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You know what sucks about riding a bike? Except for, you know, all the traffic and all the reckless car drivers, and rain, and sometimes being really tired? Bike helmets. Of course, they do provide the advantage of keeping your brain from getting splattered if you crash, but they’re not really comfortable, and they take […]
The fastest way to get from any point A to any point B is through a straight line – but when your point A is on a mountain, and your point B is on another mountain, that’s pretty hard to work out. According to architect Arturo Tedeschi (A>T), that’s also boring, so they came up with a […]
This “How to” may not be that relevant in modern times, but in the XIV and XV century, I could think of a few civilizations that would have loved to learn how Chinese engineers moved huge volumes of rock from quarries tens of miles away. Such blocks of stone, weighing at least 100 tonnes, were […]
On ZME Science we’ve showcased on more than one occasion the wonders of 3-D printing, and how this remarkable piece of technology is going to change a lot of things in the future, especially small scale manufacturing. It’s not just manufacturing it’s changing, it’s people’s lives too. For instance, we reported how 3D printers are […]
The U.S. is not only the biggest energy consumer per capita in the lord, but also the leading media consumer. An estimated 6.9 zettabytes of media flows to individuals and households in a year or 6.9 million million gigabytes. That’s almost twice as much than in 2008 and according to the latest “How Much Media? 2013 […]
The 19 days long Government shutdown was finally lifted recently, as thousands of employees returned to their day jobs. The consequences of this stalemate period are long and broad, despite its seemingly short time frame. I won’t go into the politics and mechanics of this rather unpleasant event which will most likely go down in […]
Merging road cars with airplanes into a two-in-one purpose vehicle may seem like a SciFi endeavor, but how truly crazy is this idea? Although we’re far from seeing people hovering to work in a Jetson’s-like craft or mid-air traffic jams like in the Fifth Element, some people believe street-legal cars that can both run on […]
In the heart of Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, green spaces are a rarity. With the idea of creating an escape from the congested streets of Bangkok, Somdoon Architects came up with this design of two towers, each tailored for a specific type of customers, but also eco-friendly. A “green skin” covers the building providing temperature control […]
Reconciling modern western science, which deals with matters pertaining to the external, physical realm, and ancient monastic studies, which delve into the inner self , can be daunting task if not … impracticable. For the past three years, however, the Dalai Lama and a group of Tibetan monks have been making multiple stays at Emory […]
Recently the Times Higher Education global ranking of the top 400 universities in the world has been unveiled. For the third time in a row, California Institute of Technology ranks on top, while Harvard University, Oxford University, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology round out the top five schools in the 2013–2014 rankings. The Times […]
Just a few moments ago, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics to Francois Englert and Peter Higgs on Tuesday for their 1964 postulation of the existence of the Higgs boson. The elementary particle was finally confirmed in 2012 by a team of international researchers using the Large Hadron Collider […]
Yesterday was Neil deGrasse Tyson’s 55th birthday, an astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, and popularizer of science. Nearly two years ago, during one of his Ask Me Anything’s on reddit, deGrasse Tyson answered one of the questions posed there by a fellow redditor asking “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on […]
Last week we showed you some great fluid dynamics at work – water bridges between two beakers connected to high voltage current. Water and fluids in particular sometimes behave in amazing ways under certain conditions. Today, I’d like to show another dazzling display: the Leidenfrost effect. This is a phenomenon that occurs when liquid, say […]
3D printing took the world by storm, and there’s almost no limit to what you can create: from ears and organs to rocket engines and dinosaur skeletons. This technology is so efficient and advanced that in fact, a study concluded that the average American could save money each year by printing household items. Now, two […]
Dragan Djuric and Boris Delibasic, two professors of FON (Faculty of Organizational Sciences), along with advisor Stevica Radisic deliberately published a nonsensical, fictional article in the Romanian magazine “Metalurgia International” in order to draw attention on the massive production of quasi-scientific works by Serbian professors which are published in dubious magazines. The work Their “scientific” […]
Orville and Wilbur Wright are credited as the first men who built an aircraft capable of manned controlled flight. The first manned flight by airplane (powered, controlled and heavier than air) occurred on December 17, 1903, when Orville flew at 120 feet (37 m) over the ground for 12 seconds, at a speed of only 6.8 miles per hour […]
An award winning student from the Nigerian University of Lagos is claiming that he’s “disproved” gay marriage through science, using magnets; his “research” is backed by the University. As much as we, at ZME Science, love science and what it means for us as humans, we simply hate any pseudoscience or any falsity promoted as […]
