HFO-1234yf, a climate-friendly alternative refrigerant for car air conditioning systems touted by environmental activists, may instead be a greater problem than the products they insisted was causing pollution.
Less stable materials may not sound like a great thing for your car but they may be the solution to producing a clean-running hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. More on that in just a minute. First, let's talk about where things are in clean energy.If you've read this site for more than five minutes you know I believe it's better to spend money researching legitimate clean energy rather than porkbarrelling environmental activism darlings like ethanol, wind energy, solar panels and CFL bulbs. Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles can not only be an important part of the solution to America's energy crisis, they can eliminate it ... but challenges remain.
Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.1. Drought is a serious problem in many parts of the world, going well beyond our California 'limit the days you water your lawn' irritation and well into 'We are going to die without rain' territory.It's boom or bust in parts of India, where they actually look forward to monsoons - and sometimes they can't happen soon enough. But what if the water gods are fickle? Some crafty leaders in male-dominated Bihar think the solution is to have young girls walk around naked.
CNN is trying to look like they are impartial by simultaneously only having talking heads who stress how vital government health care is while then proclaiming it Obama's "Waterloo."If you aren't familiar with military history, or only know the colloquial term, here is a brief summary: Napoleon was a brilliant General during the disastrous French Revolution who made himself Emperor after a coup d'etat. He battered around the continental powers, reinstituted slavery, implemented French modern civil law and tried to invent a new week. Oh, and sold us Louisiana.
Yesterday I wrote how Anthony Wesley, who hails from Canberra, Australia, grabbed this shot of a new dark spot near the south pole of Jupiter.It's left to bigger minds (and bigger telescopes) than mine to sort out what caused it but while the blogosphere has been buzzing, JPL has been observing.
In case you've been living under a rock, you probably know that Monday is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I don't remember seeing it on TV when I was a lad, though I am told I did (I do remember watching the live liftoff of Apollo 17, since Kennedy is about an hour drive from my boyhood home in Florida and we went to that one) but most everyone middle aged and older will - it remains the most watched program in history(1).
Games2Win, an online game company, today announced the launch of Apollo 11: Mission to the Moon, which recreates the historic mission to the moon, without the mind-numbing terror of knowing you were sitting on top of a mess o' solid rocket fuel protected by nothing except parts contracted out to the lowest bidders. The game’s release is schedule to coincide with, and commemorate, the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s success on July 20, 1969. "Apollo 11: Mission to the Moon" is what the vendor calls a "free-to-play Flash game" and you can find at http://www.games2win.com/ap1. The game play mimics pretty small parts of the first manned mission to land on the moon (without the mind-numbing terror of knowing you were sitting on top of a mess o' ...
I've never been a shark guy, I will confess that to you. Actually, I have never been an animal guy of any kind. When I was a wee scientist / media guru / journalist / game show host, Disney had a program on Sunday evenings. If there was one of those live animal shows on, I left the room. I wanted a cartoon with a talking dog or a mouse or something. Animals were what we ate, not what we laughed at.
If you're like us, you are eagerly awaiting those July 4 fireworks displays because you get to blow stuff up using science (not just the US, Canada too, though they picked the wrong day by using July 1 for Canada Day celebrations) - if only we could have awesome fireworks yet not ruin the planet.Maybe we can. A new generation of "green" fireworks is trying to take off. Hint: that's "green" as in environmentally friendly. And take off as in ... oh, never mind.
Darwin didn't miss much, I think we all agree, and came up with a lot given the limited science of his day. One thing he missed, that by this time tomorrow will be the source of outrageous titles from every schlock science publication in existence, was that sexual selection that goes on even after actual sex.Confusing? It's not so difficult to understand. Some female critters are trampy and have sex with more than one guy, for example (what, you think other parts of the animal kingdom don't have Jenna Jameson?) so there's sperm competition but there are also other factors having to do with the internal workings of the female body (i.e. that magical place), so let's catalog a few of post-copulatory sexual selection's greatest hits:
When you go to New York City, to Central Park, to the American Museum of Natural History, to the Hayden Planetarium, to a seminar hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, on the entire cosmos, you might think it would be hard to figure out who 'the star' will be.
I wrote about the opening of the World Science Festival 2009 and Edward O. Wilson's 80th birthday at the Lincoln Center in New York City but he was not the only august personage in attendance. Present to give tribute to him was also molecular biologist, Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, James Watson.
Quick, who was the feared hitter that legendary baseball numbers guru Bill James says lost more career home runs due to playing in his home park than any player in history?
