via Big Think by Paul Ratner
The recent changes in Washington do not seem to bode well for fact-driven, scientific points of view on many issues. But there are already a number of sensitive areas of science where important research is stalling due to outside pressures or serious questions asked by the scientists themselves.
A yearly conference organized by the MIT Media Lab tackles “forbidden research”, the science that is constrained by ethical, cultural and institutional restrictions. The purpose of the conference is to give scientists a forum to consider these ideas and questions and to discuss the viability and necessity of studying topics like the rights of AI and machines, genetic engineering, climate change and others.
Edward Snowden, who appeared remotely at the 2016 conference, summarized its “theme” as “law is no substitute for conscience”. Pointing to his work against pervasive digital surveillance, he reiterated that “the legality of a thing is quite distinct from the morality of it”.
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Genghis Khan: Could satellites help find his tomb?
via BBC News by Zoe Kleinman (Technology of Business reporter)
Genghis Khan was a great warrior, but where was he buried?
An 800-year-old puzzle about the burial place of Mongolian ruler Genghis Khan sparked a very 21st Century business.
Albert Lin was on an expedition to locate the lost tomb of the Mongol Empire founder, when satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe donated some photos of potential areas for his team to scrutinise.
These images, taken from space, were enormous, and as nobody knows what the tomb actually looked like, there was no obvious place to start the search.
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Frog saliva is even stranger than scientists expected
via Boing Boing by Andrea James
Frog tongue mechanism has been well-documented, but only recently have scientists started looking at the remarkable combo of tongue softness and frog spit's chemical makeup.
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The world has entered a new Cold War – what went wrong?
via The New Statesman by John Thornhill
Peter Conradi’s Who Lost Russia? How the World Entered a New Cold War traces the accumulation of distrust between the West and Russia.
In March 1992 an alarmist “secret” memo written by Richard Nixon found its way on to the front page of the New York Times. “The hot-button issue of the 1950s was, ‘Who lost China?’ If Yeltsin goes down, the question ‘Who lost Russia?’ will be an infinitely more devastating issue in the 1990s,” the former US president wrote.
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The history of global health organizations [timeline]
via OUP Blog by Chelsea Clinton and Devi Sridhar
Established in April 1948, the World Health Organization remains the leading agency concerned with international public health. As a division of the United Nations, the WHO works closely with governments to work towards combating infectious diseases and ensuring preventative care for all nations. The events included in the timeline below, sourced from Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why?, show the development of global health organizations throughout history.
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5 Ingenious Inventions to Help Animals Survive Man-Made Eco Harm
via Big Think by Robby Berman
Scientists have been stealing ideas from animals for years. The Shinkansen Bullet Train in Japan for example, was super-fast — 200 mph. But it was also super-noisy until chief engineer and bird-watcher Eiji Nakatsu got the idea that the beak that allows kingfishers to splash-lessly dive into water could also help a train slice more easily through air. One industrial “nose job” later, the bullet train is far quieter and goes 10% faster on 15% less fuel.
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"Room for Millions of Immigrants" – railroad pamphlet from 1883 shows how American life has changed
via AbeBooks.com by Richard Davies
A scarce 1883 pamphlet promoting California as a destination for immigrants has been listed for sale on AbeBooks.com. It show how immigrants were once courted in the US.
“California, the Cornucopia of the World” was written by I.N. Hoag for the Southern Pacific Railroad, and was distributed to immigrants who had already reached the East Coast of the United States.
The front cover boldly proclaims “Room for Millions of Immigrants. 43,795,000 Acres of Government Lands Untaken. Railroad & Private Land for a Million Farmers. A Climate for Health & Wealth Without Cyclones or Blizzards.”
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Curzon’s curios
via The National Archives Blog by Dr Richard Dunley
As part of The National Archives’ commemoration of the centenary of the First World War we have been running a project to catalogue some of the private correspondence of key British diplomats of the period.
These collections, held in record series FO 800, are a gold mine for researchers interested in British foreign policy, offering the personal and private views of leading figures, which often present a very different picture to that in the official Foreign Office records. They also contain many extraordinary stories which have until recently remained hidden. In a previous blog I highlighted one of these, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s penchant for pyjamas!
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Life forms that could be 50,000 years old found in caves in Mexico
The bizarre, ancient microbes and viruses found living in crystals in extremely punishing conditions deep in an abandoned lead and zinc mine
via the Guardian by Associated Press
Crystals in a Mexican cave where scientists discovered microbes that could be 50,000 years old. Photograph: Penny Boston/AP
In a Mexican cave system so beautiful and hot that it is called both fairyland and hell, scientists have discovered life trapped in crystals that could be 50,000 years old.
The bizarre and ancient microbes were found dormant in caves in Naica, in Mexico’s northern Chihuahua state, and were able to exist by living on minerals such as iron and manganese, said Penelope Boston, head of Nasa’s Astrobiology Institute.
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Amazing balloon-powered pipe organ made of paper and cardboard
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Papercraft master Aliaksei Zholner made this exquisite pipe organ entirely from paper products. Here are his build notes, written in Russian.
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