So how do cold-blooded creatures cope with this season, anyway? First of all, let’s be clear on what, “cold-blooded” means. This is actually an inaccurate and outdated word. We’re talking about animals that get their heat from their environment, like amphibians, reptiles, insects and other arthropods, and fish. We call them “ectothermic”, meaning literally, “outside heat”. These creatures seek out warm places or cooler places in order to stay just the right temperature. The benefit of being ectothermic is food. They don’t need to eat nearly as much as mammals and birds who need to fuel that fire within. Going without eating for a few months therefore works for them; winter’s cold though is a challenge.

I’ve compiled a few ectothermic animals and their amazing adaptations for surviving winter. These over-wintering strategies have developed over a long period of time enabling generation after generation to carry on from year to year.

Yellow-jackets and Hornets: During summer months, a whole colony of sterile female workers are busy hunting for insects, raising young and caring for the colony while the queen lays eggs. Toward the end of the season, the queen lays eggs that develop into fertile females and males, who, once mature, mate. The fertilized females are the only ones who over-winter; every other colony member dies. Each female may find a bark crevice, rotten log, or pile of leaves to hide in. These queens single-handedly start a new colony next spring.

Mosquitoes: Mosquitoes from temperate regions have varying winter strategies. The adults of some species die, after leaving cold-hardy eggs that over-winter under ice. When the water warms in spring, the eggs will hatch. In other species, females who have mated in the fall will hibernate in a hollow log, your basement, or other secure place. This location does not have to stay above freezing, as the insect produces glycerol, which infuses its body and acts as a natural anti-freeze. Amazing.

Aquatic Frogs: Aquatic frogs, like leopard frogs, green frogs or American bullfrogs, spend the winter underwater in a low energy state. During this time, they have to breathe through their skin, so they cannot be buried deep in the mud where the oxygen content is low. They need to be where the water still has plenty of oxygen, so incoming streams and rivulets may be good places for them to be.

Terrestrial Frogs (Toads): The American toad is a good digger. It digs itself a deep burrow in which to over-winter below the frost line. Spring peepers and wood frogs cannot dig so well, and find themselves a crevice in which to sleep away the winter. The amazing thing is, the fluid in their bodies can freeze - without doing harm to the animal. Again, a natural antifreeze - glucose - infuses the vital organs, preventing ice crystals from piercing cells and body organs, and dropping the freezing point of water. A partially frozen frog wakes up in the spring none-the-worse for wear.

Snakes: Snakes spend the winter in a rock crevice, animal burrow, or deep hole under a root ball. It is necessary that this den be below frost level. Since there may not be many of these locations, many snakes oftentimes den together. Some garter snakes may number in the hundreds - or thousands - in a single hibernaculum, or winter den. Copperheads, black rat snakes and rattlesnakes commonly den together.

Each organism has a way of coping with winter’s challenges. During this time, life is certainly on-the-edge. Cold snaps can be disastrous. Still, amazingly, there are those who survive. The next time you are snuggled in your hibernaculum, think about some of those creatures outside who are awaiting the warming rays of spring sunshine..

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About the Author:
Nancy Condon is an award-winning Environmental Educator, cross-country canoeist, hike leader, fan of National Parks, and co-founder of NaturePods, Guides for the Nature Traveler. For unique programs to download to your iPod before you travel or explore the outdoors, visit NaturePods.

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However do these optical illusions have any other value than brief entertainment? Can they be used to improve people’s perception?

Primarily we have to define which type of optical illusion we are referring to as there are three; literal optical illusions, physiological illusions and cognitive illusions. The latter plays on unconscious inferences and assumptions about the world that are embedded into our minds and therefore can dictate our perception because of what we expect to see.

Physiological illusions are typified by exposure to excessive stimuli such as bright lights or movement. These cause an imbalance in the viewer’s visual channels, resulting in altered observation. Finally, literal optical illusions create images that differ from the actual objects and components that create them.

