What happens when the bison at the Museum of Natural History get dusty? Photographer Richard Barnes has traveled the U.S. photographing museum dioramas undergoing repair and maintenance, and his photos have been made into a book, Animal Logic, that was published last fall.
Do his photos, which emphasize the distinction between nature and artifice, increase or diminish your appreciation for museum dioramas, many of which were constructed in the 1920s and ’30s? In a recent issue of The Smart Set, Jesse Smith notes this detached perspective towards dioramas isn’t new– The American Museum of Natural History In New York has a section of its website devoted to their “renowned” and “beloved” dioramas, and the Museum’s chairman describes them as “amazing technical feats of illusion.” But once you admit they’re illusions, Smith argues, the dioramas are no longer viable as scientific learning tools. And perhaps we lose something as a result.
Smith admits that he prefers the approach of Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences. “It’s not willing to throw in the towel, as the American Museum of Natural History has done. On its site, the Academy budges very little: ‘Although their magic has diminished somewhat with the advent of television and the internet, dioramas still provide an opportunity to experience these magnificent animals up close.’ I don’t know if the Academy really believes this, or it just wants me to. It honestly doesn’t matter. I prefer to be the one stepping back to judge these on their own terms, and the Academy lets me do that.”
(image credit: Richard Barnes)
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Ever wondered how the body defends against diseases and other attacks? In the following article from the Geeks are Sexy blog, learn the basic philosophy behind the immune system.
We live in a world governed not by the biggest creatures, but by the smallest. Our bodies act as vessels for all that we call “ourselves,” forming a barrier between “out there” and “in here.” While that barrier is not as simple as a wall or a single membrane, the philosophy is made real by a complex defense network called the immune system.
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Researchers say that Uranus and Neptune may have full oceans of liquid diamonds with giant diamond icebergs floating through them. The research showed that when diamonds are in their liquid state, they function similar to water and similarly, solid chunks can float in them.
“Diamond is a relatively common material on Earth, but its melting point has never been measured,” said J. H. Eggert of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. “You can’t just raise the temperature and have it melt, you have to also go to high pressures, which makes it very difficult to measure the temperature.”
Ordinarily, before diamonds are melted, they turn into graphite. It takes a perfect level of pressure and heat to turn them into liquid diamond form. Researchers found that the pressure has to be similar to those found on Neptune or Uranus.
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January is National Hot Tea Month, and to celebrate, we at Neatorama invite you to brew a cup of your favorite variety and curl up for some good old fashioned facts about one of the most popular beverages in the world — second to only water. Before we begin though, let’s make one thing clear; herbal teas (including South African red teas) are not real teas because they are not made from the Camellia sinensis a.k.a. the tea plant — sorry chamomile fans.
While there really is no consensus on exactly where the earliest tea plants were grown in Asia and how people got the idea to drink it, there are a number of myths concerning how tea originated and why people started drinking it. One story says that a Buddhist monk named Bodhidharma, the founder of Chan Buddhism, was meditating for nine years, at which point, he fell asleep. The story says he was so upset that he cut off his own eyelids, which took root and grew into the first tea plants. Other versions of the story say that Buddha himself was the one who cut his eye lids off and started the first tea plants.
The story of how tea was first consumed says that Emperor Shennong was drinking a bowl of water when leaves from the plant blew into his water. He tried the concoction and was quite happy with the drink’s flavor. Another story says that Shennong was testing the medicinal properties of different herbs and when he discovered an herb was poisonous, he used tea for an antidote.
While the history of the plants and how they started to be consumed as beverages are the stuff of legends, there are certainly a few well documented facts about the brew’s history. The oldest known still cultivated tea plant grows in the Yunnan Province in China, it is estimated to be over 3,200 years old. Records of China’s tea consumption go back all the way to 10th century BC. At one point, bricks of tea were actually used as currency in the realm, particularly in areas that were very rural and devoid of coin currency.
Chinese Buddhist monks introduced the drink to Japan, where it quickly became a favored drink of royalty. Within no time, seeds were imported into the country and cultivation began. Centuries later, tea ceremonies were introduced by Buddhist monks as well, where they slowly evolved into the highly formal tea ceremonies that Japan is known for today. In the sixteenth century, the tea ceremonies played a big role in feudal diplomacy.
