cross North America, the green leaves of summer will soon be painted a beautiful array of yellow, orange
The post Three Myths About Red Autumn Leaves has been published on Technology Org.
Tragically, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa painfully reminds us of the fragile state of health infrastructure in poor countries — as well as of the seemingly limited impact of global health governance.
Though cold comfort, many of the experimental drugs that could help defeat Ebola also remind us of the benefits of military and civilian biodefense R&D.
Biodefense efforts try to limit the damage from biological weapons. The Soviet Union investigated Ebola as a biological weapon during the Cold War, although the Soviets didn't mass produce the virus as a weapon — in contrast...
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Pope Francis took a stroll yesterday from the Vatican guest house apartment where he lives over to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to unveil a bust of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. The bust itself is rather Teutonically foreboding, but the most interesting bit of the unveiling came when Francis made a short speech to assembled members of the Academy. Though only a few paragraphs long (and currently available only in Italian; the translation below is unofficial), Francis's remarks focused largely on evolution—still a controversial doctrine in parts of the worldwide Christian church.
"When we read in Genesis the account of Creation, we are in danger of imagining that God was a magician, complete with a magic wand capable of doing anything," Francis said. "But he was not. He created beings and let them develop in accordance with the internal laws that He has given to each one."
He went on:
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Med res | Hi res Illustration: Fermilab/Sandbox Studio It’s the most powerful accelerator-based neutrino experiment ever built in
The post Fermilab’s 500-mile neutrino experiment up and running has been published on Technology Org.
NGC 660 is featured in this cosmic snapshot, a sharp composite of broad and narrow band filter image data from the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea. Over 20 million light-years away and swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, NGC 660's peculiar appearance marks it as a polar ring galaxy. A rare galaxy type, polar ring galaxies have a substantial population of stars, gas, and dust orbiting in rings nearly perpendicular to the plane of the galactic disk. The bizarre-looking configuration could have been caused by the chance capture of material from a passing galaxy by a disk galaxy, with the captured debris eventually strung out in a rotating ring. The violent gravitational interaction would account for the myriad pinkish star forming regions scattered along NGC 660's ring. The polar ring component can also be used to explore the shape of the galaxy's otherwise unseen dark matter halo by calculating the dark matter's gravitational influence on the rotation of the ring and disk. Broader than the disk, NGC 660's ring spans over 50,000 light-years.Whether it’s a plain cheese, a deep-dish stacked with meats or a thin-crust veggie delight, there’s just something
The post The chemistry of pizza has been published on Technology Org.
