The trapjaw ant: its jaws can open at 180 degrees, and snap shut at between 78 and 140 miles per hour. That’s the world’s fastest bite.
Source: Alex Wild
The best explanation that you’ll read about what actually happens in a nuclear power plant. Involves Jenga.
Maggie Koerth-Baker outdoing herself.
It was scrubbed, ground down into grains, …and so on, leaving the scientists with a concentrated dino-poo residue that could be readily viewed under the microscope.
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Tapeworms, Trematodes and Other Dinosaur Pests (via outofcontextscience)
Great stuff by Brian Switek |
Cameras cleverly disguised as lumps of snow were able to catch some rare and amazing photos and vid of these endangered polar bears.
They almost went by unnoticed ‘til one Polar Bear destroyed $200,000 worth of camera equipment (the whole thing was caught on photo and video).
I will never look at rotifers in the same way again. I’d always known them for their fascinatingly asexual branch - the bdelloids. Now I will know them for their whirling jaws of death.
At the end of a long day in Japan, there is a striking disconnect between the official statements (at least in the English media) concerning the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and the actions being taken by authorities and the plant’s owners
- Geoff Brumfiel, Nature
She wouldn’t talk to the criticisms levied in the press. I assume that after this talk, she just walked away without taking questions, to write a letter to Science or something equally honourable…
“Biochemist Felisa Wolfe-Simon, whose recent discovery of arsenic-utilizing bacteria that thrive in otherwise poisonous environments rewrote science textbooks in a profound way, reminded us of the importance of questioning our most fundamental understanding of life.”
Just checked my textbook. Seems unchanged.
TED 2011 The Rediscovery of Wonder, Day Two | Brain Pickings