Tea wasn’t introduced into Europe until the 17th century, when it was first brought to Amsterdam. Around this period it was introduced to France and Russia where it was quickly made popular in both countries. It’s introduction into English society was perhaps the place that it had the biggest impact though.
By 1750, tea became the national drink of Britain. Unfortunately, Britain developed a need for Chinese goods, but China largely had no use for English goods. For a while, England sent out silver bullion, but it wasn’t long before they began trading opium (grown in India and still illegal in China) for tea. Thus, tea played a major role in the Opium Wars and the treaty for the war actually required the Chinese ship tea to England in exchange for the drug.
At the same time, the Brits decided that they needed to stop being dependant on the Chinese for their supply of tea, so they hired Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to steal a tea plant from China and then cultivate it in India. The plants fared well in this new environment and now India is one of the biggest producers of the plant.
Image via Okinawa Soba [Flickr]
Most people prefer to make tea from tea bags, but tea purists consider the tea from the bags to be far inferior to loose-leaf tea. Part of the reason is that the small bits of leaves used are often just the waste products left behind from loose-leaf tea. Another problem is that more of the leaf’s surface is in contact with the air, allowing it to lose flavor faster. Some people also claim they can taste the flavor of the bag when they drink it this way. Others claim that tea bags are too small to allow the tea to properly diffuse in the water, which is why Lipton released their line of Pyramid Teas to counteract these problems, but many tea aficionados still don’t like them for the other reasons listed above.
Image by Wikipedia user Andre Karwath.
As I said before, real tea is only made from the Camellia sinensis, which means that red tea and other herbal teas don’t make the cut. Even then though, there are still six different varieties of tea, each created by a different processing method. The tea plant’s leaves wilt and oxidize very quickly after it is picked, and each type of tea is made through drying the leaves at a different point of the leaf’s cycle. White tea is wilted and unoxidized. Green tea is unwilted and unoxidized. Yellow tea is unwilted and unoxidized, but allowed to yellow. Oolong tea is wilted, bruised and then partially oxidized. Black tea is wilted and fully oxidized. Post-fermented tea is created by allowing green tea to ferment, it is largely reserved for medicinal purposes and not casual drinking. There’s a cool visualization of the process here.
While each type of tea naturally has its own distinct flavor, most teas you buy at the store have their own flavoring made by mixing different blends together or by adding other flavors to the mix. Some of the more popular tea flavors include:
Source Image by Wikipedia user lateasquirrel.
Tea contains a number of different antioxidants, one of which, catechins, actually makes up 30% of its weight. This antioxidant can help fight tumors. White and green teas contain the most antioxidants. On the other end of the spectrum, black tea has the most caffeine. Caffeine makes up about 3% of black tea’s dry weight, more than even coffee. The reason coffee gives you more of a buzz when you drink it though is that it’s less diluted than tea. Tea also has fluorine, which prevents dental decay.
Studies have shown that tea can help normalize your blood pressure, lower your stress levels, prevent heart disease, reduce depression and prevent diabetes. It also has germicidal properties that help you prevent sickness(which shows just how terrible my immune system is, given that I drink tea daily and still get sick all the time). A study released last year showed that white tea can boost your metabolism, reduce fat cells and help you lose weight. Another study that came out last year showed that drinking tea daily can reduce your chances of having a stroke by as much as 21%.
The tea plant grows year-round and though it prefers tropical and sub-tropical climates, it has survived as far north as England. Only the top one to two inches of a mature plant are used for tea. These parts of the plant are called flushes and the plant grows a new flush every week or so during growing season. The Chinese believe that a higher elevation makes for better tea plants because the plants grow slower, allowing the buds to become more flavorful.
The evergreen plants are sort of like poinsettias, in that those that aren’t properly cultivated will naturally grow into a tree.
Image by Wikipedia user Dave Oceano.
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A lot of people buy clothes and immediately wear them without washing them, but a recent study has come out showing that this can be an unintentionally filthy habit. Good Morning America went to a number of both high-end and low-end retailers and purchased 14 items of clothing, which they then sent to Dr. Philip Tierno, director of microbiology and immunology at New York University, to test. The results were surprisingly disgusting; many of the items had fecal germs on them and one blouse also had vaginal organisms and yeast on it. Some of the samples had many people’s secretions, while others only had one heavily contaminated person’s germs.
