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For All Mankind

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By Christopher Eppig, Ph.D.

Today we celebrate one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments. On July 20, 1969 — 45 years ago today — Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon. It was the height of the cold war, and the United States poured a huge amount of effort into space exploration as a way of competing with the Soviet Union. The Soviets beat us at many milestones, but the success of our human missions to the moon won the space race soundly for the United States.

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10% Of Our Brains?

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By Christopher Eppig, Ph.D.

10% Of Our Brains?

There is a new movie coming out later this month called “Lucy.” (See the trailer here.) The premise of this movie is that humans only use 10% of our brains, and Scarlett Johansson  gets superpowers by using more than 10% of hers. This idea that we only use 10% of our brains, but would be better if we used more, is a very persistent myth in our society.

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Crowdfunding Gold under the Reading Rainbow

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By Scott Michael Slone

Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high…

Many of our readers might be familiar with Reading Rainbow, an educational children’s show that aired on PBS during the 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s. It was a show dedicated to promoting reading in a child’s life and promoting critical thinking about what they were reading, much like the show Bill Nye The Science Guy promoted scientific thought and analysis. Continue reading “Crowdfunding Gold under the Reading Rainbow”

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EteRNA is Turning Research on its Head

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By Scott Michael Slone

It’s quite remarkable to see what the power of an intelligent mob can do.

Distributed computing projects like Fold@home, which runs simulations of proteins to better understand their role in the body, help us to understand vastly complicated scientific and mathematical questions without the need for large dedicated supercomputers. They function on the basis that there already exist numerous computers in the world, like the one you’re reading this on. Continue reading “EteRNA is Turning Research on its Head”

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Bugs in the Climate System

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By Scott Michael Slone

To those of you who use computers, you can understand the issues that can sometimes be caused by them. Faulty hardware, operating system issues, programs not working, drivers not installed properly, the list goes on and on. The average user has no end to the issues they could have, with many being very subtle and tricky to solve. A recent bug has been revealed in Climate modeling systems that will need to be handled if any model is going to have credibility, and there’s no tech support you can call when your model for a climate system doesn’t start. Continue reading “Bugs in the Climate System”