How are you doing at work today? If you answered: Super productive, then we’re guessing you ate breakfast this morning. Yes, yes, mom always said it was the most important meal of the day, but there has since been a lot of science to back up the old adage. Eating a good breakfast will make you a better, more efficient thinker during the day. And it’s not just about increasing your brainpower. Eating breakfast makes you healthier.
All that and more can be found in this clever, food-filled infographic about breakfast from OnlineSchools.com. If you didn’t eat breakfast today, perhaps a look at some statistics can convince you to try it tomorrow. Most importantly, nearly all Americans know that they should eat breakfast. But, still, most of us don’t care. (We can be a stubborn people, it’s true.) In fact, fewer than half of us consume the day’s most important meal.
Captured on film in the moment they’re snagged by biologists for study (they let them go unharmed, don’t worry), these photos of trapped birds are an oddly compelling illustration of the intersection of nature and science.
Living at Aquarius Reef Base is “like camping underwater,” according to Earle. The aquanauts eat, sleep, and shower at the base. The rest of the time, they get to explore what Earle describes as the best swimming pool in the world. The researchers can even communicate with landlubbers during their expeditions—while underwater, they wear special helmets outfitted with clear face plates and face masks (for speaking) that link back via a cable to the base, and then via another cable up to a surface buoy that wirelessly transmits the signal to the world.
When we spoke to Earle, the aquanauts hadn’t been at the base for long. But one of them had already seen something incredible: At 2 a.m., a giant goliath grouper—about the size of two to three people—cruising around the base, snapping up smaller fish attracted to the light. The grouper, which has been hanging around the base “looks like a big pillow with eyes,” says Earle. “She comes out like a lioness on the prowl.”
Last week, the Wellcome Collection announced the winners of its 12th annual image awards, recognizing the “most informative, striking and technically excellent” pictures from the collection’s recent acquisitions.
The winners—capturing everything from the division of cancer cells to the crystalline structure of caffeine—demonstrate how such techniques as microscopy can be used not only to enhance our understanding of chemicals and organisms but to create truly awe-inspiring images.
But WikiCells is no mere As Seen On TV™ gadget and Edwards says it’s no mere conceptual provocation either—the launch in Paris proves this. The technology already exists: Electrostatic charges can transform a sugar processing bi-product called bagasse, mixed with chitosan and alginate, into an edible shell membrane. Now any food you might find wrapped in plastic in the store can come in a shell made just using this technology. You’ll be able to peel the shell off and compost the skin like a banana peel or, take a step beyond biodegradable, eat the whole thing like you would chew a grape.
Its solution, called the Hydrolemic system, involves both harvesting more moisture from the air than our current un-modified bodies are capable of, and also doing more to retain the water we have. The company imagines that system would require us to drink .1 cups of water a day.
For most people, high school science fairs yield amusing but not altogether practical results: your baking soda and vinegar volcanoes, your potato clocks. There are exceptions, of course—15 year-old Jack Andraka created a cheap, efficient pancreatic cancer sensor for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. And there are the finalists in Google’s annual Science Fair, which invites entrants ages 13 through 18 to compete for a variety of prizes. These kids are results are anything but amusing. They’re potentially world changing.
Below, we look at five of our favorite finalists (there are 15 in total). The winner will be crowned next month.
NASA’s Mars Rover Opportunity captured this image looking eastward over the Endeavour Crater late in the afternoon of Opportunity’s 2,888th Martian sol (day) which corresponded with March 9, 2012 here on Earth. In the foreground, Opportunity’s own shadow appears, in a sort of one-step-removed self-portrait. […] The image is a mosaic of about a dozen images and presented in false color to draw out certain features of the topography.
Until recently we’ve only been able to speculate about story’s persuasive effects. But over the last several decades psychology has begun a serious study of how story affects the human mind. Results repeatedly show that our attitudes, fears, hopes, and values are strongly influenced by story. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than writing that is specifically designed to persuade through argument and evidence.
“Not only do naturally creative people cheat more than uncreative people, subjects cajoled into thinking outside of the box become cheaters, too. This suggests that the creative process isn’t just tied to dishonest behavior; it actually enables it—troubling news at a time when the corporate world treats innovation as an unimpeachable moral good.”
Polyurethane seemed like it couldn’t interact with the earth’s normal processes of breaking down and recycling material. That’s just because it hadn’t met the right mushroom yet.
Want to hear a Harvard professor hold forth on the neuropsychology of zombies? Then attend an event at the newly expanded “Science on Screen” series, where films are followed by scientific discourse.
By observing the inner workings of an octopus’s leg or an elephant’s trunk, scientists have created muscles from carbon nanotubes that could one day power machines.
![I wonder which #Instagram filter Mars Rover likes to use.
theatlantic:
Science Picture of the Day: The Mars Horizon
NASA’s Mars Rover Opportunity captured this image looking eastward over the Endeavour Crater late in the afternoon of Opportunity’s 2,888th Martian sol (day) which corresponded with March 9, 2012 here on Earth. In the foreground, Opportunity’s own shadow appears, in a sort of one-step-removed self-portrait. […] The image is a mosaic of about a dozen images and presented in false color to draw out certain features of the topography.
[Image: NASA]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4j1uydn9i1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
