Science + Technology

The Little Metronome That Wouldn't

Robert Krulwich — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:49:18 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1TMZASCR-I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWToUATLGzs

Measuring The Power Of Deadly Tornadoes

Steve Mullis — Mon, 20 May 2013 23:52:00 +0000

Damaging tornadoes ripped through Oklahoma on Sunday and Monday, causing widespread damage that is still being assessed, and additional severe weather is expected.

One of the hardest hit areas, Moore, Okla., is no stranger to devastating twisters.

'Cheating' Can Be An Effective Learning Strategy

Tania Lombrozo — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:57:10 +0000

It's the end of the semester here at UC Berkeley, and I've got testing on my mind. I'm not the only one; across campus, instructors are engaged in the arduous task of grading quickly and fairly while students sigh with relief as they exit their final, final exams.

We most often think of tests as being about assessment.

Seeing The (Northern) Light: A Temporary Arctic Retirement

Curt Nickish — Mon, 20 May 2013 07:01:00 +0000

By all the laws of anything, Winston Chen should not have quit his well-paying, midcareer job at a software company at age 40. But one day he was watching a TED Talk, one of those popular online video presentations, delivered by a New York designer.

"He presented this absolutely irresistible idea," Chen says. "He said, 'Why don't we take five years out of retirement and spread them throughout your working life?' "

So Chen told his wife, then 39, about it.

What Did I Do Last Summer? Oh, I Discovered How To Make Babies Without Sex. And You?

Robert Krulwich — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:15:32 +0000

Ah, if only all summers could be like June, July and August 1740 — when three young guys (and a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old) did a science experiment that startled the world. In those days, you could do biology without a fancy diploma. More people could play.

That spring, the hot book — the one everyone was reading — was a gorgeously illustrated volume about insects by the French naturalist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur.

Cloning, Stem Cells Long Mired In Legislative Gridlock

Julie Rovner — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:04:00 +0000

The news that U.S.

Water Trapped For 1.5 Billion Years Could Hold Ancient Life

editor — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:03:00 +0000

Scientists have discovered water that has been trapped in rock for more than a billion years. The water might contain microbes that evolved independently from the surface world, and it's a finding that gives new hope to the search for life on other planets.

The water samples came from holes drilled by gold miners near the small town of Timmins, Ontario, about 350 miles north of Toronto. Deep in the Canadian bedrock, miners drill holes and collect samples.

Cup Of Joe With Apple CEO Goes For $610,000

Bill Chappell — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:26:23 +0000

It turns out that the desire to speak with Apple CEO Tim Cook, along with $610,000, will buy you a cup of coffee.

With Rising Seas, America's Birthplace Could Disappear

Christopher Joyce — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:35:00 +0000

By the end of the century, the birthplace of America may be underwater.

The first successful English colony in America was at Jamestown, Va., a swampy island in the Chesapeake Bay. The colony endured for almost a century, and remnants of the place still exist. You can go there and see the ruins. You can walk where Capt. John Smith and Pocahontas walked. But Jamestown is now threatened by rising sea levels that scientists say could submerge the island by century's end.

You wouldn't know that by looking. In springtime, Jamestown is a carpet of bright new grass.

What Is It About Bees And Hexagons?

Robert Krulwich — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:18:31 +0000

Solved! A bee-buzzing, honey-licking 2,000-year-old mystery that begins here, with this beehive. Look at the honeycomb in the photo and ask yourself: (I know you've been wondering this all your life, but have been too shy to ask out loud ... ) Why is every cell in this honeycomb a hexagon?

Bees, after all, could build honeycombs from rectangles or squares or triangles ...

But for some reason, bees choose hexagons. Always hexagons.

And not just your basic six-sided hexagon.

Litterbugs Beware: Turning Found DNA Into Portraits

Acacia Squires — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:37:14 +0000

Heather Dewey-Hagborg was sitting in a therapy session a while ago and noticed a painting on the wall. The glass on the frame was cracked, and lodged in the crack was a single hair. She couldn't take her eyes off it.

"I just became obsessed with thinking about whose hair that was, and what they might look like, and what they might be like," she says.

On the subway ride home, she noticed all of the insignificant things people left behind — a dropped cigarette butt, a chewed-up piece of gum.

New Closed-Captioning Glasses Help Deaf Go Out To The Movies

editor — Sun, 12 May 2013 19:48:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsckbFwU2SQ

For Year-Round Buzz, Beekeepers 'Fast-Forward Darwinism'

Katherine Perry — Sun, 12 May 2013 17:47:00 +0000

Beekeepers In Massachusetts are taking the mission to save the bees into their own hands.

There has been a dramatic disappearance of honeybees across the U.S. since 2006. A recent U.S.

Atop A Hawaiian Mountain, A Constant Sniff For Carbon Dioxide

Joe Palca — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:46:00 +0000

Climate scientists have a good reason to want to get away from it all. To get an accurate picture of the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, you have to find places where the numbers won't be distorted by cities or factories or even lots of vegetation that can have a major local impact on CO₂ concentrations.

Starting in 1958, scientists from the Scripps Institution for Oceanography have been using an instrument on the top of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii to measure CO₂ in the atmosphere.

College Divestment Campaigns Creating Passionate Environmentalists

Elizabeth Shogren — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:16:00 +0000

At about 300 colleges across the country, young activists worried about climate change are borrowing a strategy that students successfully used in decades past. In the 1980s, students enraged about South Africa's racist Apartheid regime got their schools to drop stocks in companies that did business with that government. In the 1990s students pressured their schools to divest in Big Tobacco.

This time, the student activists are targeting a mainstay of the economy: large oil and coal companies.

So far only a few small colleges have opted to drop investments in fossil fuel companies.

Could You Talk To A Caveman? Researchers Say Yes!

editor — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:34:00 +0000

In 1961, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner came up with some basic theories of caveman linguistics in their 2,000-Year-Old Man skit. Most of them had to do with rocks, as in, "What are you doing with that rock there?"

Now, a professor in England has questioned the validity of the famous caveman's rock-centric theories. And Mark Pagel of the University of Reading is reaching even further back, to the time of the 15,000-year-old man.

Pagel and his team have theorized that if you trace a number of languages back far enough, you'll find a common root tongue.

Moths That Drive Cars (Really)

Robert Krulwich — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:54:54 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2k1T2X7_Aw

Consumers Facing Subscription Service Overload Will Only Get More Choices

Laura Sydell — Thu, 09 May 2013 07:33:00 +0000

YouTube is expected to announce in the coming days that it will launch paid subscription channels, a first for the online video platform that's been around since 2005. But, with the growing number of subscription services available for entertainment, shopping and news, some consumers say they're reaching digital subscription overload.

Mary Gaughan and her husband get near that point when they think about what movie or TV show they want to watch on free evenings at home. "Where do we get it?

Will Tweaking Windows 8 Be Enough To Revive The PC?

editor — Wed, 08 May 2013 06:53:00 +0000

When Microsoft introduced Windows 8 last year, the software giant billed the new operating system as one of the most critical releases in its history.

Study: 'Fossil' Words Are Older Than We Thought

Scott Neuman — Tue, 07 May 2013 23:06:00 +0000

The origin of some of the words we use today go back much further than scientists once thought, suggesting an Ice Age-era proto-language that spawned many of the world's contemporary linguistic groups, according to a new study by a group of U.K.-based scientists.

The study, published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used a statistical model to conclude that so-called "ultraconserved" words have been around for perhap