links.lmorchard.com - #science

Dining Like Darwin: When Scientists Swallow Their Subjects : The Salt : NPR

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 21:24:45 +0000

Once he embarked on The Beagle, Darwin's penchant for bold food choices continued to evolve. He ate puma ("remarkably like veal in taste"), iguanas, armadillos. He not only ate giant tortoises, but tried drinking their bladder contents: "The fluid was quite limpid, and had only a very slightly bitter taste." He ate a 20-pound rodent (usually assumed to be an agouti) that provided "the very best meat I ever tasted." He even accidentally ate part of an ostrich-like bird called a lesser rhea, after spending months trying to catch it so that he could describe the species. (Don't worry: Once he realized what they were dining on, Darwin made everyone stop eating and sent a package of leftover bones, skin and feathers back to England.)

Tags: #darwin #science

Scientists uncovered the nutrients bees were missing — Colonies surged 15-fold | ScienceDaily

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:55:26 +0000

Scientists have developed a breakthrough “superfood” for honeybees by engineering yeast to produce the essential nutrients normally found in pollen. In controlled trials, colonies fed this specially designed diet produced up to 15 times more young, showing a dramatic boost in reproduction and overall health. As climate change and modern agriculture reduce the availability of natural pollen, this innovation could offer a practical way to support struggling bee populations.

Tags: #agriculture #bees #science

What imitating an iconic robot reveals on allospecific vocal imitation in parrots and starlings | Scientific Reports

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 18:25:15 +0000

This study compared nine parrot species and European starlings on their ability to imitate monophonic and multiphonic sounds created for the Star Wars character R2-D2. These complex synthesizer sounds allow for a strong comparative analysis with the same spectral complexity imitated by multiple species. Our results show that starlings have a higher accuracy when imitating multiphonic sounds than parrots

Tags: #birds #parrots #science #starlings #starwars

Stellar Harvest — Center for PostNatural History

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 18:24:33 +0000

Pell designed the Stellar Harvest project to use the light-concentrating power of a large reflecting telescope to gather light from the brightest available star in the night sky for the smallest light-loving microorganisms on Earth - phytoplankton. The project will examine the ability of a type of phytoplankton known as diatoms, which are found in every aquatic environment on the planet and responsible for a significant amount of the oxygen we breathe, to grow off the light from a star.

Tags: #art #science #space #stellarharvest

How It's Made - YouTube

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 18:13:44 +0000

Explore the fascinating world of how everyday items are manufactured and produced. From aluminum foil to contact lenses, discover how many of the things we buy and use are made.

Tags: #howitsmade #industry #nifty #science #videos #work

Engineers repurpose a mosquito proboscis to create a 3D printing nozzle

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 19:37:15 +0000

The team tested their "bio-nozzle" by building a custom 3D printer, called a 3D necroprinter. They mounted the mosquito proboscis on a standard dispensing tip and used it to deposit specialized bioinks.

Tags: #3dprinting #bioprinting #mosquitos #necroprinting #science

Breathing Through Our Butts Declared Safe After First Human Trial

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 18:28:44 +0000

Scientists have tested out enteral ventilation—a possible method of administering oxygen with a liquid delivered through the rectum that is then absorbed into the intestines—in humans for the first time. The trial demonstrated that this method of ventilation is safe and “paves the way for future studies to see if this technique can help patients with respiratory failure,” according to a study published on Monday in the journal Med.

Tags: #butts #science

Synthetic Survey Data? It's Not Data

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 21:13:04 +0000

My personal conclusion — as a matter of logic, empirical findings, statistical reasoning, and scientific principles — is that synthetic data has no place in survey research. I also believe the purported use cases for synthetic data are unconvincing; alternative approaches are superior in their results and are less risky in practice. And there are important questions about research ethics that each of us should consider.

Tags: #ai #data #genai #llms #research #science #surveys

Why I hate the index finger - PMC

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:07:50 +0000

To me, index fingers portray a hideous personality reflecting conceit and pantywaist attitudes. In essence, they are smart-ass digits we can often do without. If I had to lose a finger and had my choice, I would choose first my nondominant hand index ray and next the other index. I find index digits easy to hate and sometimes hard to love.

Tags: #anatomy #fingers #medicine #science #wtf

Scientists are trying to understand cephalopods’ behavior and molecular makeup.

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 18:19:02 +0000

Tags: #biology #cephalopods #imported:pinboard #science

Growing up unvaccinated: A healthy lifestyle couldn’t prevent many childhood illnesses.

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 14:48:44 +0000

So the anti-vaccine advocates’ fears of having the “natural immunity sterilized out of us” just doesn’t cut it for me. How could I, with my idyllic childhood and my amazing health food, get so freaking ill all the time?

Tags: #health #imported:pinboard #medicine #science #vaccination

God, Darwin and My College Biology Class - NYTimes.com

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 21:13:39 +0000

EVERY year around this time, with the college year starting, I give my students The Talk. It isn’t, as you might expect, about sex, but about evolution and religion, and how they get along. More to the point, how they don’t.

Tags: #biology #evolution #imported:pinboard #religion #science

God, Darwin and My College Biology Class - NYTimes.com

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 21:13:39 +0000

Tags: #biology #evolution #religion #science

Faith in science and religion: Truth, authority, and the orderliness of nature.

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 16:14:28 +0000

The conflation of faith as “unevidenced belief” with faith as “justified confidence” is simply a word trick used to buttress religion.

Tags: #faith #imported:pinboard #religion #science #to:fb

The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think - James Somers - The Atlantic

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 19:21:58 +0000

Douglas Hofstadter, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, thinks we've lost sight of what artificial intelligence really means. His stubborn quest to replicate the human mind.

Tags: #ai #computer #geb #hofstader #ia #imported:pinboard #science #to:fb