We all know that fresh water is going to become more and more of an issue over the coming decades. Climate change and an ever-growing population will be placing ever more stress upon this most essential of resources, and so anything that helps to save water is, at least in my books, a Bloody Good […]
Environment and Ecology
Why I’ve gone so quiet: the Mongol Rally 2012
Hello, dear readers :) I just wanted to explain why I’ve been so quiet as of recent, and why I’ll likely be pretty quiet for the next couple of months. In short: I’m doing the Mongol Rally (with mad Canuckistani Dane Foster). We’re leaving Wellington on July 10th, and beginning our epic trip from the […]
Earth Now - near real-time, map-based climate data from JPL
Gosh, but this is gorgeous. Admittedly, I have a jones for data. And for maps, too*. And NASA/JPL** and their work. All of which means that Earth Now, a recently-released iPhone/iPod/iPad app from JPL, is my idea of phonepr0n. It shows, on an interactive model of earth, various overlays for various types of near-real […]
Fireflies, luuurve and NASA
In this newest animated video from fellow Sciblogger Siouxsie Wiles (Infectious Thoughts) explains how fireflies* use bioluminescence to find love (or the firefly equivalent), and, well, food. And it then goes on to explain how the chemical reaction used to produce that light, can be exploited to help us test for bacterial presence. In your […]
TOSP Episode 19: January 30th 2012
[Original post on the Sciblogs The Official Sciblogs Podcast site] Greetings, podcast audience of ours! This week’s podcast was supposed to be slightly shorter than usual, but then Elf and aimee got into a Discussion or two. There may have been some slight ranting :) We cover the human brain connectome (peeeerdy), awesome urchin-like nanospheres, a […]
OMG! Earth photography pr0n
Thank you, NASA, for once again providing really beautiful imagery. Fresh off the boat off the orbiting device*, a gorgeous ‘blue marble’ photograph of the little planet upon the surface of which we sail through our ever-expanding universe**. As NASA says: This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on […]
A very deep-sea chandelier
I am in lust for this chandelier. Don’t get me wrong - I am often in lust for chandeliers. I am not, as it turns out, without my quirks. But this one if particularly gorgeous. This piece - Skyphos 1 - was designed by Kateřina Smolíková. It’s a low-energy glass-and-LED design. And the reason it looks […]
Ulan Bator’s geoengineering scheme is THAT cool
Originally syndicated from the Lemur Attack Force blog (I’m doing the Mongol Rally next year, and we could use YOUR help!) As you quite possibly know, Ulan Bator is the capital of Mongolia. And, given that it’s going to suffer from the continentality effect as a result of its location (clue – it’s very landlocked […]
The Case of the Mysterious Jellyfish
I love Wellington. On fine days, I can cycle from from town around the bays to get to work, which is a lovely . And last Friday was particularly exciting! In Evans Bay, only a meter or two from the pavement, a large jellyfish had come in to shore and was floating in the shallows. […]
Hybrid cars , on the subject of
We’ve seen them around. We know they’re some kind of (some might say) unholy mix between standard internal combustion engines and electric motors. If one lives in cities like Wellington (NZ), you will have noticed a couple of the local taxi companies drive them. And that their dashboards look all space-age and sport interesting-looking graphics […]