While this isn’t usually enough to make you sick, it could be and either way, it is certainly disgusting.
Link Image via Clean Wal-Mart [Flickr].
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Can you imagine telepathically sending messages to those around you, seeing out of a tooth or discovering a volcanic crater filled with all types of new species never before seen by man? Scientists can and while many of the new discoveries listed on this WebEcoist article have been featured on Neatorama before, they are all fascinating enough to deserve a second look.
What’s your favorite recent discovery? I personally like the volcanic crater the best because I’m a sucker for animals.
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Science is wonderful of course, but it can also be vaguely terrifying if you take things to their logical (or not so logical) conclusions. Take batteries that run on human blood:
So scientists have developed a battery that is powered by human blood. The idea is a cybernetic power source, to keep your pacemaker or whatever running. But, lets think about this for a second…what do we have way too much of on this planet? People. And what do we have way too little of? Power. A battery that runs on human blood is an easy fix for both of them. Jonathan Swift would be proud of this, screw eating the poor, lets just power all our gadgets with them.
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Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera recently revealed fascinating shots of a dune sea of sorts in a crater of the Hellas impact basin. What has officials at NASA excited about the dunes is their symmetric nature.
The dunes here are linear, thought to be due to shifting wind directions. In places, each dune is remarkably similar to adjacent dunes, including a reddish (or dust-colored) band on northeast-facing slopes. Large angular boulders litter the floor between dunes.
The most extensive linear dune fields known in the solar system are on Saturn’s large moon Titan. Titan has a very different environment and composition, so at meter-scale resolution they probably are very different from Martian dunes.
Link. See more stunning images (like frosted dunes) at the HiRISE site.
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Your mother probably told you time and time again, “Bundle up or you’ll catch a cold!” But how accurate is this statement? After all, our bodies stay close to the same temperature no matter how cold it is outside. What is the real reason people get sick more in the wintertime?
Well to answer that question let’s look at the conventional wisdom. If you ask just about anybody off the street, they’ll tell you that the cold somehow weakens your body (maybe your immune system) and makes you more susceptible to disease. How do they know this? Well their mothers told them, of course!
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You may well be thinking ‘The mystery of what?’ but resin (the type from trees) is still something of a mystery. The jury is still out about why exactly plants secrete (or excrete, depending on what side of the argument you are on) the sticky oozy stuff on which you may well have at some point inadvertantly put your hand or your clothes while taking a stroll through the woods. Plus at the right time it looks simply amazing, especially with insects inside it.
Some plants produce explosive resin. The Jeffrey Pine of California produces resin which is highly volatile – that mean it has, under the right circumstances – a tendency to vaporize. When people tried to distil it in nineteenth century America, they thought it was Ponderosa Pine resin. A number of distilleries exploded as a result of this mis-classification and the mistake was put right in something of a hurry. The reason behind the explosion was that the Jeffrey Pine resin was made up largely of pure heptanes – highly flammable. Distillation of Jeffrey Pine resin continues to be very dangerous to this day but the denizens of California have managed to get it right since the great pine explosions of 1852.
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When you’re trying to figure out where to build your next ski resort, you don’t have to use guesswork to pick the ideal spot — there’s an app for that.
Geographers at the University of Delaware have developed a geographical information system (GIS) that can identify the location that would best suit your winter sport needs, whether you want a small, exclusive resort or a large, mass market venue.
Professors Jordan Silberman and Peter Rees have taken into account humidity levels most likely to produce snow, as well as road accessibility, slope geometry (to avoid avalanches), threats to wildlife, likely erosion from tree felling, and the availability of electricity to run the lifts.
“This lets us rank the locations for skiing, snowboarding, ice-climbing and snowmobiling,” says Silberman.
So before you break ground for that chalet, consult this GIS-based model. It beats a Magic 8-Ball.
Links: io9, New Scientist, Applied Geography; image via Freaking News
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Infographics are not new, they are just easier to make and pass around on the internet. BibliOdyssey has a collection of posters, pages, and pamphlets from the Victorian era that make information into an art form. Pictured is the Tableau De L’Histoire Universelle (History of the Universe Chart).
