In this visually dazzling talk, Jonathan Drori shows the extraordinary ways flowering plants — over a quarter million species — have evolved to attract insects to spread their pollen: growing ‘landing-strips’ to guide the insects in, shining in ultraviolet, building elaborate traps, and even mimicking other insects in heat. [TED]
Event cloaks are the sort of thing movies and far-future, ten-tome science fiction tales are made of. That is unless you’re Moti Fridman or part of his group of sharp-minded companions at Cornell, in which case ย you haveย designed and built a cloak that hides events in time. The concept of event cloaking works like this: […]
A newly published study has been interpreted by some as a sign that search engines are damaging people’s memory skills. In fact, it seems more of an indication that the brain makes a smart use of its resources. The study carried out by researchers at Columbia, Wisconsin and Harvard Universities, and published in Science, involved […]
Science has long been a field dominated heavily by men, so seeing the first Google Science Fair award its highest honors to three young women with an interest in the workings of biology gave me a serious case of warm fuzzies. The top three awards, one in each age group, and an overall Grand Prize […]
There are so many interesting bits of space stuff floating about the Innerwebz this week! Planets and moons and asteroids (with moons?!), oh my. Here’s brief rundown of each with links to in-depth articles if you’re of the space geek set. Our Eighth Planet is so Grown-Up! Tomorrow, June 12, we celebrate Neptune’s first birthday. […]
Check out this cool optical illusion called “The Flashed Face Distortion Effect”. Please note that the faces featured in the video have not been altered in any way. We describe a novel face distortion effect resulting from the fast-paced presentation of eye-aligned faces. When cycling through the faces on a computer screen, each face seems […]
The Sagan Series just released an inspiring new video paying homage to NASA’S final space shuttle flight. Check it out: [Youtube]
In the following video, Carl Sagan explain the concept of “time dilation” and how it would affect us if people would be able to travel at the speed of light. Check it out: [Via]