Physiological illusions such as The Hermann grid, take advantage of the theory that specific stimuli have already established neural channels from the participants early stages of visual processing. It is then the repetitive stimulation of one or two of these paths that causes the physiological disparity that adjusts the inspection and gives the affect of an illusion. Therefore experimenting with these illusions may not improve your optical vision but it will certainly exercise your mental perceptions.

If we apply Gestalt theory to cognitive illusions we can decipher that we as observers, make sense of the world by organizing different stimuli and individual sensory experiences, and put them together into a meaningful whole. Our brains are compelled to perform this amalgamation and this ethos explains such illusions as the Kanizsa triangle which exploits the realms of individual’s depth perception. Frequently, our eyes and mind feel obligated to put what we see together and come to the conclusion we believe we are supposed to. In many 2D images, perspective is often alluded to through certain artistic techniques and mathematical rules, which combine to make the viewer see 3 dimensions present although there are obviously only 2. Again, these optical illusions are excellent for exercising the mind but unfortunately do very little for the voyeur’s visual ability.

Therefore we can conclude that although it is doubtful that gazing longingly at optical illusions will improve your actual vision, they can have a significant affect on the observer’s psychological capacities and consequently their perception. Of course this doesn’t mean you should stare at M.C Escher’s paradoxical illusions such as “Ascending and Descending.” This image depicts an impossible set of stairs, and I wouldn’t advise gawking at it for extended periods of time because it’s quite possible it’ll send you clinically insane.

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About the Author:
John McE writes articles on a number of subjects including eye-sight exercises and optical improvement. You can find more of John’s work at Focus Clinics.

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Children begin to become interested in learning at a very young age. By the time most people are only 4 years old they are discovering more and more about the things they are interested in. So how do we encourage this behavior? How do we help our children want to learn and develop a desire for knowledge?

They only way to help children stay interested in learning is to make learning something they want to do. As with most successful child-learning-support techniques it involves YOU the parent/teacher. It’s really quite simple!

Children learn best by doing things, whatever they are. By learning from your example and from hands-on experience we get a real example of how things work. Setting the precedent that you want to learn is the first step.

When you are picking an activity to do with your children try to let them pick an activity. Letting them pick increases your chances of keeping them focused through the whole task and shows them that they can get excited about things they’re learning and that you can learn even from fun things.

Have them choose ahead of time so you can prepare, or have several activities prepared and let them choose from those. Even if they don’t like all of the choices at least they get to choose, a symptom of which they will subtly learn responsibility for their own choices.

If your kids are into sports, teach them about Physics. Sports where you hit a ball like Baseball, Cricket, Tennis, and Golf deal with many Physical concepts. You could discuss how the speed and spin of the ball effects the game, or how the angle you hit the ball, or the bounce as the ball hits the turf effect the game. Professional baseball players have many different formulas for getting a Triple Play! Formulas in themselves are scientific.

All sports can be a fantastic lesson in physiology! Studying how our bodies work is vital to athletes and trainers alike. Everything from studying how certain muscles move to better understand how to train a certain movement like a throw or a jump, to how your body uses food for fuel and how your pulmonary system works to keep you oxygenated during vigorous activity, it’s all science!

Just going for a walk in your neighborhood can become a lesson in science. Playground equipment can help teach physical concepts. You can talk about the fulcrum in a see saw, or how swings work by shifting your weight. The slide is a lesson in inertia and friction and “monkey bars” are full of opportunities for studying gravity and the wonders of muscles in our body.

While you are at the park take some time to notice any wildlife around you. Birds and other animals can become a biology lesson. Ask your kids to attempt to identify all the animals you see. Maybe you could have them make note of how many different animals they noticed and any interesting behaviors they observed in a field journal. You can also do this with flowers and trees.

Letting your kids help you cook dinner is the perfect time to discuss science. Talk about the equipment you are using, how the temperature affects your recipe, how the ingredients interact. Explain how water boils, how evaporation occurs to thicken your sauce or how baking soda and yeast help to make bread rise.

There are also many safety issues that can be discussed in the kitchen, and many of those directly relate to working in a laboratory when your kids are older. Safety when dealing with heat, boiling liquids, and cross contamination are all things they can learn about at home with you and apply in class.

