Mar 18 How a St. Patty’s Day solar storm turned on the Northern Lights By Rebecca Jacobson, Inside Energy When a wave of charged particles and magnetic field from the sun hits the Earth, the planet becomes a neon light bulb. Continue reading
Mar 17 Watch 7:00 Can a helmet sensor help prevent brain trauma in athletes? By PBS News Hour As we learn more about the effects of concussions and sports-related head trauma, parents, coaches and medical professionals are debating how to keep players safe. Some are looking to technology, like a device worn under the helmet that shows the… Continue watching
Mar 17 Massive solar storm sparks dazzling northern lights for St. Patrick’s Day By Rebecca Jacobson, Inside Energy If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, look up at the sky tonight for a spectacular light show. Two coronal mass ejections from the Sun on March 15 hit the Earth Tuesday, generating a severe geomagnetic storm. The storm has caused… Continue reading
Mar 16 How data may make better medicine By Laura Santhanam Since the 1950s, overall productivity has gone down in biomedical and pharmaceutical research and development, but limited data exists to help policy and industry experts understand why. The Brookings Institution recently explored these issues in innovation. Continue reading
Mar 15 Can a new mapping model save this endangered flying squirrel? By Carey Reed Scientists hope a new mapping model published this week that pinpoints where the endangered Carolina northern flying squirrel lives will help conservationists better focus efforts to protect it and its equally threatened habitat, the Appalachians' red spruce forests. Continue reading
Mar 13 Why Math geeks are so excited about March 14, 2015, at 9:26:53 By Rebecca Jacobson, Inside Energy Pi Day is a holiday for math (and pie) enthusiasts to celebrate their love of numbers. And this year marks a once-in-a-century occurrence. Saturday at 9:26:53 a.m. the date and time will read 3.14.15 9:26:53. That’s 10 digits of pi. Continue reading
Mar 13 Browse the early days of the internet with these GIFs By Laura Santhanam March 15 marks the 30th anniversary of the birth of the .com domain suffix, or dotcom. In the early days, companies acquired their own dotcoms and developed a marketing presence on the Internet. Check out a few of these initial… Continue reading
Mar 12 Large Hadron Collider gears up to find dark matter, new particles in its second run By Rebecca Jacobson, Inside Energy After two years of upgrades and repairs, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland fires up again this month. This time it’s moving at twice the energy, looking for dark matter and exotic new particles. Continue reading
Mar 11 How the itsy bitsy spider evolved from a giant prehistoric sea creature By Jenny Marder It’s hard to believe that a prehistoric sea creature the size of Shaquille O’Neal could teach us anything about a modern dust mite. But a 7-foot-long, 480-million-year-old marine animal called an anomalocaridid is an ancestor to modern arthropods , the… Continue reading
Mar 11 How a hospital withstood a 9.0 quake with nary a broken window By Ed Jahn, Oregon Public Broadcasting Within an hour of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated central Japan in 2011, Ishinomaki Red Cross Hospital was accepting patients and acting as a refuge for throngs of survivors who’d lost everything. No broken windows. No collapsed ceilings. No… Continue reading