Technology

Save Your Money- Flame Retardants On Fresh Cut Christmas Trees Don't Help

The best flame retardant for your Christmas tree is still plain old water.  Worse,  researchers have determined that some flame retardants not only don't work on cut Christmas trees, they actually sped up the drying process and made trees more flammab ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 13 2008 - 10:13am

Guitar Hero Of 1875- Weighing Yourself In Public After A Big Meal

Stepping onto a scale after a calorie-filled holiday season isn't an activity many 21st-century Americans relish. But in the late 19th century, scales were all the rage at festive gatherings — the 1800s' answer to Guitar Hero. "A family woul ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 13 2008 - 11:02am

2008's Top 10 Coolest Science Gadgets (So, Gifts For The Holidays You Didn't Even Know Existed)

Today you wake up and realize that Christmas is fast approaching, a little more than a week away, and you haven't done ANY shopping for gifts. Now that you realize that Christmas looming in your very near future, you are tempted to get the usual bath ...

Article - Erin Richards - Dec 16 2008 - 3:47pm

Vendee Globe Yacht Race Gets A Meteorology Boost

CLS, a subsidiary of the French Space Agency (CNES), acting through its new radar applications division (formerly the BOOST Technologies Company), wants you to know they can use Envisat radar imagery to operationally observe oceans at high resolution so th ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 15 2008 - 6:32pm

Nanotechnology 'Smart Yarn' Can Detect Blood

A carbon nanotube-coated "smart yarn" that conducts electricity could be woven into soft fabrics that detect blood and monitor health, engineers at the University of Michigan have demonstrated. "Currently, smart textiles are made primarily o ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 15 2008 - 6:58pm

Great Science Photos

These photos span all the sciences but there are some nice biology-related ones here.  They are from National Geographic and definitely cover many of this year's top science stories. It seems to have been a good year for the cephalopods- the first co ...

Blog Post - Mrs. H. - Dec 19 2008 - 7:39pm

Scientific Blogging Features- Let's Add Some More Social Media

Probably tomorrow I am going to do an advanced 'primer' on all the features we have here because I know most people don't even read the FAQ- and that's okay, you shouldn't have to read a FAQ to read an article or leave a comment, b ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Dec 20 2008 - 1:50pm

ESA Makes Global Land Cover Map Available

ESA’s global land cover map, which is ten times sharper than any previous global satellite map, is now available to the public online from the GlobCover website. It is the highest resolution land cover map that has been completely validated ever released. ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 21 2008 - 10:21am

Taste of Green Wine in a Box

Beware: green chemistry is soon to serve you green wines. And in boxes, too. Once I read in Chemical and Engineering News a list of the chemicals in either red or white wines. I remember thinking "generic wines" to start with: Let's see the ...

Blog Post - Hatice Cullingford - Dec 22 2008 - 1:58pm

A Computer Inside A Molecule

Over the last 60 years, ever-smaller generations of transistors have driven exponential growth in computing power. Could molecules, each turned into miniscule computer components, trigger even greater growth in computing over the next 60? Atomic-scale comp ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 22 2008 - 9:50pm