Shedding Light on Supermassive Black Holes with Pulsars
Pulsars have been nicknamed “cosmic lighthouses” after the narrow beams of radio light they sweep through space. For astronomers, one newly-discovered pulsar is casting light on an unexplored and mysterious region of the cosmic “ocean”: the immediate neighborhood of the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way galaxy’s heart. Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit regular pulses of radio waves. The pulsar in … Continue reading Shedding Light on Supermassive Black Holes with Pulsars
From howling to fetch: how did we get our first pets?
Ever thought about keeping a wolf? Probably not… To understand how wolves evolved into modern dogs and started living with humans, researchers wanted to find out exactly where and when this happened. Using many samples from prehistoric and modern dogs and wolves, they isolated the genetic material in mitochondria. By comparing those DNA sequences, they find that the origin of dogs most likely lies in … Continue reading From howling to fetch: how did we get our first pets?
Changing our mind with implants and light.
“The Future of Brain Implants”, psychologist Gary Marcus and neuroscientist Christof Koch took one step further, unfolding a future where a chip can be implanted into healthy brains to achieve superpower. Although there are still technical hurdles and risks, it is not unreasonable to stay optimistic as scientific breakthroughs are often beyond our wildest imagination. Continue reading Changing our mind with implants and light.
La Nature se dévoilant à la Science (Nature Unveiling Herself before Science)
This is a painting of my favorite statue by Louis-Ernest Barrias in Musée d’Orsay, Paris. As the title suggests, the beauty of nature is the inspiration for both art and science. I painted it with a drawing pad (WACOM’s Bamboo) attached to my computer using the software ArtRage 2.0. By controlling the texture, the pressure, the amount of “pigment”, the extent of “dilution” and many … Continue reading La Nature se dévoilant à la Science (Nature Unveiling Herself before Science)
DNA Sciku
7 feet of information. Stored in the nucleus. For this sciku. Fast forward along DNA until reaching the stop codon. Synthetic DNA. The blueprint of life. What is natural? A Sciku is a scientific snack, a short piece of science-related poetry served in three lines. It’s inspired by the very short form of Japanese poetry called haiku though not strictly following its traditional … Continue reading DNA Sciku
Noise to Signal: Cosmic Music
This project originated at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics when sociologist of science Gerhard Sonnert met the blind astronomer Wanda Diaz Merced, who studied the sonification of astronomic data as a tool for data analysis and signal detection. Among other data, she used sonified x-rays from EX Hydrae (depicted above), a binary star system that is a cataclysmic variable of the intermediate polar type. With the help of composer Volkmar Studtrucker, … Continue reading Noise to Signal: Cosmic Music
Inflation of the Universe!
We may know that the universe began with a Big Bang, but until yesterday, we had no direct evidence for the drastic expansion the universe is thought to have undergone in the moments after its birth. This “inflationary” model has grown from a speculation in 1979 into the best available explanation of how the universe’s infant moments (less than a trillionths of a trillionth of a second) formed crucial aspects of our universe today. Continue reading Inflation of the Universe!
When Good Immune Systems Go Bad
Food allergies are a growing problem around the world []. These days, if you do not personally suffer from an allergy, you almost certainly know someone who does. Currently, around 3-7% of children have a food allergy—about a 50% increase since 1997 [1, 2]. For many people, allergies are little more than a nuisance, but for others, an allergic reaction can be life threatening. What … Continue reading When Good Immune Systems Go Bad
Buzzkill: Where have all the bees gone?
One of my earliest memories is of the chaos caused by a kamikaze bee that flew through an open window in my family’s pickup truck during an otherwise pleasant country drive. It saddens me to imagine a future where children are deprived of the bee-related traumatic experiences that I had growing up, but lately the world’s bee populations have been mysteriously dying. Bees contribute heavily … Continue reading Buzzkill: Where have all the bees gone?
Fake electric flowers reveal surprising bee seduction technique
Photo by Annemarie Mountz, from http://phys.org/news/2013-02-bees-electrical-fields.html Flowers seduce bees with attractants such as color, shape, and scent. Scientists now think that flowers may have another surprising attractant in their repertoire: electric fields. Researchers in the UK found evidence suggesting that different flowers produce distinct patterns of electric fields. They hypothesized that bees can sense these patterns and learn to associate them with rewards like nectar, … Continue reading Fake electric flowers reveal surprising bee seduction technique