIV prevention, but the news comes balanced with significant cautions and ca > read more
VIDEO: Classical guitar solo--'see' the chords
Published on 2010-11-22 18:20:00
Albéniz, Asturias (Leyenda), guitar solo, James Edwards (animation)Thanks Andrew casey on twitter click here > read more