Science is all around us. Cooking is chemistry, carpentry is engineering, gardening is botany with a touch of geology. Even the arts, especially music, involve science and math. No violin or electric guitar could make a sound without physics.

So many everyday things can be approached from a scientific stance. You can take any subject that your children are interested in and show them it can be fun to learn!

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About the Author:
Sara Jones was a fine student but science was a source of frustration she didn’t want her kids to suffer. She met Rick and Amanda Birmingham and realized their grasp of everyday science was the secret to making science fun. To learn more about the solution to science visit Super Fun Science.

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The recently published tabloid article by Emma Cox leads off proclaiming: “A FEARSOME mutant fish has started killing people after feeding on human corpses, scientists fear,” under a headline of “Humans scoffed by mutant fish.” (Scoff being British/Canadian slang for gobble.)

Tracking the Goonch for the show ”Nature Shock,” biologist Jeremy Wade presents ichthyological scare story, complete with needle-toothed monsters from the deep that may have risen from bottom scavengers to apex predators.

Folk Theory

Along the Great Kali River, flowing between India and Nepal, some villagers told Wade that they believe a “monster” dwells in their midst. Their theory is that it has evolved from eating prawns to a killer with an acquired taste for humans.

According to Wade’s interview in the SUN: “The locals have told me of a theory that this monster has grown extra large on a diet of partially burnt corpses. It has perhaps got this taste for flesh by feasting on remains of funeral pyres. There will be a few freak individuals that grow bigger than the other ones and if you throw in extra food, they will grow even bigger.”

While there are also crocodiles in these waters, Jeremy lays the blame of attacks on humans to the toothy Goonch lurking offshore. As part of the television exploration, his team caught a claimed world-record Goonch weighing in at 161 lbs. (73 kg). “If that got hold of you, there’d be no getting away,” he quipped.

Facts

Poorly documented reports of people being grabbed by mysterious aquatic creatures date back to 1988, when a 17-year-old Nepalese youth bathing in shallow water was attacked and pulled underwater by an unseen animal. The scene was repeated a few months later, when a small boy was taken to an unknown fate by an aquatic predator.

The latest fatality occurred last year, when an 18-year-old Nepali was hit from beneath and carried down by a creature one witnessed said looked like “an elongated pig.”

Biologists are skeptical of some of these yarns, and there is unanimity in their disclaiming that the goonch has somehow “mutated” into a maneating monster. Whether one or more renegade individuals have developed an aberrant taste for humans is not beyond the boundaries of plausibility. Nature is full of surprises, but these require research and proof before being swallowed hook-line-and-sinker. For a reality check, Fishbase experts classify the Goonch as “harmless” and “sluggish.”

This is a fish with the size, strength, and teeth to be a frightful threat in the water, but it is a leap to believe that the species has moved from feeding on relatively small river crustaceans to full-scale humans.

The British Channel 5 program ”Nature Shock” may be viewed online at http://demand.five.tv.

Watch your local aquarium shop for the rare but sometimes seen baby Goonch, which sometimes arrives among “assorted Asian catfishes.”

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About the Author:
James Lawrence is the editor of Microcosm Aquarium Explorer, an educational resource for conscientious aquarium keepers, offering thousands of species profiles and identifying images. For more Goonch facts and images: http://MicrocosmAquariumExplorer.com.

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The European Union was unable to agree to a timetable to manage climate change because they could not agree on costs and the type of acceptable alternative fuels. McCain is promising 40 new nuclear power plants by 2030, while Barack Obama has concluded that they can not achieve their climate change goals, unless they include nuclear power. The French are already committed to nuclear power.

But where is all the uranium ore going to come from to fuel these power stations?

Geologists think that only 5.5 million metric tones can be mined economically. While the International Atomic Energy Agency argues that the nuclear power stations in use today use 70,000 metric tons a year. That is without any increase in the number of nuclear power plants.

If we really wanted to use nuclear powered electricity for all of our energy needs, could it really be done quickly? Not only would we have to build plants to replace the existing nuclear plants, we would also have to replace all existing fossil fuel plants, as well as build extra nuclear power plants to allow us independence from oil.

