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Masks and Emasculation: Why Some Men Refuse to Take Safety Precautions
They think it makes them look weak, and avoiding that is evidently more important to them than demonstrating responsible behavior
Blogs
Observations
How a Landmark Physics Paper from the 1970s Uncannily Describes the COVID-19 Pandemic
Phil Anderson’s article “More Is Different” describes how different levels of complexity require new ways of thinking. And as the virus multiplies and spreads, that’s just what the human race desperately needs...
Observations
The Fight against COVID-19 Threatens to Cause Collateral Health Damage
The pandemic is no excuse to abandon chronic disease management and prevention
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March 30, 1759: The Four Layers of Earth
In a letter dated to March 30, 1759 the Italian mining engineer Giovanni Arduino (1714-1795) proposed to the physician and fossil collector Prof. Antonio Vallisnieri the subdivision of earth's crust in various classes of rocks.Based on his observations along the foothills of the Alps, Arduino recognized a stratigraphic column with 4 classes: unstratified or poorly stratified rocks (or " Primary Rocks ", survived into the 20th century as " Paleozoic "), stratified rocks (" Secondary Rocks ", or " Mesozoic "), more recent, as yet unconsolidated, sediments (" Tertiary Rocks ") and as own category volcanic rocks...
Links from the Brink (March 30, 2013)
Ivory smugglers, manatees, Iranian cheetahs, slow lorises and Britain's beloved hedgehogs are in the news this week.Ethics and Endangered Species: A new study accuses wildlife photographers of unethical behavior when it comes to the slender loris (either Loris tardigradus or L...
Physics Week in Review: March 30, 2013
We have been Down Under in the Land of Oz all week, but Jen-Luc Piquant has been zealously compiling cool physics-y links for you anyway. By the time you read this, we will be landing in Los Angeles, arriving earlier than we left Sydney...
Sea hares thwart spiny lobster attack with goo
The gooey ink secretions of sea hares do more than just repel or distract their predators; scientists have discovered that this sticky substance can also mask their senses of smell and taste.Sea hares (genus Aplysia ) are large, herbivorous mollusks that are closely related to sea slugs and nudibranchs...
Neuroscience in Fiction: Slaughterhouse 5 , by Kurt Vonnegut
“All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance...
Blood Goats. You Heard Me.
Sometimes we feature artwork on Symbiartic because it's astounding and thought-provoking. You may have seen Kaitlin Beckett's work on Symbiartic before (when we showed off her Katana Sharks and Fan Fish ), or on her site, A Curious Bestiary.Today, Blood Goats .Something about these seemes sad and powerful to me...
Synthetic Biology News Roundup
There's been a lot of interesting papers out this month in synthetic biology. Here's a quick roundup of some news and research: Oliver Wright, Guy-Bart Stan and Tom Ellis.
Friday Weird Science: Manliness tastes really goaty.
Sci is at Neurotic Physiology today, talking about a study I borrowed from the bibliography of Mary Roach's fabulous new book, Gulp: Adventures in the Alimentary Canal.
Unusual Octopods: A Flapjack Devilfish Octopus [Video]
The many octopus species that live beyond the reach of vacationing snorkelers, scuba diving researchers and even near-shore commercial fisheries are relative unknowns compared with the more familiar shallow-water species...
Can the World Afford Cheap Water?
More people in India have access to cellphones than to basic sanitation. Meanwhile, more than 7,000 villages in the northwestern part of the country suffer drinking water shortages as the water table in this breadbasket region continues to drop...
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