Even bugs display individual differences in behavior—with some acting consistently aggressive and others consistently shy. Or, as pourmecoffee puts it, "Some insects are jerks." — Maggie • Comments: 6

Hey, kid. Wanna buy a bag of cereal marshmallows?

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 6:56 PM Wed 

I'm not sure which is more magical and wondrous: That it is apparently possible to buy a bag of the little, perfectly stale marshmallows normally only found mixed with terrible cereal, or that one buys bags of little, perfectly stale marshmallows care of a company called Discount Herbals. That odd business plan leads to such cognitively dissonant quotes as:

Cerealmarshmallows.com is positive that once you have tried our products, the results you experience will prove that no other herbal or vitamin nutritional supplements compare.

I haven't decided yet whether I think this is a joke site. Part of me (the part that wants to buy a bag of little, perfectly stale marshmallows) hopes it's not.

Via rstevens

      Comments: 40

Video shows asteroid discoveries since 1980

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 6:38 PM Wed 

Just in case I wasn't already in awe of the scientific progress made during my own lifetime, Lauren Submitterated (it's a verb now) this video showing the mind-blowing numbers of asteroids that have been discovered since 1980. Created by Scott Manley—and with some very lovely music, I might add—the video shows new discoveries in white, then changes their color to reflect position in relation to the inner solar system. Earth crossers are red. Earth approachers are yellow. All others are green.

Manley's included a lot of good information about what the patterns of where and when new asteroids appear in the video tell us about astronomy over over the last 30 years.

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.

      Comments: 25

The beauty and wonder of a squid's eyeball

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 5:09 PM Tue 

Look at this squid's eye. Just look at it. See anything eerily familiar?

Squid, along with the rest of the family Cephalopoda, haven't shared a common ancestor with us vertebrates in some 500 million years—long before the evolution of our camera-like eyes. And yet, there the cephalopods are, flagrantly swimming about with eyes that use a lens to project an image onto a retina. Call it Squid Eye for the Vertebrate Guy. So, how's it work?

Convergent evolution, my friends. Convergent evolution. We happened to hit on similar solutions to the same problem of sight, even though the eyes of vertebrates and cephalopods evolved separately, in very different ways, at different times. Today, we can see that legacy in cephalopod and vertebrate fetal development. With vertebrates, the eyes grow on stalks, reaching out from the brain. In cephalopods, the eyes start as a clumping of cells on the surface of the skin and reach backwards, into the head, to make brain contact. Similar destinations. Very different road maps.

This lovely illustration—featuring dissections of the head, funnel, mantle and eye of a Thaumatolampas diadema—comes from The Cephalopoda Part I: Oegopsida and Part II: Myopsida, Octopoda Atlas written in 1910 by zoologist Carl Chun following a German expedition to the Indian, Atlantic and Great Southern oceans.

You can see more of Chun's detailed, passionate illustrations at the BibliOdyssey blog.

      Comments: 22

Hipster dinosaurs

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 3:59 PM Tue 

I find this site, full of coloring-book images of dinosaurs altered into pretentious cool kids, incredibly charming.

Thanks to the awesome Ashley Stubblefield!

      Comments: 15

Honoring the death of a civil rights pioneer

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 9:57 AM Tue 

Fifty-three years ago, Jefferson Thomas joined eight other black teenagers in integrating Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas. The reaction against them was immediate, pervasive and frequently violent. White mobs spit and screamed at Thomas and the other Little Rock 9 when they showed up for school. The state's governor tried to use the Arkansas National Guard to keep the black students out, saying that following the federal mandate would only result in social disruption and that integration would have to wait until some unspecified time. And Thomas' father was laid off, probably as punishment for his son's decision.

Through it all, friends say, Thomas kept his sense of humor and used it to boost the spirits of the other Little Rock 9. He took his inspiration from a hymn, "Lord, Don't Move My Mountain, Just Give Me the Strength to Climb."

"It seemed that overnight, things stopped being so bad," he said. "The same things were happening, but they didn't hurt me as much. I didn't feel like I was a failure. I felt victorious because I made it through the day."

Thomas died last Sunday, from pancreatic cancer, at the age of 67. He is the first of the Little Rock 9 to pass away. Little Rock Central High School has since become a National Historic Site. The photo of Jefferson Thomas—along with classmates Minnijean Brown and Thelma Mothershed—is from their online archives, where you can also listen to oral history recordings, read about the lives of the Little Rock 9, and get a deeper understanding of the events surrounding public school integration. Personally, I like this shot because it shows Thomas and his classmates in a candid moment, looking like normal teenagers, rather than people from a history textbook. That reminder, that historic figures are people, is important to keeping their experiences—and the lessons we ought to be learning from those experiences—fresh and real. History isn't just facts for a quiz.

      Comments: 18

What are your favorite physics websites?

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 10:36 AM Mon 

Physics.org is looking for the best physics-centric sites on the Web, and they need your help. The first ever Physics.org Web Awards is now open for nominations.