Figures for the amount of plants we will need vary, but we are looking at increasing energy production by at least 17 times its present output! That could account for at least 1,000,000 tons of uranium ore each year! All our known reserves would be used up within 5 years. Geologists think there is about 35 million tons of uranium ore, much of it uneconomical to mine. That would last only about 30 years.

If the aim is to replace all fossil fuels with nuclear energy, how would this be possible after the uranium has run out?

If nuclear power was to be introduced on a step by step basis, there would still be a problem. The G8 countries have agreed to cut carbon emissions by 50% and this is to be achieved by 2050. Nuclear power will take up the slack. If they are to produce the energy needed the uranium would run out by 2050. All this will do is buy use 42 years!

Mining is usually done on an ad hoc basis. We don’t try to mine everything, we feed it into the system as and when we need it. While large areas of the planet have yet to be explored for uranium. So there might be some large stocks out there. Often we find that there are more mineral stocks than we expect to find. Look at how many new gas fields we have discovered.

But until we know how much is out there, how can we base an alternative energy plan around nuclear power? Building nuclear power stations are very expensive, and just consider how many we will have to build. Can we really depend upon a nuclear powered solution based upon the stocks of uranium that we know about?

What if those new uranium stocks are in countries we have blacklisted? What if it is to be found in Syria, North Korea or Iran? There is also the possibility that those stocks are in areas we can not mine.

We are going to have to depend upon our ability to recover uranium from the spent uranium fuels themselves. However, a report by the International Atomic Energy found that in 2004 two thirds of all uranium used was being mined, and not recycled. A large part of the remainder came from army stock piles. We are going to have recycle about a million tons a year if we really want to convert to nuclear energy. This is going to be a huge task and at what financial cost?

One solution put forward is to use breeder reactors. They tend to create more nuclear fuel than they use. In America some breeder reactors were introduced but they stopped in the 1990s. Only a few are in use in the world today. The real technology to make these breeder reactors is simply not in existence yet. We still have to get it up and running. Also they can be used to make nuclear weapons and they would be controversial.

At best nuclear power could only be used as part of the solution, and even then as part of a short term solution. Unless we find more uranium it can not be the solution to our energy needs. Unless we stop and think this through we are going to be facing the same energy shortages we face now. All we are doing is putting it off for another few decades at best.

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About the Author:
Colin Stafford writes on environmental issues, which include the ecology, alternative energy, climate change and nature. You can find many more articles on his blog, A Better Quality of Life.

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The American space program, from its earliest days through the present, has lead to thousands of technological advancements that are used everyday by our citizens. These new technologies have increased our national security, safety, lead to medical advancements, increased energy efficiency (which makes for a cleaner environment), saves lives, and increases our overall quality of life. Some of the technological benefits we have seen from the space program are:

Items used around the average American household

• Better Insulation. Aluminum heat shields from the Apollo program are used in homes to drastically reduce home heating and cooling costs, making homes more energy efficient which leads to lower power consumption.
• Smoke Detectors. These devices are standard in every home now, and were created for the Skylab space station in the early 1970’s.
• Better satellite technology for worldwide communication and television broadcasts.
• Small in home water purification systems were originally invented to purify water on early space missions.
• Cordless power Tools. NASA asked Black and Decker to develop a cordless power tool for use by the Apollo astronauts to collect deeper core samples on the moon. This invention lead to the wide range of cordless power tools in use today, including the first dust busters.

Items leading to a cleaner environment

• Satellite mapping used for forest management and weather.
• Hydroponic systems for the growing of food sources.
• Pollution measuring/smokestack monitor devices used in factories.
• Advances in solar energy technology.

Items used by the medical field

• Advancements in laser technology, now adapted to conduct laser heart and eye surgeries.
• Better technologies used for conducting mammograms.
• A spin-off from the Hubble Space Telescope has lead to a less intrusive and more method for conducting breast biopsies through digital imaging.
• NASA developed technologies were adapted for use in CAT scan and MRI machines.
• Infrared Thermometers. NASA technology used for measuring the heat of stars and distant planets was adapted for use in infrared thermometers common in every home and hospital today.

