74 search results for: "Science Break"
Science Break : Electrical & EM Methods
…Science Break articles. On circadian rhythms (December 2013 RECORDER) I read about a company which offers a clock that, “monitors sleep patterns… and uses coloured lights customized to your circadian rhythms to facilitate sleep, and to wake you at an optimal time.” (National Post, 2014) To find out more, Google…
Science Break : Cogeneration
…Science Break articles, something I really enjoy. On the topic of war, encryption and crosswords, Jim Laing drew my attention to a WWII story involving a Surrey, England headmaster who was a regular crossword author. English intelligence noticed a suspiciously high number of their “secret” code words were showing up…
Science Break : Materials science
…Science Break: Steel (Kuhn, 2013). Properties Again, this is another huge field. For the sake of brevity, I will share Wikipedia’s list of main material property categories (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2021c) – mechanical, chemical, electrical, thermal, optical, magnetic – as well as a reference to their page on this (Wikimedia…
Science Break : Mushrooms
…Science Break article (Kuhn, 2008) which included a description of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a fungus that grows inside a live ant and alters the ant’s behaviour, compelling it to climb to the top of a tree, and then the fungus sends its fruiting spike up and out of the top of…
Science Break : Bacteriophages
…Science Break article “Parasitoids” (Kuhn, 2008). There I contrasted parasites, which do not kill their hosts, with parasitoids, which do. Lysogenic and lytic are analogous terms, albeit at a microscopic scale. Figure 2. Anatomy and infection cycle of phage T4, used under Creative Commons license 4.0 (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2017)…
Science Break : Savage or Slave?
…Science Break articles are glorified book reviews, and this one falls into that category. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, by James Scott (2017) really impressed and surprised me as each chapter offered up new revelations and different ways of looking at things, challenging what I…
Science Break : Hominin Update (Part 2)
…Science Break article. In the abbreviated section below on DNA sequencing I draw heavily on Svante Pääbo’s Neanderthal man: in search of lost genomes, a book that I highly recommend to readers who want to pursue this topic further. Pääbo has played a central role in the push to salvage,…
Science Break : Automatic Transmissions
…Science Break article (Kuhn, 2012) on the Antikythera device, an ancient machine that used planetary gears to predict the positions of the known (then) planets in our solar system. In Figure 3, if the carrier (green) is rotated 45° clockwise then the planet gears (blue) turn within the fixed ring…
Science Break : Metal Leaching
…Science Break article on steel. Leaching Leaching, in the general sense, describes the extraction of a substance from a solid by dissolving the solid in a liquid. When a solvent is added to the solid (made up of an insoluble carrier and the desired solute), the solid separates into a…
Science Break : Morality
…Science Break article on heuristics, and morals deal almost entirely with areas lacking complete information. Research has shown that the brain circuitry for heuristics gets shaped and modified through experience and learning, especially during childhood, so this would explain how moral beliefs can be so different from one community to…
Science Break : Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Etc.
…Science Break articles; the challenge will be to find the time! Happy New Year everyone. References alex. (2011, August 1). The Doctor Who Stacked Weights on His Testicles. Retrieved December 12, 2013, from Mad Science Museum: http://www.madsciencemuseum.com/msm/pl/sensitive_testes Anonymous blogger. (2012, February 18). Tusko’s Trip. Retrieved December 12, 2013, from The…
Science Break : Circadian Rhythms
…Science Break article “Plant hydraulics” (Kuhn, 2013), even plants are capable of fairly rapid response to external stimuli, and of course animals are too. But those responses are not circadian; in order to meet the criteria, the system must more or less lock in to a 24 hour clock, and…
Science Break : Natural Gas Liquids
…Science Break article, “Africa’s deadly lakes” concerning heavy gases. (Kuhn, 2009). Normal Butane This is the unbranched form of butane (n-C4H10), where the four carbon atoms are connected in a continuous chain. It has numerous uses – in lighters, camp stoves etc., as a propellant for spray cans, and as…
Science Break : Weather Maps
…Science Break” articles, and that’s great. If you have any ideas for future articles, please pass them on. Alternatively, if you’d like to submit your own article, please contact me. I’d love it if we could run guest articles. My contact info is oliver.kuhn@divestco.com or (403) 298-5639. Chris Irvine contacted…
Science Break : The Tardigrade
…Over the years I have seen intriguing references to tardigrades and the unique properties these small organisms possess. Recently there have been headlines floating around claiming researchers had been able to entangle tardigrades at the quantum level. That just seemed too interesting to pass up – I had to look…
Science Break : Natural phenomena
…There are many unusual natural phenomena that can be explained by science – and some that remain unexplained. Some which I had always assumed to exist, such as swamp gas (blue lights above swamps), still lack adequate scientific theories, and perhaps are better viewed as figments of human imagination. The…
Science Break : mRNA Vaccines and Molecular Testing
…mRNA Vaccines – by Oliver Kuhn As we know, scientific advances usually follow a slow, laborious path, involving many incremental steps forward along with inevitable dead ends, but occasionally punctuated by glorious breakthroughs. The development of mRNA vaccines has been relatively rapid and fuelled by enormous levels of money and…
Science Break : Desalination
…Some quick facts regarding Canada’s share of the world’s fresh water, courtesy of (Environment Canada, 2018). Canada has 20% of the world’s fresh water, but only 7% of the world’s renewable fresh water. The difference can be attributed to “fossil” water that is trapped in ice, aquifers, and lakes, and…
Science Break : Opioids
…Several months ago when I was picking this topic, opioids were arguably considered the biggest current health crisis, but of course now that has been eclipsed by COVID-19. Brian Schulte (RECORDER editor) and I considered switching the topic to COVID-19, but decided against it, since the news is swamped with…
Science Break : Feral and Invasive Species
…It’s fall, and it’s election season, so there are maple leaves everywhere, real and on placards. Since moving to Toronto I’ve learned to both love and hate maple trees. My back yard is surrounded by them – two huge Norway maples (Acer platanoides) to the west, and although damaged by…