This is a fold-out print depicting all of human history from the time of creation (4693 BC = Adam & Eve; the great flood = 3300 BC) up to the date of publication (1858 by Eug. Pick, Paris). Vignettes of historically significant people, places and buildings etc are arranged along the borders.
The designer has employed something of a metaphorical display choice: civilisations are presented as a series of rivers — the widths likely imply the comparative population level of each group versus the world’s population — which ‘flow’ down through history.
See also graphics on geography, biology, astronomy, and more. The pictures are all linked to larger Flickr versions. Link
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The contract has been signed for the Shepherds Flat wind farm in Oregon, which will cover 30 square miles, and is expected to generate 2 billion kilowatt hours of energy every year. That will provide 10% of the power California needs! Good to see we are finally moving forward with green technology.
Independent power producer Caithness Energy has awarded GE a $1.4 billion contract for 338 of the company’s most advanced wind turbines to build a 845-megawatt wind farm in Oregon — a size that outstrips all others currently operating worldwide.
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Certain bird species can project their voices in one direction while their beaks are pointed in another. Jessica Yorzinski, a graduate student in animal behavior at UC Davis conducted a study with Gail Patricelli, professor of evolution and ecology, to see how birds use alarm calls. Yorzinski and Patricelli placed a ring of directional microphones around a bird cage to record songs from a variety of wild birds that were captured and then released. The birds were presented with a stuffed owl, and the researchers recorded how the birds reacted.
Most of the alarms calls were omni-directional, which could be useful in warning other birds of a predator in the vicinity. But some of the bird species — juncos, warblers and finches — demonstrated “an ability to focus their calls in the direction of the owl, so these calls could also function to warn off a predator.”
Among the birds with this ability, some could sound the alarm in one direction while their heads were turned in a different direction, like a person talking out of the side of his mouth.
“It’s not clear how they’re accomplishing this,” Yorzinski said.
Link via It’s Animals
Photo of yellow-rumped warbler courtesy Stockphoto/Franck Leung
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Big feet are not for everyone, however in the case of the blue footed booby, bigger and bluer is better. These clumsy birds are found on the Galapagos Islands and in some areas of California.
This entertaining animal may think he’s wise in his execution for a date or night on the town with the local ladies, however at times his efforts seems to be more like an obnoxious and exhausting ordeal.The females may strut their in a parade of elaborate twists and turns, but it’s the male who points his head to the sky, fans out his wings, and starts shaking his feet around like he’s at the roller rink doing the hokey poky.
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Looking to cuddle up with your own bit of disease? Try this breast cancer cell sculpture by Amyof Glitter, Vinyl and Thread. She was inspired by the beauty of the cancer cells and entered her creation in the Good Cause Challenge.
Link Via Craftzine Image Via Glitter, Vinyl and Thread
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Up until now, scientists believed that coral only ate plankton and other micro-organisms, but a new discovery shows the mushroom coral can actually eat jellyfish almost its same size. Scientists were diving near the Israeli city of Eilat in the Red Sea, when they photographed the phenomenon for the first time.
“We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw it,” Ms Alamaru, a member of the research team, says. “This is definitely unusual. As far as I know no other coral are reported to feed on jellyfish. However, some sea anemones, which are close relatives of corals, are documented feeding on other jelly species.”
Scientists have suspected that coral must eat microscopic baby jellyfishes, but this is the first time they were presented with evidence of the animal eating adult jellies.
Link Image by Omri Bronstein from the Tel Aviv University
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This list from the Discovery Channel might come in handy to give to someone you know who might get too nervous about the 2012 doomsday predictions and the movie about them. Each scenario is debunked with what scientists really know. For example,
1. Changes in the Sun’s magnetic field will lead to powerful flares.
So what else is new under the sun? The sun goes though a well-documented 11-year sunspot cycle that is driven by its magnetic field entangling, reforming and flipping polarity. Yes, the peak of the next cycle is in 2012 (or 2013), and some predictions suggest it might be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last peak.
But experts say it will certainly not be the biggest peak ever recorded.
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No wonder learning a new language can be more difficult the older you get. We were learning our individual languages before we were even born! That’s what researchers revealed in a release today by Current Biology.
It seems that fetuses not only warm to the sound of mother’s voice as they gestate, they also are being programmed in the direct patterns inherent in certain languages. By the time we are born, our dialect is determined.
