"For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over the inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it."The GEO600 has stumbled upon something incredible . . . more here.
One morning this past May, Elizabeth Mallott, a researcher working at Suomi’s lab, arrived to start her day at the main rhesus enclosure and found a half-dozen monkeys in her parking spot. They were huddling close together, bedraggled and nervous. As Mallott got out of her car and moved closer, she saw that some had bite wounds and scratches. Most monkeys who jump the enclosure’s double electrified fences (it happens now and then) soon want to get back in. These monkeys did not. Neither did several others that Mallott found between the two fences.
After caging the escapees in an adjacent building, Mallott, now joined by Matthew Novak, another researcher who knew the colony well, entered through the double gates. The colony, numbering about 100-odd monkeys, had been together for about 30 years. Changes in its hierarchy usually came slowly and subtly. But when Novak and Mallott started looking around, they realized that something big had happened.
Descend, bold traveler, into the crater of the jokul of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the calends of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth; I have done this, Arne Saknussemm"
Stellarium is a free downloadable software application that "shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope." Once I entered my longitude and latitude*, the program identified the constellations in the sky to my north . . . very neat.
When you go to a park, the whole point is to sit on the grass and bask in the lovely sunshine, right? Unless you're in New York -- where the enormous buildings impose a canyonlike gloom over many areas. So it was with the designers of Teardrop Park South, down in the Battery Park area of New York: They began extending their park at the same time as a new building was being erected, and realized they were about to face a huge problem. When both projects were completed, the building would permanently shield the park from the sun. What to do?
Of all the ancient cultures in South America, perhaps the most mysterious are those found in and around the rugged mountains of Peru. The area is such a harsh environment, with steep inclines, temperature extremes and a scarcity of water to sustain crops or man, that it is a puzzle why ancient cultures settled here. But settle they did, often building large living centers from stone at very high altitudes where low atmospheric pressure makes even walking a breathless task. Continue.
These two pictures represent the eye motions of two viewers as they scan a work of art with the goal of remembering it later. One of them is a trained artist, and the other is a trained psychologist. Can you tell which is which? At Scienceblogs.com.
"By early October, the summer tourists have left Martha's Vineyard. Marcia Smilack, camera in hand, walks slowly along a barren dock, waiting for something in her peripheral vision to evoke the sound of a cello in her ears or the feel of satin on her skin. When it does, she stops, points her camera at the water, and waits to hear or feel it again. Then she shoots her picture."
