This battered diamond has survived a “journey to hell and back,” and it has a pretty specular story to tell. Spat out from deep inside the earth, it is our first direct evidence for a scientific theory that says that vast amounts of water are trapped deep inside Earth’s mantle.
Read More → "Rare diamond reveals existence of water deep inside Earth’s mantle"
As with every major city, New York creates a huge amount of waste. Disposing of it requires a variety of environmentally damaging processes, such as landfill and transportation. To try and minimize the impact of waste disposal, Present Architecture has proposed a series of composting islands along the city’s waterfront.
The Green Loop is a network of ten islands that each comprise a composting hub and public space. A minimum of one … Read More → "Compost islands proposed for New York"
Looks like it’s time to start giving 10-year-olds a little more credit where their scientific claims are concerned. According to a new study from Aston University in Birmingham, England, they were right all along—five seconds really does make a difference in terms of food safety.
via Gizmodo
Read More → "The 5-second rule is now supported by actual scientific evidence"
Any semi-serious Scrabble player knows that it doesn’t matter what you and your friends agree on as legitimate words — it only matters which ones are in the official Scrabbledictionary. But now, you could actually have a say on what’s in that dictionary: on Facebook, Hasbro is allowing fans to submit … Read More → "‘Scrabble’ is now letting players vote for a new official word"
Metamaterials are already being used to create invisibility cloaks and “temporal cloaks,” but now engineers from Duke University have turned metamaterials to the task of creating a 3D acoustic cloak. In the same way that invisibility cloaks use metamaterials to reroute light around an object, the acoustic cloaking device interacts with sound waves to make it appear as if the device and anything hidden beneath it isn’t there.
Steven Cummer, professor … Read More → "World’s first 3D acoustic cloaking device created"
Ruh-roh! Why does Scooby-Doo speak so strangely? Being a dog is probably a contributing factor. But Kyle Hill of Discover magazine says that the famous mystery-solving dog also has a speech sound disorder. Which one? Speech sound disorders come in two types: phonetic and phonological. People with phonetic disorders have physical difficulty forming words. People with phonological disorders tend to add or substitute sounds when speaking.
Hill consulted& … Read More → "We finally have a name for Scooby-Doo’s speech disorder"
Migraines suck, but do they suck enough that you’d strap on an electric headband that zaps your brain’s nerves to block the pain? The FDA doesn’t think that’s such a crazy notion—the agency just approved exactly such a device for treating and preventing migraine headaches.
Read More → "Migraine-blasting electric headband coming to the U.S."
What makes a dog breed go extinct? Some are mated out, completely turned into new types of dogs to fit the fashion or function of the day. Others are wiped away by predators (humans included) or ignored by the breeders that had sustained them…
Who’s a good dog? They were. They were.
1. KUR?
The Kur? (above) was brought to New Zealand around the 14th century, … Read More → "11 dog breeds that no longer exist"
The origami microscope, dubbed Foldscope, designed by Prof Prakash and his team, can be fitted on to one sheet of A4 paper making it extremely easy to ship in large numbers.
It can be assembled in seven minutes, includes no mechanical moving parts, operates with no external power and is very sturdy. Everything from the lenses to the batteries come on the paper.
“You … Read More → "Ultra-cheap ‘origami’ microscope developed"
A student has proposed a novel take on the traditional window blind that can twist and shift in three dimensions. Penumbra is a concept from architecture student Tyler Short using louvers that can tilt both horizontally and vertically to provide shade throughout the day. The louvers act like a vertical venetian blind, and can be tilted 180 degrees as … Read More → "Blind concept offers breathtaking vision"