Wermke’s team recorded and analyzed the cries of 60 healthy newborns, 30 born into French-speaking families and 30 born into German-speaking families, when they were three to five days old. That analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the newborns’ cry melodies, based on their mother tongue.
Specifically, French newborns tend to cry with a rising melody contour, whereas German newborns seem to prefer a falling melody contour in their crying. Those patterns are consistent with characteristic differences between the two languages, Wermke said.
ScienceDaily has a brief story about this new knowledge: Link
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Here’s another story about abandoned man-made structures, but this one may have a happy ending.
Instead of using aboveground ponds to grow algae for biofuels, researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology have proposed growing algae underground in abandoned mines. What are the advantages? Underground mines are cheap, maintain constant temperature, solve the aboveground evaporation and contamination problems, and the site preparation has already been done by the mining companies.
But don’t algae need sunlight to grow? Not necessarily, says mining engineering professor David Summers.
It happens that algae work best when they use only the blue and red parts of the light spectrum, which can be provided by LED lights, and they need periods of darkness in which to process the photons.
An added benefit: Mine owners like the idea because it eliminates the need for them to clean up the sites, as algae are particularly good at sequestering metals.
Win + win + win? I guess we’ll find out.
More information at Scientific American.
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How do starfish keep cool when lying on the sand during low tide? Dr Sylvain Pincebourde and colleagues at the University of California, Davis and Bodega Marine Laboratory, Bodega Bay, California, studied starfish (okay, sea stars) in an aquarium, replicating tides and environmental conditions.
They discovered that a starfish will ingest cold seawater to lower its body temperature before a hot day on the beach. Sucking up water large amounts of water increases a starfish’s body mass, which means its body temperature increases more slowly. Pretty cool!
Infrared photo above by B. Helmuth and S. Pincebourde shows cool areas in purple and warm areas in red, via BBC News.
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Photo: Tom Bonaventure/Getty Images
There’s also speculation about recreating processes like limestone formation -which usually takes nature thousands of years- that eats carbon from the air.
Nanoarchitects are aiming to speed the process up to a matter of days. They believe it could be done simply by coating the walls of buildings with tiny droplets of engine grease. The grease would be laced with a common salt such as magnesium chloride. When the magnesium reacts with carbon dioxide in the air, a solid magnesium carbonate pearl begins to form.
This serves as the seed for the growth of white, wheatsheaf-shaped carbonate crystals. The large surface area of a droplet of grease maximises the interface between the magnesium and the atmospheric carbon, speeding up the rate of the reaction. Within days, the grease would be transformed into a sparkly crystalline coating similar in appearance to heavy frost or snowfall… A green city…would look like Narnia under the White Witch, crystal white and beautiful. The carbon choking our planet could become a harmless decorative feature.
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In order to teach horse owners about their horses, Gillian Higgins spends up to four hours painting anatomical features on her white horse – in essence, turning it inside out!
No more wondering about where a particular bone, joint, or muscle is located – they’re on the horse!
Link – via cakeheadlovesevil
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The 19th annual Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded Thursday night at Sander’s Theater on the Harvard campus. The awards are given to “honor achievements that make people laugh, and then make them think.” A few of the winners:
PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.
VETERINARY MEDICINE PRIZE: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.
LITERATURE PRIZE: Ireland’s police service (An Garda Siochana), for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country — Prawo Jazdy — whose name in Polish means “Driving License”.
See the entire list of winners at Improbable Research. Link
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Modern musicians are frequently believed to be stupid airheads who couldn’t hold down any “real” job. But in reality, there are a lot of intelligent rock stars. Some musicians are even geniuses – and not just when it comes to music composition. These musicians are not only intelligent, they have also used their knowledge to get college degrees or in their secondary professions.
Brian May of Queen isn’t your average rock and roll supernova. He was named the 39th Greatest Guitarist of All Time by Rolling Stone, but he’s also great at something else – astrophysics. May graduated from the Imperial College of London with an honors degree in physics and Mathematics. He then went on to obtain a doctorate in both departments, when Queen exploded into rock and roll stardom. While he gave up his schooling for the band, he did not stop working with physics and published a few academic papers while in the group.
More recently, he printed a book entitled Bang! – The Complete History of the Universe in 2006. In October of 2007, he completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics. His thesis was titled A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud. The month after, he was appointed Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.