Advancements to aid in Firefighting and public safety

• Lighter weight Respiration systems developed for Apollo astronauts were adapted for use in fire fighting.
• Rescue jaws used by firefighters to quickly cut through doors and roofs in order to get to trapped accident victims inside.
• Newer light weight and portable radiation detectors.
• Personal alarm systems used by firemen, prison guards, the elderly, etc.
• Self righting life rafts.
• Doppler radar used for storm warning and tracking, to include wind shear detection used at major airports in the U.S.

The above list in not all inclusive; it is only a fraction of the items which were developed as a result of the U.S. space program. The total number of technological achievements gleaned from NASA space programs numbers in the thousands. Future missions planned for the moon and Mars will only aid in pushing technology further and serve as a catalyst for the next generation of technological advances that future generations will undoubtedly take for granted.

Check out the following sources for more information on this topic:

1. http://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/f_apollo_11_spinoff.html
2. http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
3. http://www.lunarproperties.com/page/28
4. http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html
5. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2005-10-04-questions-answers-griffin_x.htm

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About the Author:
Sally Reynolds is a Liberal Arts student from Palm Beach, Florida, who loves shopping, space and writing.

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High energy particle colliders are nothing new. The first ones were developed in the 1930s and called cyclotrons. This type of device used large magnets to guide and accelerate particles ever faster through a spiral configuration. By the early 1940s, such a device was used to enrich uranium for the Manhattan Project. The cyclotrons were eventually developed into extreme high-energy particle colliders which were the biggest machines ever conceived and can only be seen in their entirety from the air because, instead of spiral tracks, they use full circles that are miles wide. They are often referred to as “atom smashers” because they send two particles at high speed around a circle in opposite directions and then document their collision. There are currently seventy-five particle colliders located on six continents around the world. Of the largest, one is the International Linear Collider located at Fermilab. The other is the Large Hadron Collider built for CERN, which is the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The expanded use of so many colliders opened the door for multiple research projects revealing the existence of one new particle after another. Of course, with every new particle came its anti-particle twin. The cornucopia of new particle discovery was so plentiful that it eventually became known as “the particle zoo.” It’s important to realize that few, if any, of these anti-particles have actually been recorded. They are merely theorized to keep the mathematical equations balanced. This same sort of theoretical balancing act is also applied to the existence of many fields and forces. For every force, there must be a particle to carry it. Conversely, every new particle found by the colliders must be associated with a force.

The most elusive of these particles, and one that the LHC was specifically designed to find, is the Higgs Boson, which is associated with the Higgs Field. It is commonly referenced in science circles as the “God particle” and is thought to be the reason why things have mass. The force of gravity is associated with mass. In Einstein’s pursuit of a single Theory of Everything (TOE), he simply could not get gravity to play well with relativity theory. And neither could anyone else. Mass and gravity have successfully provided a monkey wrench to thwart all attempts by physicists to establish a Grand Unified Theory (GUT).

Considering the fact that much of the science behind the experiments that will be conducted at the LHC are, at best, theoretical, is it any wonder so many folks are nervous about what might happen? Let’s get a historical perspective. Even though theories of the world being round instead of flat were recorded as early as fourth century B.C., many still thought that Columbus would certainly fall of the edge of the Earth if he sailed west into the unknown. Many people, scientists among them, thought that a plane would simply explode if it attempted to break the sound barrier. When the U.S. was ready to send a living being into orbit, they chose a chimp rather than a human because they were concerned about unknown contaminations from space. It’s often overlooked that Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize in Physics for E=mc2. At the time, relativity theory was looked upon with a raised eyebrow and the scientific community withheld its laurels until the theory could be substantiated. History shows us that new theories are usually not embraced immediately. More often than not, they are fully accepted only after they are proven.

Will the LHC create an uncontrollable Big Bang or a black hole big enough to swallow the Earth and all its surrounding space, as sensationalized by the popular media? Not likely. It’s more likely that the quantum leap of faith taken by a few contemporary physicists will demonstrate a lack of fear based on an understanding that transcends the science and the math. In doing so, they just might give us a small glimpse from a unique perspective into the nature of reality.

