Category Archives: Science and Medicine

Climate change is now

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Chris

Summer is here, and in many places people are feeling the heat. But a Stanford study says it will get worse. The study says that in the near future, in many places, the coolest summers will be hotter than the … Continue reading →

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Venture Capital and Intelligence Tech

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Chris

As part of my story on Michael Crow, I recently interviewed Christopher Darby, the president of a company called In-Q-Tel (Crow is chairman of the board), which has been around for about ten years, although I had never heard of … Continue reading →

Posted in Current History, Science and Medicine, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A fungus creates zombie ants

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Chris

Here is a story that seems more like science fiction than natural science – another case in which a parasite takes over some poor creature’s brain and manipulates the host’s behavior in a way that benefits the parasite. We’ve seen … Continue reading →

Posted in Brain Hacking, Science and Medicine | Leave a comment

Lions and eco myths

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Chris

Recently another mountain lion wandered out of the hills into Palo Alto and had to be shot by the police. And then came the ridiculous assertion that comes up every time something like this happens, and it makes me want … Continue reading →

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Is Sugar Toxic? Le Chatelier and Succrose

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Chris

  I’ve been meaning for a while to write something on this NY Times article asking if sugar is toxic. The basic gist is that sucrose (table sugar) is broken down into two sugars, glucose and fructose. Glucose feeds right … Continue reading →

Posted in Diet and Exercise, Science and Medicine | Leave a comment

Putting anthropological running theory to the test

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Chris

One of the theories about why humans are such good runners is that they are built to run run long distance so that they can run down game. Other animals can go much faster in short bursts, but inevitably their … Continue reading →

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Self improving computers inevitably take over

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Chris

I had a fascinating coffee with my friend Steve Omohundro, a physicist, inventor and computer scientist. One of the areas he has done research on is self-aware systems and more particularly computer systems that change their own programming. What he found … Continue reading →

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Drinking the fog

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Chris

In Santa Cruz, where I grew up, the fog rolls in every summer evening and burns off about noon the next day, so this story about the technology to catch fog for drinking water was particularly interesting to me. Santa … Continue reading →

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The smell of remembering

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Chris

There was a time in the 60s when various people promised you could learn in your sleep. Just play a tape of a lesson as you slept, and voila! you would be ready to ace the test in the morning. … Continue reading →

Posted in Brain Hacking, Neuroscience and Psychology, Science and Medicine, Sleep | Leave a comment

Birds and humans are the only animals that gotta’ dance

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Chris

An interesting interview from Discover, about how nearly every species except humans can’t learn to bop to the beat of music. As the researcher explains, this probably has to do with our vocal learning pathways, which have to be highly … Continue reading →

Posted in Neuroscience and Psychology, Science and Medicine | Tagged | Leave a comment