In search of the perfect pint
Independent - It’s a drink that is almost as old as civilisation: beer was originally made from emmer, an early form of wheat, by the Babylonians who offered it to their gods. We’ve been drinking beer for centuries. But only now are scientists learning the secrets of the perfect pint.
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Bisexual Species: Unorthodox Sex in the Animal Kingdom
Scientific American, by Emily V. Driscoll - Two penguins native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male.
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DNA Study Traces Human Origins Across the Continents
Scientific American, by Gary Stix - The study of human genetic variation—a kind of historical Global Positioning System—goes back to World War I, when two physicians working in the Greek city of Thessaloníki found that soldiers garrisoned there had a differing incidence of a given blood group depending on their nationality.
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The Coming of the Car-Bot
BusinessWeek - Imagine the scene: You’re driving your car to an office building in New York City, five minutes from a job interview. No worries. You have already dialed into the car’s memory the parking garage where it’s going to stay, and prepaid the bill. You shut the door. And off it goes. Driverless. And the chances of the car getting into an accident while it travels five or six treacherous city blocks are less than if the hopeful job applicant had tried to park it himself under time pressure.
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Impact Earth: Could we divert a giant asteroid?
Independent - A century ago this week, an asteroid fireball exploded over Siberia with the power of 185 Hiroshima bombs. Steve Connor asks how we can prevent a similar catastrophe in a major world city.
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Get Out of Your Own Way
WS Journal, by Robert L. Hotz - In ways we are only beginning to understand, the synapses and neurons in the human nervous system work in concert to perceive the world around them, to learn from their perceptions, to remember important experiences, to plan ahead, and to decide and act on incomplete information. In a rudimentary way, they predetermine our choices.
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Your Brain Lies to You
NY Times - FALSE beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories — and mislead us along the way.
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The Itch
New Yorker, by Atul Gawande - Itching is a most peculiar and diabolical sensation. The definition offered by the German physician Samuel Hafenreffer in 1660 has yet to be improved upon: An unpleasant sensation that provokes the desire to scratch. Itch has been ranked, by scientific and artistic observers alike, among the most distressing physical sensations one can experience. In Dante’s Inferno, falsifiers were punished by “the burning rage / of fierce itching that nothing could relieve”.
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