We're looking for great sites suitable for a non-specialist audience in the following categories:

• * Best blog
• * Best news site / online magazine
• * Best podcast
• * Best Q&A / ask the expert site
• * Best revision site
• * Best kids' site
• * President's prize (anything which doesn't fall under any of the categories above)

You can nominate sites until the 10th of October and there's several ways to nominate. On Twitter, you can send a message to @dotrythisathome or make a general tweet using the #pwa10 hashtag. There's a Facebook page. Or you can just send an email. Winners will be announced just as soon as the judging panel—which includes yours truly—reaches a decision.

      Comments: 18

Adorable alternative energy

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 1:25 PM Sun 

Gaia Vince explains how a sustainable farm in Peru runs on guinea pig power.

No, it does not involve hundreds of tiny exercise wheels. (Although that would be pretty damn cute, too.)

Instead, every month, the farmers process more than 400 pounds of guinea pig poop into combustible gas—and a liquid byproduct that works as plant food—by allowing bacteria to break the waste down in a warm, oxygen-free environment. It's called anaerobic digestion, and it's a process that's increasingly popular on American farms, as well. Dairy farms—with their easy access to lots of consolidated cow shit—in particular.

What's cool about this Peruvian model is that it shows you don't necessarily need fancy, expensive equipment to make anaerobic digestion work. The process can be applied at different levels of tech intensity, depending on resources, location and how much energy you actually want to produce. This Peruvian family makes enough gas for themselves, plus a little extra. Meanwhile, a dairy farm in Wisconsin uses the gas to make electricity that they sell back to the utility company. All told, there's enough to power 70 households.

      Comments: 25

Snakebot inspires dreams, haunts nightmares

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 12:51 PM Sun 

Built by robotics students at Carnegie Mellon, Uncle Sam the Snakebot is simultaneously horribly awesome, and awesomely creepy.

Uncle Sam is programmed with a variety of different "gaits", or types of movement patterns, which are based on the real-life behavior of real-life snakes. The goal is to create a modular—and, thus, relatively simple to produce and scale—robot that can get to and through places where people, and less-willies-inducing robots, can't maneuver.

Via Switched

      Comments: 28

Grains of pollen as seen by an electron microscope

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 12:35 PM Sun 

Behold, the face of the enemy.

(Why, yes, my nose is rather runny, why do you ask?)

Urge to vengeance aside, my main reaction while flipping through this gallery of pollen images was wonder at the intense variety of sizes, shapes, textures and tricks floating through the microscopic world of plant pollen. This group shot ranges from the (relatively) giant orb of pumpkin pollen in the center, to the teensy blue dot that belongs to the forget-me-not. Some of the grains seem like completely alien things, but others bear a striking resemblance to the plants they help create—for instance, I guessed that Venus fly trap pollen went with the Venus fly trap before I read the caption.

All these shots are the work of Swedish Swiss scientist Martin Oeggerli, who makes amazing art using a scanning electron microscope. The images actually start out in black and white, with Oeggerli going back and adding color, pixel by pixel. The colors can, but don't necessarily, reflect reality, but they do help make textures stand out and make the form more easily readable by your eye.

The Telegraph: Full pollen image gallery

Martin Oeggerli explains the technology behind his photos, from microscope, to sample preparation, to coloration.

Image: Martin Oeggerli/Micronaut

      Comments: 24

Historic artifact for a holiday weekend

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 4:24 PM Sat 

This is the world's first frozen margarita machine, invented and built by Mariano Martinez in 1971 from parts of a soft-serve ice cream maker. His inspiration: A 7-11 Slurpee.

Today, it resides in the collection of the National Museum of American History, where a museum director once called it a, "classic example of the American entrepreneurial spirit."

Smithsonian: Top 10 Inventions from the Collections of the National Museum of American History

      Comments: 9

Sailing the Northwest Passage at night

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 4:12 PM Sat 

Polar explorer Børge Ousland (How'd you like to have that as your job title?) is on a sailboat making its way through the Arctic Ocean. This has never been an easy place for boats, and this video gives you a good idea of why. The captain of Ousland's boat explains the hazards of this area a little more in-depth, while simultaneously making an important point—thanks to warming trends, traversing the Northwest Passage isn't has hard as it used to be.

It is obvious that the conditions met by the early explorers such as Vitus Bering, Fridtjof Nansen, Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld and Roald Amundsen no longer exists. We passed through in a few weeks, while our predecessors were forced to overwinter once or even twice. Still, it is not an easy passage for any kind of boat or vessel. There is still ice, although not to the extent there used to be, but plenty to make conditions unpredictable for ships. In addition many of the seas you have to pass are very shallow. In the East Siberian Sea, the shipping lane is located 50 nautical miles off the coast, in order for there to be sufficient depth for bigger ships. Lights, buoys and nautical markings are scarce.

You can follow Ousland's progress on his blog. Today, he reached American waters and changed his underpants, and we learn that changing your underpants on special occasions is a fine, old Norwegian tradition. To which I can only say, "Good."

Via Climate Progress

      Comments: 10