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The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
A personal insight
by Professor Felicia Schmutzgarten
[EDITOR’S NOTE: The author is a professor at a liberal arts college in the United States. We have disguised her name and location, for reasons that may be apparent to the reader.]
There is a simple way to get girls interested in science. It was revealed, indirectly, at a faculty meeting I attended last week.
At my college, most of the students are female, and so are most of our faculty members. The problem on the table was student attendance -- or rather, the all-too-frequent lack thereof. “I’m surprised,” said one of our brand-new biology professors, a man I shall call Dr. Fox. Dr. Fox is a recent Ph.D. with Ivy-League medical training, several publications in prestigious journals, a postdoc in genomics, Atlantic-stormy blue eyes, high faceted cheekbones, broad shoulders, and perma-tousled raven-black hair. “Do you know,” he went on in his smoky baritone, “it’s mid-October already and I haven’t had a single absence all semester.”
The guy from MinutePhysics has another YouTube channel: this one called MinuteEarth. In this episode, he tackles the limits of the Earth's altitude. -via Digg
Photo: Ryo Ichikawa
Will the wonder that is Japan ever cease? First, the country gave us Dragon Ball Z. Then she gives us Kamehameha, a meme where people imitate anime fight scenes. How awesome is it? Let's just say that it's over NINE THOUSAAAAAAND!
More over at Kotaku - via PetaPixel
Photo: @mrmr0630
Photo: @ari_snows
Eric Idle, a member of the comedy troupe Monty Python, and John Major, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, both turn 70 years old today. On the occasions of their mutual birthday 20 years ago, Idle wrote to Major to convey his compliments. Say no more, say no more.
If only Idle's speculation was true, then at last the Ministry of Silly Walks would get the funding it deserves.
-via Letters of Note
These mysterious hooded creatures are the Guardians of Time, a sculpture by Austrian artist Manfred Kielnhofer. The illuminated Guardians appear every night at a new place - currently, they are located in Dubai for Art Dubai Week 2013. The life-size sculptures look great during the day, but at night ... that's when they're truly stunning.
The first full video of the new mental_floss YouTube channel has John Green quickly dispelling many things you've heard over the years. Green will be hosting a weekly series on the channel. Link
Life can be difficult when you are not only round but extremely buoyant! This is one of four delightful animated trailers produced to promote the 2013 Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film, all featuring peculiarly inflated animals. See the rest of them at vimeo. Link -via the Presurfer
Update: Read more about how these films were made. Link
Instead of blowing a bubble yourself, maybe the reaction of dry ice in water can blow it up for you! I'm not sure what I expected to happen here, but what happened was awfully pretty. -via Daily of the Day
When the golf course is crowded and there's no time to take turns, then everyone plays at once. Or, in this case, just for a stunt:
Every month the PGA Golf Management program at Campbell University has a competition between the different classes. The January competition was to see how many people could line up and make a putt at the same time. The winners this month was the Senior Class with nine people!
-via Yababoon
Might as well skip all the "getting to know you" rigamarole and go ahead and negotiate how many children you'll have. Ha! My kids will tell you that it was love at first sight when I met my husband, because they were there and saw it. I correct them to say it was "attraction" at first sight, but luckily events transpired that made it necessary for him to get my phone number. -Thanks, Jared!
There's a "lawn dinosaur" in Redwood City, California named Dug. His family dresses him up for special occasions. Dug has his own Facebook fan page where you can see more pictures, and his own subreddit, too!
To answer your questions, Dug is made of tin, and was bought at a lawn and garden supply store in California. Link -via reddit
Many historic buildings in London were damaged or destroyed by German bombs in World War II. Some were later demolished, and some were repaired and restored. An exception was the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-East. Originally built around 1100, only the north and south walls and the tower remained after the Blitz. Too historic to tear down and too expensive to rebuild, it was designated a public park in 1967. Since then, lovely trees and foliage have grown up, making the church a peaceful contemplative place to stop and think, but it still serves as a monument to the destruction of war. See more pictures at Urban Ghosts. Link
(Image credit: Peter Trimming, cc-sa-3.0)
Photo: Jeffrey Liao/Shutterstock
Every cloud has a silver lining, and if atmospheric chemist Athanasios Nenes is correct, it has tons of bacteria as well. When Nenes collected air samples from about 30,000 feet over land and sea, he found that the air high above us is teeming with microorganisms:
It's not exactly a friendly place. It's cold, it's dry, and there's a lot of damaging UV light.
But Nenes says the bacteria seemed to be able to handle it. "They were alive," Nenes says. "More than 60 percent of them were actually alive, and they were in an active state that that you could say they should be metabolizing and eating things that are up there."
Back on the ground, other members of the research team used genetic techniques to identify the bacteria. One of them was Georgia Tech microbiologist Kostas Konstantinidis.
"We were able to see at least close to 100 different species, of which about 20 were in most samples," Konstantinidis says. Some of those 100 species were from the ocean. Others came from the soil and from fresh water.
There were even some E. coli. But Konstantinidis says he's not sure yet whether it's a type that makes people sick. The sample is still being analyzed. "My feeling is it will also include pathogens," he says, "but we don't have direct evidence about that yet."
NPR's Morning Edition has the story: Link
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