Greg Graffin was an anthropology and geology double-major from UCLA. He went on to obtain a master’s degree in geology from the school and then earned a Ph.D. in zoology from Cornell University. Throughout this entire time, he was singing and touring with Bad Religion, a band he helped form when he was only 15.
Although he’s still playing with Bad Religion, Graffin also teaches Life Sciences at UCLA. He has also written two books, one a series of correspondences between himself and historian Preston Jones titled Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? A Professor and Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism & Christianity, the other is being released in 2010 and is titled Anarchy Evolution. According to a recent Twitter post, he is also be involved with an upcoming television series, called “Punk Professor.”
Source Image Via The Toad [Flickr]
Anyone familiar with the punk band The Descendents knows of the nerdy caricature that has come to serve as the band’s logo. That drawing is based on the band’s lead singer, Milo Aukerman. Fans may also recognize the name of the group’s first album, ‘Milo Goes to College.’ The album was named because Milo was actually going to college at UCSD at the time.
His affection for learning caused the band to go on a number of temporary hiatuses while he returned to school. Eventually, Aukerman earned a Ph.D in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Even after graduation, the band continued the cycle of reuniting and separating as Milo kept returning to the band and then his career in biochemistry. The group is currently dormant, but with their history, most fans still hold out hope that Milo will come back soon.
Tom Scholz is the founder and guitarist for a little band called Boston. But before he ever even started the group, he received a master’s degree at MIT in the field of mechanical engineering. He was working as a senior product design engineer for Polaroid when he decided to try his hand at rock.
After Boston took off, Tom created his own music technology company, Scholz Research & Development in 1980. In 1995, he sold the company to Dunlop Manufacturing, who continued to produce the company’s most famous product, the Rockman guitar amp. The amp was designed by Sholz himself and still is manufactured with his signature on each unit.
The lead singer and co-founder of the Offspring, Dexter Holland graduated as valedictorian of his high school before he moved on to college. He then moved on to USC where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in biology and Master’s degree in molecular biology. When the Offspring took off, he actually left his doctoral program in Molecular Biology at USC in order to focus on the band. Unrelated, but also interesting, Holland is also a licensed pilot and hot sauce entrepreneur. His hot sauce, Gringo Bandito, has even been picked up by Albertsons.
Dexter isn’t the only smart guy who’s played in the band though. James Lilja played drums with the band for a few years before returning to his medical calling – in gynecology. If you thought it was strange to have a punk rock professor in LA, just imagine visiting a rock star gynecologist in San Jose.
Sources #1, #2, Image of Dexter Via Jack Shepler, Rock Music Review [Flickr]
After leaving Iron Butterfly, bassist Philip Taylor Kramer obtained a degree in aerospace engineering. He then began working on the MX missile guidance system for a US Department of Defense contractor. After that, he began working on facial recognition systems, advanced communications and fractal compression systems for CDs. In 1990, he opened a business, Total Multimedia, with Micheal Jackson’s brother, Randy, where they specialized on data compression techniques for CDs. Kramer also worked on a project started by his father that would discredit Einstein’s theories. Part of his research involved a transmission project that could result in communications that went faster than the speed of light.
His disappearance in 1995 sent conspiracy theorists aflutter and remained a complete mystery for four years. It started when he drove to the LA airport to pick up an investor who never showed up. Kramer then made a number of phone calls from his cell phone, including one to the police where he said, “I’m going to kill myself. And I want everyone to know O.J. Simpson is innocent. They did it.” He was never heard from after this and the mystery ended up appearing on Oprah, America’s Most Wanted, Unsolved Mysteries and a Skeptic magazine article depicted the number of conspiracy theories surrounding his disappearance.
His body was finally uncovered in 1999, when photographers looking to shoot old car wrecks at the bottom of Decker Canyon in Malibu discovered his minivan with his remains inside. The death was officially ruled a suicide based on his phone calls made that day, but conspiracy theories still rage on.
The guitarist for such classic bands as Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers is also a self-taught expert on weaponry systems. After a lengthy studying period at home, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter decided to demonstrate his knowledge on the subject by writing a five-page paper that proposed the ship-based anti-aircraft Aegis missile be converted into a missile defense system. After he gave the paper to California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Baxter’s career as a defense consultant began.