“My initial interest was an artistic one at heart, but, surprisingly, we could instantly differentiate seizure activity from non-seizure states with just our ears,” Chafe said. “It was like turning a radio dial from a static-filled station to a clear one.” When Chris Chafe and Josef Parvizi from Stanford University began transforming recordings of brain […]
In 2011, Building Trust International launched an International design competition asking Architects, Designers and Engineers to come up with an innovative design solution for a mobile, modular school for a displaced community of migrants and refugees on the Thai/Burma border. The winners of The MOVING Schools 001 were architects Dan La Rossa and Amadeo Bennetta; […]
Mauritius is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) off the southeast coast of the African continent. The first Portuguese explorers found no indigenous people living on the island in 1507, though there is some evidence that the Arabs discovered it in 975. Since then, French, Dutch and English colonists […]
The Herero are an ethnic group inhabiting parts of Southern Africa, inhabiting mostly Namibia. There are some 250.000 members living today; the Hereros in Namibia are still, to this day, wearing the Victorian style of clothing of the German people who once tried to wipe them out. In 1892, German colonists started arriving in Namibia. […]
No joke – and yes, you can play World of Warcraft, or any other computer game for that matter. So, do you need some time off from your stressful life, while making good money and also helping science? If the answer is ‘Yes’, then pack your bags and head on to Houston because NASA wants […]
Over the years, LEGO building blocks have been a source of hours of endless entertainment for kids (and kids at heart) worldwide. Encouraging creativity and unintentionally rewarding children for selfishly bogarting all the pieces of a particular color, all sorts of interesting things can be made out of a decently sized tub of LEGO bricks. […]
Though built in 1933, the Fossil Cabin near the dinosaur graveyard at Como Bluff is, in a way, the oldest building in the world: the walls of the building were built out of 5,796 mortared-together dinosaur bones, dug from nearby areas. Initially, the building was part of a gasoline filling station along US 30 by […]
There’s a huge gender gap between men and women in science that can be tied to early segregation in childhood (boys with math, girls with humanities), continuing with bias against women pursuing science, either in the classroom, academia or industry later on in life. Efforts to close this gender gap are made, and progress, albeit […]
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), recently initiated a bold and creative project in which they enlisted six member organizations of the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance. HSUS asked the organizations if they would each submit a piece of art made by chimps belonging to their respective sanctuaries. In the end, some pretty creative […]
Of course any architect does a lot of mechanics and all that, but he also shouldn’t miss the optics classes: a high-end Jaguar has partially melted after it was parked in the sizzling-hot reflections coming from London’s newest skyscraper. Yep, a luxury car has partially melted due to the reflections from a nearby skyscraper – […]
While browsing reddit the other day, I came across a most peculiar finding. One of the users, Decapod73 or Tony Alexander in real life, posted photos he took while on an expedition in the Peruvian Amazon forest of intricate structures that bear an uncanny resemblance to a white picket circular fence – right in the center, half […]
Theoretical Physicists John Preskill and Spiros Michalakis sat down for a short talk in which they describe how quantum computing differs from the classical view (i.e. digital computers). They first go on about the fundamental, key aspect of the quantum world: the laws that describe and govern things at the tiniest level differ from those […]
Investigators say the operation was the biggest, most sophisticated theft New York City has seen since the 1978 Lufthansa heist. The booty US federal authorities have uncovered so far includes Rolex watches, a Mercedes SUV, a Porsche, bags from Gucci, and piles of cash. Yet the alleged perpetrators never held a gun to a teller […]
America’s longest war (or second-longest for sure) in history is expected to end in 2014 once with the retreat of US forces from Afghanistan. Currently members of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan are heading for the exits, leaving the US alone in securing the country. That’s not all they leave behind, though. […]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is an established neurosurgeon, but you all might know him better as CNN’s chief medical correspondent through the various live interventions he’s had along the years on television as well as some feature documentaries. Last night, his most recent documentary, called “WEED”, premiered on CNN as you might have already guessed, it’s all […]
Your first impression after seeing one or more of the photos featured in this piece might be that these are ‘shopped, painted or feature an astronomical event of some kind. Your assumptions couldn’t be farther from the truth, and believe it or not these beautiful dancing lights over the helicopters’ rotor blades were captured in […]
