TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In the Beginning... Introducing the Origins Issue A Greek statesman who lived in the sixth century B.C. put forward the first explanation, shorn of theological trappings, that captured the essence of all things living and inanimate. Thales of Miletus noticed that water could exist as a liquid, gas or solid and posited that it was the fundamental constituent of matter from which the earth’s denizens--men, goats, flowers, rocks, and whatnot--somehow sprang forth.As with all natural philosophy (a pursuit now known as science), Thales’ observation immediately provoked an argument. Anaximander, a disciple of Thales (today what would be called a graduate student), asked how water could be the single basic element if rock, sand and other substances appeared to be devoid of moisture. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Sunbathers on Display Privacy in a public park; reaping garden left-behinds. nytimes.com |
Readers Respond on the "Origin of Computing" Patent Lead In “ Origin of Computing ,” Martin Campbell-Kelly writes that the first digital computer was J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly’s ENIAC, finished in 1945 as part of the war effort. But the first person to build and operate an electronic digital computer was a physics professor, as noted in “Dr. Atanasoff’s Computer,” published in the August 1988 Scientific American . John Vincent Atanasoff’s first computer was a 12-bit, two-word machine running at 60-hertz wall-plug frequency and could add and subtract binary numbers stored in a logic unit built with seven triode tubes. This was 1937. There was no war, no Pearl Harbor, just a theoretical physicist trying to solve problems in quantum mechanics with his students at Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa. [More] rss.sciam.com |
A Peaceful Refuge in Brooklyn, and All the Noise It Took to Build It Various factions had fought for years before the opening of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Such squabbling over city green spaces is hardly unusual. nytimes.com |
Struck out: Fatal fungus could kill off U.S. Northeast's little brown bats in 20 years I recently came home from a two-week workshop in remote Vermont, where I was pleased to hear of my fellow students' encounters there with bats. Several of the animals kept sneaking into one of the local hotels, and one curled up in a classmate's hair for a few minutes' nap.Although most people (including the guy with the bat-attracting hair) are scared of these flying mammals, I saw the silver lining in these stories. As we have previously reported, 95 percent of Vermont's bats have been killed by the deadly fungal infection known as white-nose syndrome (WNS), but at least the bats in that one small town are doing well. [More] Bat - White nose syndrome - Little brown bat - Northeastern United States - Fungus rss.sciam.com |