There are many different kinds of creativity. Why are some people more creative than others? Some people think the Visitors are here because, as they have become more efficient and machine-like, they have lost their innovative spark and want to investigate a younger, more creative world. The Master of the Key may have been an example of this.
read more
Climate change: First it was cow farts, now it’s the anesthesia they give you in the hospital? (Next thing you know, it will be blamed on vampires!)
Inhaled anesthetics widely used for surgery, particularly the anesthetic desflurane, make a measurable contribution to global warming. In fact, the anesthetics used by a busy hospital contribute as much to global warming as the emissions from hundreds of cars per year. While no one’s suggesting that patients shouldn’t receive needed anesthetics because of the risk of climate change, some simple steps could help to limit their environmental impact.
read more
The quiet, stealthy ones – What’s quiet but sneaks up on you? California’s San Andreas fault is notorious for repeatedly generating major earthquakes and for being on the brink of producing the next big one in a heavily populated area. But the famously violent fault also has quieter sections, where rocks easily slide against each other without giving rise to damaging quakes. These are the quiet quakes.
The relatively smooth movement, called creep, happens because the fault creates its own lubricants–slippery clays that form ultra-thin coatings on rock fragments. The question of why some fault zones creep slowly and steadily while others lock for a time and then shift suddenly and violently, spawning earthquakes, has long puzzled scientists.
read more
We can hear the sound of the God PARTICLE, anyway. One the particles that the Large Hadron Collider, known as CERN, is the Higgs Bosun, or “God Particle.” And one way the scientists there are locating them is by listening for their distinctive sound.
In BBC News, Pallah Ghosh quotes physicist Lily Asquith as saying, “If the energy is close to you, you will hear a low pitch and if it’s further away you hear a higher pitch. If it’s lots of energy it will be louder and if it’s just a bit of energy it will be quieter.”
Ghosh quotes CERN engineer Archer Enrich as saying, “When you are hearing what the sonifications do you really are hearing the data. It’s true to the data, and it’s telling you something about the data that you couldn’t know in any other way.” read more