Mirsky (left) attempts to interview Arctic expert. Credit: Robin Lloyd Some “highlights” from the last 13.5 years of this podcast. In keeping with the net increase in entropy of the universe, this is the 3000th episode of 60-Second Science. So we’ll take a break today from our usual coverage for some brief comic relief. Because […]
The world is in desperate need of protective gear to keep health care workers safe and ventilators to help severely ill COVID-19 patients breathe. In the face of massively increased demand and stalled supply chains, engineers are scrambling to redesign equipment so it can be produced outside of specialized factories. Researchers at academic institutions are […]
Census Day, when census takers usually begin to knock on households tracking down those less likely to be counted, was April 1. This year, however, because of the pandemic, they have been unable to do that, and the Census Bureau is now asking Congress for a four-month extension for delivering the final figures. If this […]
Originally published in January 1860 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “The celebrated African traveler Dr. Livingstone relates by letter: ‘The luxuriant valley of the Shire River is marshy and abounding in lagoons, in which grow great quantities of the lotus plant. The people were busy collecting the tubers, which when boiled or roasted, resembled chestnuts. Another […]
As the global strategy for slowing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic changes from containment to mitigation, millions of residents are being asked to shelter in place, leaving their homes only for essential needs. This limitation of movement and social interaction has been a major stress test for marriages. In China, the strain of life […]
Das Coronavirus ist in Deutschland angekommen. Was kommt auf die Bevölkerung zu, wenn in Deutschland großräumige Quarantänemaßnahmen ergriffen … source
“In the beginning, everything was void, and J.H.W.H Conway began to create numbers.” This is how mathematician John Horton Conway appears in Donald Knuth’s novella Surreal Numbers—a seemingly all-knowing force that brought all of the numbers into existence, whose methods were written down so others could deduce and explore them, too. It’s a fitting description […]
London, at an hour that made Rosalind glad she’d nicked her brother’s black cloak instead of wearing her scarlet one. The factory alongside her had quit belching smoke for the night, but it would start again soon. A noise caused her to draw back against the brick wall. Glancing up, she gasped. An oblong hulk […]
These are the astonishing before and after scenes from cities around the world – as countries go into lockdown to combat the coronavirus. (Subscribe: … source
On April 4, Licho, one of the four last speakers of the Great Andamanese language family, died of tuberculosis and heart disease in Port Blair on South Andaman Island in the Bay of Bengal. I received the news with a profound sense of loss. I had worked with Licho for two decades to document the […]