The waves of controversy and outrage following former CIA and NSA technical officer Edward Snowden’s leaks of details that reveal the US and British governments had been secretly deploying mass surveillance programs on their citizens are far from over. Recently further details as to the extent and reach these programs possess have been uncovered, after a […]
We’ve all come to love and cherish the visionary images of astronauts out in space in their spacesuits. There’s something truly incredible about getting to see a humanoid form right in space, overlooking our beautiful blue marble, wrapped inside a protective suit that shelters the new millennium explorer from the cold, deadly grips of vacuum. […]
This isn’t a cyborg gold fish from a borg’s aquarium, this little amazing fellow is called Einstein. He unfortunately ended up with a disability caused by a disease that has basically made him useless in water: he can’t swim anymore. Not by itself, at least. Feeling heart broken by seeing his pet fish so helpless, […]
Weighing in at 33 pounds (15kgs), this huge honey mushroom was recently discovered by locals in China’s Yunnan Province. Specialists aren’t sure yet, but the giant fungus could actually be a record breaker. The large clump of mushrooms, which numbered over 100 caps attached at the base of their stems, caused quite a stir amongst […]
Somewhere in the far reaches of space (or perhaps in some realm that we have yet to discover), a bunch of really bored cosmic dudes are probably watching us right now. Heck, they’ve probably had their eyes on us for thousands (or even millions) of years already; and they possibly have enough data to compile […]
The first use of the umbrella, albeit in a more primitive form, can be traced back to ancient times. In Persia the parasol is repeatedly found in the carved work of Persepolis, while others works such as sculptures frequently depict figures likes a king in his chariot, with an attendant holding a parasol over his […]
This is quite possibly the woolliest sheep in history, Shrek the sheep. He was found in this condition in 2004, in the very land of sheep – New Zealand – after escaping the annual spring shedding for six consecutive years. If you ever wondered what a really woolly sheep might look like, here you have […]
The United States is a country renowned for its history of technological innovation and stewardship. Some of the world’s greatest inventors, though not all of them may have not been born there, first displayed their work in the US. Samuel Colt (colt revolver), A.G. Bell (telephone), Thomas Edison (light bulb, among many), George Washington Carver […]
Valles Marineris is the largest canyon on Mars, and in the solar system for that matter that we know of. It’s 4000 km long, 200km wide, 10 km deep and stunningly beautiful. Just so you can get a glimpse of how beautiful it is, ESA just recently posted a movie that focuses on an enclosed 8 km-deep […]
Every little thing we hold for granted here on familiar ground and gravity is different in space. Take washing your hair for instance. Expedition 36 crew member Karen Nyberg recently uploaded a video on YouTube which has since gone viral which demonstrates how astronauts aboard the International Space Station wash their hair in microgravity. At first […]
The otherwordly new video features one of the two Martian moons – Phobos, as it rises on the sky. Even though the movie only has 32 seconds, the action actually took place over the course of 27 minutes. Mars has two moons: Phobos (which is just 22 km wide on average), and Deimos, which is […]
The overwhelming part of the universe is still a mystery to astronomers – and most of what we know is a result of deduction and analysis. So it should be no big surprise that when radio waves from 11 billion light years was received, they couldn’t pinpoint its origin. Their brightness and distance suggest that […]
Bono of U2 recently let it be known that he was a student of astrophysics (yes, truly!). Upon meeting the 2012 Nobel Prize winner for physics Brian Schmidt, Bono demonstrated a thorough understanding of Schmidt’s work on the evidence for an accelerating universe. More and more over the last 100 years, scientists have been theorising about the […]
A new visualization technique developed by researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute used a thin sheet of laser light that beams, stepwise, into different planes of a specimen to create intricate and detailed snapshots of cells. In these pictures featured above and below you can see how zebrafish and fruit fly embryos were imaged using this novel […]
Non-stop sunshine, an incredibly beautiful ocean, one of the highest standards of living in the developed world and the Koala are just a few possible reasons why Australians are the happiest people in the world, at least according to the annual Better Life Index survey authored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This is the third […]
If you’re a regular follower of NASA’s updates, you may have caught glimpses of some of the X-ray photos they report showing the surface of the sun. In these photos, dark specks of various sizes can be seen, which are actually what astronomers refer to as coronal holes. They may extend from the Sun’s equator to […]
A new study suggests that U.S. businesses pay almost $6,000 per year extra for each employee who smokes, compared to an employee which doesn’t smoke. Researchers claim this is the first study to focus on the cost of employing smokers vs non-smokers. So why does this happen? By drawing data from previous researches, focusing on […]
