Science + Technology

What Did I Do Last Summer? Oh, I Discovered How To Make Babies Without Sex. And You?

Robert Krulwich — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:15:32 +0000

Ah, if only all summers could be like June, July and August 1740 — when three young guys (and a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old) did a science experiment that startled the world. In those days, you could do biology without a fancy diploma. More people could play.

That spring, the hot book — the one everyone was reading — was a gorgeously illustrated volume about insects by the French naturalist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur.

Cloning, Stem Cells Long Mired In Legislative Gridlock

Julie Rovner — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:04:00 +0000

The news that U.S.

Water Trapped For 1.5 Billion Years Could Hold Ancient Life

editor — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:03:00 +0000

Scientists have discovered water that has been trapped in rock for more than a billion years. The water might contain microbes that evolved independently from the surface world, and it's a finding that gives new hope to the search for life on other planets.

The water samples came from holes drilled by gold miners near the small town of Timmins, Ontario, about 350 miles north of Toronto. Deep in the Canadian bedrock, miners drill holes and collect samples.

Cup Of Joe With Apple CEO Goes For $610,000

Bill Chappell — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:26:23 +0000

It turns out that the desire to speak with Apple CEO Tim Cook, along with $610,000, will buy you a cup of coffee.

With Rising Seas, America's Birthplace Could Disappear

Christopher Joyce — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:35:00 +0000

By the end of the century, the birthplace of America may be underwater.

The first successful English colony in America was at Jamestown, Va., a swampy island in the Chesapeake Bay. The colony endured for almost a century, and remnants of the place still exist. You can go there and see the ruins. You can walk where Capt. John Smith and Pocahontas walked. But Jamestown is now threatened by rising sea levels that scientists say could submerge the island by century's end.

You wouldn't know that by looking. In springtime, Jamestown is a carpet of bright new grass.

What Is It About Bees And Hexagons?

Robert Krulwich — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:18:31 +0000

Solved! A bee-buzzing, honey-licking 2,000-year-old mystery that begins here, with this beehive. Look at the honeycomb in the photo and ask yourself: (I know you've been wondering this all your life, but have been too shy to ask out loud ... ) Why is every cell in this honeycomb a hexagon?

Bees, after all, could build honeycombs from rectangles or squares or triangles ...

But for some reason, bees choose hexagons. Always hexagons.

And not just your basic six-sided hexagon.

Litterbugs Beware: Turning Found DNA Into Portraits

Acacia Squires — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:37:14 +0000

Heather Dewey-Hagborg was sitting in a therapy session a while ago and noticed a painting on the wall. The glass on the frame was cracked, and lodged in the crack was a single hair. She couldn't take her eyes off it.

"I just became obsessed with thinking about whose hair that was, and what they might look like, and what they might be like," she says.

On the subway ride home, she noticed all of the insignificant things people left behind — a dropped cigarette butt, a chewed-up piece of gum.

New Closed-Captioning Glasses Help Deaf Go Out To The Movies

editor — Sun, 12 May 2013 19:48:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsckbFwU2SQ

For Year-Round Buzz, Beekeepers 'Fast-Forward Darwinism'

Katherine Perry — Sun, 12 May 2013 17:47:00 +0000

Beekeepers In Massachusetts are taking the mission to save the bees into their own hands.

There has been a dramatic disappearance of honeybees across the U.S. since 2006. A recent U.S.

Atop A Hawaiian Mountain, A Constant Sniff For Carbon Dioxide

Joe Palca — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:46:00 +0000

Climate scientists have a good reason to want to get away from it all. To get an accurate picture of the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, you have to find places where the numbers won't be distorted by cities or factories or even lots of vegetation that can have a major local impact on CO₂ concentrations.

Starting in 1958, scientists from the Scripps Institution for Oceanography have been using an instrument on the top of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii to measure CO₂ in the atmosphere.

