Common vampire bats live on mammalian blood alone
(Credit:Barry Mansell/naturepl.com)

Any mad scientists planning to genetically engineer Dracula this Halloween should look to the vampire bat for inspiration. New research pinpoints some of the genetic changes that allowed them to evolve to subsist on a diet of pure blood.

Key among those is a knack for keeping their […]

Posted in Nature, Science and Technology No Comments »

The super-honcho of DSLRs at 21.1 megapixels, this baby rivals monstrously pricier medium-format digitals in resolution and pummels them with its portability and ease of use.

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
Dual Digic III processors handle the massive load of data collected by the full-frame CMOS sensor, and the resulting images make stunning large prints. The Mark III’s […]

Posted in Arts and Culture, Graphic Arts, Science and Technology, Technology No Comments »

In Search of Family History Despite the Threat of Pain

Jeanne Moreau and Hippolyte Girardot as a mother and son in “One Day You’ll Understand,” directed by Amos Gitai. (credit) Kino International

As the trial of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie plays on television in the background, a Frenchman named Victor (Hippolyte Girardot) combs through documents, […]

Posted in Arts and Culture, Film & Film Making No Comments »

It’s official: The South Pole is also succumbing to human-induced climate change

Humanity’s impact on climate has been detected on every continent except Antarctica, or so said the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February 2007.

No longer: scientists, comparing decades of records from 17 Antarctic weather stations with computer simulations of Earth’s climate, […]

Posted in Environmental, Science and Technology No Comments »

A "living fossil" tree species is helping a University of Michigan researcher understand how tropical forests responded to past climate change and how they may react to global warming in the future.

The research appears in the November issue of the journal Evolution.
Symphonia globulifera is a widespread tropical tree with a history that goes back some […]

Posted in Environmental, Science and Technology No Comments »

It’s the most famous chord in rock ’n’ roll, an instantly recognizable twang rolling through the open strings on George Harrison’s 12-string Rickenbacker. It evokes a Pavlovian response from music fans as they sing along to the refrain that follows:

It’s been a hard day’s night
And I’ve been working like a dog
The opening chord to A Hard […]

Posted in Arts and Culture, Learning, Music No Comments »

Meteorites that are among the oldest rocks ever found have provided new clues about the conditions that existed at the beginning of the solar system, solving a longstanding mystery and overturning some accepted ideas about the way planets form.

A picture of the first discovered (and therefore eponymous) angrite "Angra dos Reis"; which was observed to […]

Posted in Science and Technology, Space Exploration No Comments »

A quarter-million people were killed when a tsunami inundated Indian Ocean coastlines the day after Christmas in 2004. Now scientists have found evidence that the event was not a first-time occurrence.

A team working on Phra Thong, a barrier island along the hard-hit west coast of Thailand, unearthed evidence of at least three previous major tsunamis […]

Posted in Earth Sciences, Environmental, Science and Technology No Comments »

In this day and age, people engage in their right to vote from all over the world. But this Nov. 4, few ballots will have traveled as far as those cast by two NASA astronauts.

Commander Edward Michael Fincke and Flight Engineer and Science Officer Greg Chamitoff are living and working onboard the International Space Station. […]

Posted in Political, Science and Technology, Space Exploration No Comments »

In the quest to slow down and ultimately understand chemistry at the level of atoms and electrons, University of Colorado at Boulder and Canadian scientists have found a new way to peer into a molecule that allows them to see how its electrons rearrange as the molecule changes shape.

Understanding how electrons rearrange during chemical reactions […]

Posted in Physics, Science and Technology No Comments »