In The Unlikeliest of Places

After hundreds of years of exploration, discovery and research, we’ve learned quite a lot about our planet.  You would think that after all of this time, there would be hardly any living thing left on Earth that we hadn’t yet found.  Well, you would be wrong.  Way wrong, actually.  Our planet is loaded with life.  New species are constantly being discovered – hundreds a year.  If I did a blog post every time a new species was discovered, I’d be posting multiple times a day.  Today’s blog post, however, is about one new species in particular which stands out among the rest.

The Amazon is
bursting with life

New species are often found in areas of the world that are harder for us to explore.  Oceans are a good example.  Rainforests are a great example.  The rainforests of the Amazon and Madagascar are constantly revealing new creatures to us.  Researchers in a rainforest in Borneo recently discovered a new species of mushroom that looks like a colorful sea sponge.  So much so, in fact, that they named the species Spongiforma squarepantsii, which is officially the most ridiculous species name I’ve heard since Dracorex hogwartsia.

Who's To Blame For Disaster?

Put on your serious hats, folks.  Today’s story has a moral.

In April 2009, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit the city of L’Aquila in central Italy.  With over 300 dead, hundreds more injured, and thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed, it was the worst earthquake to strike Italy in decades.  And now a group of scientists are being blamed for it.

The L'Aquila earthquake devastated
several towns in 2009

For several months before the quake, the region had been experiencing small tremors, and a meeting was held to discuss whether or not there was cause for alarm.  A panel of seven earthquake experts decided that these tremors were not unusual for the region, and stated that it was unlikely that a major quake was coming.  The disaster occurred a week later, and now, Judge Giuseppe Romano Gargarella is ordering that the seven scientists be tried for manslaughter.  The judge claims that the experts’ information was faulty and misleading, and that, had the scientists done a better job predicting the earthquake, an evacuation could have been planned, and lives could have been saved.

But there’s a problem with that argument:  You cannot predict an earthquake.

Squids And Bricks In Space

This Monday, the space shuttle Endeavor will fly for the last time, carrying six crew members on a 16-day trip to the International Space Station.  This will be the second-to-last flight of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program.  After this, Atlantis will fly later this year, and then the Program will be done for good.  But scientists are putting this penultimate voyage to good use – not only will the shuttle be delivering the much-celebrated Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, designed to detect dark matter and other cool outer space-y stuff, but Endeavor will be home to a couple of rather unique and exciting experiments.

Space is a weird place.  It’s cold, it’s dark, it’s silent, and importantly, there’s no gravity, and that’s kind of a big deal.  Building machines to operate in space is a bit of a challenge, especially if you don’t know how your contraptions will act in little or no gravity.  Well, to get at solving this problem, the crew members of the Endeavor flight will help in conducting a special experiment.  Their mission, if they choose to accept it, will be to play with LEGOs in space.

Man, remember when you were little and being an astronaut seemed like the coolest job?  These guys get to go into space, and build stuff with LEGOs … in space!  I think I made the wrong career choice.

The Future is Filled With Robots!

In this week’s news – Cyborgs on the rise!

Well, not quite yet, but we’re getting closer.  Years of study have demonstrated over and again that there is huge potential in the concept of a mind-machine interface, allowing people to communicate with, and control, computers using only their thoughts.  Past experiments have shown how it’s possible to control robotic arms and legs using the same parts of your brain that control your real arms or legs.  Not only does this technology hold a lot of promise for handicapped people – imagine a paraplegic being given robotic legs to replace his originals – but it has also led to a series of really cool videos of monkeys.

Advancing Against AIDS

Your body is naturally equipped with a highly skilled defense force, complete with advanced targeting systems, devastating weaponry, and specially-trained assassins.  It is this force that protects you from invaders and attackers trying to force their way in and wreak havoc with your body.  But this system isn’t flawless, and those pesky pathogens can be crafty, and every now and then, one of them sneaks by.  This is where medical science comes in.  Medicine is the cavalry, designed to give your body’s natural defenses a helping hand in warding off nature’s more resilient marauders.

Sometimes an enemy comes along that your body really needs some help with.  Not every disease is as docile as a rhinovirus.  Way toward the top of Medicine’s Most Wanted list is HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, responsible for the deaths of well over a million people a year.  A vaccine for combating HIV has evaded medical science for years, but recent research brings new hope to the battle.