Imagine having a printer hooked up to your computer that could make anything. Tired of your toothbrush? No problem. Print a new one. Want a chocolate treat? Print it. Need a new dress, new shoes or maybe just new cleats for soccer? Just choose a style and size. Then print, print and print some more. […]
‘Print’ almost anything Read More »
AT SOME point in their career every mathematician comes up against the question, is mathematics invented or discovered? The query makes some cranky. The answer doesn’t directly affect their work, after all, and the discussion often leads nowhere useful. Spending time debating the ultimate nature of mathematics takes away from actually doing it.
Patents for software? Read More »
Bump a glass and any water inside might slop over the side. Splash in the bathtub and waves slosh. Toss a rock into a pond and ripples move outward in expanding rings. In each case, the water moves in waves. Those waves carry energy. And the more energy that gets added to a watery
First, he tracked basking sharks—filterfeeding leviathans that look like supersized great whites—in the coastal waters near Great Britain, and then Atlantic cod, leatherback turtles, Magellanic penguins, and bigeye tuna. He’s wrangled and tagged ocean sunfish, blue sharks, and shortfin mako sharks (and claims success by the fact that he still has all his fingers). Only after David Sims had exhausted many
Not every hypothesis in cancer research has the same staying power. Some emerge with fanfare and hype, only to fade when follow-up research fails to support a promising theory—or when an upstart steals the spotlight. But even when a promising idea gets pushed aside, it’s not always gone for good. The perfect object lesson: treating
Cutting Cancer’s Engine Read More »
Gods in Ancient Egypt could do it; so allegedly could Buddha and Jesus. But for the rest of us lowly human beings – at least, those of us without divine parent- age or supernatural abilities – the closest we can get to walking on water is to strap on a pair of pontoon shoes and
To humans, falling rain usually amounts to little more than a minor inconvenience. After all, we are big and raindrops are small – they splatter on our heads and sleeves, and we end up a little wetter. But a mosquito’s mass is only 2–3 μg and the largest rain- drops may weigh up to 100μg.
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, TENN. — The world’s first artificial bat cave is expecting the arrival of its first winged visitors. The nearly 80-foot-long concrete chamber was built to protect bats against white nose syndrome, a disease named for a white fungus that infects the skin of the muzzle, ears and wings of hibernating bats.
Tennessee’s bat cave Read More »
A bullet fired into a disk of polyurethane — a type of plastic — may not burst out the other side. In some instances, the bullet will stop in its tracks, frozen by the plastic and sealed inside. How a simple plastic can do this has left researchers scratching their heads. Until now. Read more
How to stop a speeding bullet Read More »
In the muck beneath the ocean floor, there’s something alive. Lots of somethings. But don’t worry: You’ll never see them. Instead, these tiny, one-celled germs are content to hunker down in very old clay, for a very long time, eating just enough to stay alive. “These organisms are so different from anything we
Living Long Beneath the Sea Read More »