College Divestment Campaigns Creating Passionate Environmentalists

Elizabeth Shogren — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:16:00 +0000

At about 300 colleges across the country, young activists worried about climate change are borrowing a strategy that students successfully used in decades past. In the 1980s, students enraged about South Africa's racist Apartheid regime got their schools to drop stocks in companies that did business with that government. In the 1990s students pressured their schools to divest in Big Tobacco.

This time, the student activists are targeting a mainstay of the economy: large oil and coal companies.

So far only a few small colleges have opted to drop investments in fossil fuel companies.

Could You Talk To A Caveman? Researchers Say Yes!

editor — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:34:00 +0000

In 1961, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner came up with some basic theories of caveman linguistics in their 2,000-Year-Old Man skit. Most of them had to do with rocks, as in, "What are you doing with that rock there?"

Now, a professor in England has questioned the validity of the famous caveman's rock-centric theories. And Mark Pagel of the University of Reading is reaching even further back, to the time of the 15,000-year-old man.

Pagel and his team have theorized that if you trace a number of languages back far enough, you'll find a common root tongue.

Moths That Drive Cars (Really)

Robert Krulwich — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:54:54 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2k1T2X7_Aw

Consumers Facing Subscription Service Overload Will Only Get More Choices

Laura Sydell — Thu, 09 May 2013 07:33:00 +0000

YouTube is expected to announce in the coming days that it will launch paid subscription channels, a first for the online video platform that's been around since 2005. But, with the growing number of subscription services available for entertainment, shopping and news, some consumers say they're reaching digital subscription overload.

Mary Gaughan and her husband get near that point when they think about what movie or TV show they want to watch on free evenings at home. "Where do we get it?

Will Tweaking Windows 8 Be Enough To Revive The PC?

editor — Wed, 08 May 2013 06:53:00 +0000

When Microsoft introduced Windows 8 last year, the software giant billed the new operating system as one of the most critical releases in its history.

Study: 'Fossil' Words Are Older Than We Thought

Scott Neuman — Tue, 07 May 2013 23:06:00 +0000

The origin of some of the words we use today go back much further than scientists once thought, suggesting an Ice Age-era proto-language that spawned many of the world's contemporary linguistic groups, according to a new study by a group of U.K.-based scientists.

The study, published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used a statistical model to conclude that so-called "ultraconserved" words have been around for perhap

Bee Deaths May Have Reached A Crisis Point For Crops

Daniel Charles — Tue, 07 May 2013 22:12:00 +0000

According to a new survey of America's beekeepers, almost a third of the country's honeybee colonies did not make it through the winter.

That's been the case, in fact, almost every year since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began this annual survey, six years ago.

Over the past six years, on average, 30 percent of all the honeybee colonies in the U.S. died off over the winter. The worst year was five years ago.

Our Very Normal Solar System Isn't Normal Anymore

Robert Krulwich — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:46:30 +0000

Some things you just count on. Like if we ever meet a space alien, it should have eyes (and maybe a head). Like somewhere out there, there are planets like ours. Like we have an ordinary solar system — "ordinary" because you know what it looks like ...

It's got a sun in the middle, little planets on the inside, bigger ones farther out. That's what most of them should look like, no?

We thought they should.

U.S. Turns Up Heat On Costly Commercial Cyber Theft In China

Tom Gjelten — Tue, 07 May 2013 07:03:00 +0000

American companies that do business with China make good money. They also lose a lot of money there to cyberthieves, who routinely hack into the computers of the U.S. firms and steal their trade and technology secrets.

China's theft of U.S. intellectual property has gotten serious enough in recent months to warrant President Obama's attention and prompt a series of visits to Beijing by senior members of Obama's Cabinet.

Envisioning The Future With Cori Lathan

Joe Palca — Tue, 07 May 2013 06:59:00 +0000

Computers were created to be useful tools, but all too often it's still a chore to get technology to do our bidding.

Corinna Lathan imagines a future that's no longer a chore, where computers understand our wants and needs so well that we don't even have to think about telling them what to do. She's an inventor who has started her own company, AnthroTronix, to make that kind of intuitive technology part of our lives.