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About the Author:
MaAnna Stephenson - Formally trained in electronics, acoustics and music and initiated as a shamanka, MaAnna Stephenson has lived immersed in the relationship between science and intuitive wisdom. Her exemplary work spans the music industry, wood carving, and authoring The Sage Age, a book illuminating new models for new thought. Visit www.SageAge.net for more. Some content excerpted from The Sage Age - Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom © 2008 MaAnna Stephenson.

Photo Credit: The Large Hadron Collider/ATLAS at CERN by Image Editor

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A reflector telescope is one that uses a mirror rather than lenses to bend light and magnify images. Reflector telescopes, because they are easier to make and can be made in sizes much larger than refractors, are an invention that changed astronomy and our understanding of the universe. The largest refractor telescope in the world is forty inches in diameter and reflector telescopes dwarf this in comparison. There are currently several reflector type scopes that are over four hundred inches in diameter.

Why a reflector is better than a refractor

If you are familiar with a prism or a rainbow you can understand why reflectors are superior to refractors. When light passes through glass the different bands (or colors) pass through at different angles and this causes aberrations or problems in the images. This is called chromatic aberration and it gives us distorted views of what we see through a lens. In the time of Newton glass making and lens making was very primitive and the problems of chromatic aberration were not yet overcome. Today we can make lenses that have almost no chromatic aberration but we can’t make them very large. When a lens gets to be really large it gets very heavy and its own weight will distort the lens and ruin the image.

Newton’s telescope solved these problems. A mirror doesn’t pass light through it. It simply bounces all the light off the surface. There is no chromatic aberration at all. And because you only need to bounce light off the surface you can place the whole mirror on a supporting structure or base which takes a lot of the weight off the mirror. This way you can build much larger mirrors without any distortion.

It is commonly thought that Newton invented the first reflector telescope but it isn’t true. Credit for making the first reflector goes to and Italian Monk, Physicist, and Astronomer named Niccolo Zucchi. He published a book on Optics in the 1650’s and it is this book that inspired Sir Isaac Newton to build his own telescope. Zucchi created his first reflector around 1616 while Newton completed his first (and famous) telescope in 1670. But while Zucchi did make some new discoveries with his telescope it didn’t work well and was difficult to make and to use. It was Newton’s telescope that worked really well and that brought the art and science of reflectors into the world of science.

The real genius of Newton’s Telescope

All of that stuff is remarkable but there is something much more important in Newton’s Astronomy and in his telescope. He didn’t after all, discover moons around Jupiter like Galileo did, or plot the return of a comet like Halley did. But what he did do was tie in Mathematics, Astronomy, and our understanding of the universe using his telescope and his theory of universal gravitation. He proved mathematically that gravitation was a two way operation and that while the earth pulled on a falling apple so the apple too pulled on the earth. This was clearly seen, calculated, and confirmed in the motions of heavenly bodies which was refined and made possible by the new science of reflector telescopes which we can credit to Newton.

Sir Isaac and his telescope carried on with the work of Copernicus and Galileo by furthering our understanding of the universe we live in and helping us to realize there are laws that govern the whole of the universe. And this rule holds true for falling apples and for planets revolving around stars.

The actual telescope that Newton built still survives today and is in the care of the Royal Society of London. They keep it on display in London and sometimes it travels the world as part of an exhibit.

__________
About the Author:
Will Kalif - Want to learn more about telescopes? Visit the Telescope Nerd: TelescopeNerd.com.

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• Scientists develop a new technique that allows certain objects to be invisible [Science Centric]
• It May Be Science Blasphemy, But Magic Can Boost Children’s Self Esteem [Scientific Blogging]
• Dealing with creationism [Crooked Timber]
• Nanotech may be the answer for “superbugs” [David Kirkpatrick]
• Bacteria to Clean Arsenic Spills [Find Me A Cure]
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• Thomas Nagel on ID and Evolution [Pure Pedantry]

Have a great weekend!

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