In 1995, he was elected chairman of the Civilian Advisory Board for Ballistic Missile Defense, a position he still holds. Through work with that project, he was awarded consulting contracts with the Missile Defense Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, Science Applications International Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. He has also joined the NASA Exploration Systems Advisory Committee.
Baxter believes his unique way of looking at terrorism is what has allowed him to do so well in the industry, “We thought turntables were for playing records until rappers began to use them as instruments, and we thought airplanes were for carrying passengers until terrorists realized they could be used as missiles. My big thing is to look at existing technologies and try to see other ways they can be used, which happens in music all the time and happens to be what terrorists are incredibly good at.” Next time you’re wondering if the country is doing everything it can to keep you safe, remember that someone nicknamed “Skunk” is on top of it. It may not help comfort you, but at least you might giggle about it.
Source Image Via NASA (yes, that NASA)
-Lionel Richie has a degree in economics from Tuskegee.
-Art Garfunkel has a Masters from Columbia in both history and math.
-Tracy Chapman has degrees in anthropology and African studies from Tufts University, where she was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts.
-Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave has a degree in social studies from Harvard. After leaving the music world, he settled down and began teaching history.
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Many communities have enacted smoking bans in public places, some of which have been in effect for several years. How is that affecting our overall health? According to an analysis of studies, the bans are significantly cutting the rate of heart attacks in those communities.
“By lumping 11 studies together, we have increased the certainty that smoking bans really do reduce the risk of heart attack,” lead author Dr David G Meyers (University of Kansas School of Public Medicine, Kansas City) told heartwire. Meyers and colleagues report their findings online September 21, 2009 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Meyers says there are some additional messages from this review. Although they found, on average, a 17% reduction in AMI, this figure is “deceptive,” he says, because they also showed—in longer-term studies—a 26% decrease in heart attacks per year that the ban had existed. So this proves “the longer a community bans smoking, the greater the effect.” It also appears the people who seem to derive the greatest benefit from the bans are younger and often predominantly female—likely those working in the hospitality and entertainment industry, he says.
(image credit: Flickr user bennylin0724)
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Two male squirrel monkeys were given gene therapy and now the normally color blind animals are able to distinguish between shades of red and green in color vision tests. In normal situations, female squirrel monkeys can see a full range of colors, but males cannot see red or green.
Is this the beginning of the end of monkey sexual discrimination? Only time will tell.
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Photo: Mark Gallagher
Resembling something out of Independence Day, or the arrival of Cthulu, Mammatus Clouds are a meteorological phenomenon caused by sagging cellular accumulations produced in clouds of ice and water, and usually mean a fierce storm is trying to develop.
Tending to form in warmer months over the Midwest and eastern areas of the US, mammatus are nonetheless found elsewhere, as our chase across the States to track this singular meteorological phenomenon will reveal.
The above photograph was taken in Colorado, but Environmental Graffiti has a bunch of cool examples. The one from Tornado Alley state Oklahoma is particularly ominous.
Photo: Wikipedia by NOAA
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A ‘telepathy’ chip that allows people to control computers, televisions and light switches by the power of thought is being developed by British scientists. The idea was conceived by Dr. Jon Spratley while he was studying at the University of Birmingham.
The tiny sensor would sit on the surface of the brain, picking up the electrical activity of nerve cells and passing the signal wirelessly to a receiver on the skull.
The signal would then be used to control a cursor on a computer screen, operate electronic gadgets or steer an electric wheelchair.
This type of technology would allow disabled people such as Stephen Hawking to have more control over their environment. Link
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The food we eat – from corn to cattle – has been domestically modified for thousands of years. Today scientists, agronomists and geneticistsare taking the next step: improving our food from the inside out.
Allergic to tomatoes? It’s more likely than you think – up to 16 percent of people are sensitive to tomatoes, adding extra complications to life in a world of free-flowing ketchup, tomato sauce and burgers with the works. It’s not tomatoes themselves that are at fault, it’s a small protein called Profilin. By silencing two genes responsible for Profilin production in tomatoes, scientists can create non-allergenic fruit that are otherwise completely normal in taste, texture and appearance.
Previously: 7 Intriguing Genetically Modified Fruits and Vegetables.
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