The Gist

Gisting Off Into the Sunset

Hugh Powell — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:12:06 +0000

It’s been a year since I started writing for the Gist, and over our lifetime we’ve amassed more than 200 posts. But the time has come to ride into the sunset – to kick off into that happy blogosphere in the sky, where the rivers babble with happy comments and the posts fly off the [...]

Purple Rain: Tomatoes Get New Color Scheme

Hugh Powell — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:06:39 +0000

Ah, the last of the summer tomatoes. Plump, sun-warm, and soft. Sometimes I like to just eat them over the sink and let the rich purple juice run down my chin. What’s that? You were expecting rich red juice? But purple could be so much healthier, according to this week’s Nature Biotechnology online. Scientists from [...]

Evolving a Better Bank Balance

Hugh Powell — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:30:32 +0000

Men are under natural selection to become richer, according to a report in the November issue of American Naturalist. That’s right: the same way natural selection once encouraged longer necks in giraffes and duck bills on ducks (and platypuses), men are now feeling that Darwinian pull toward the corner office. The Newcastle University researchers found [...]

With Economy Tanking, Ingenuity Is Still a Bargain

Hugh Powell — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:47:49 +0000

The science news last week was peppered with common-sense breakthroughs: among them, an elephant-rampage early-warning system and a hospital centrifuge made from a hand-cranked eggbeater. It’s a good time for modest ingenuity to make a comeback, since our plummeting economic fortunes are dampening enthusiasm for, say, an $8 billion physics project that keeps getting the [...]

Seeing Stars About Overhead Projectors

Hugh Powell — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:48:21 +0000

Barring an observation or two about how science is or isn’t cropping up in this campaign, the Gist is not a political blog. But as someone who still remembers sixth-grade planetarium visits where I craned my neck against the theater seats to watch the stars wheel by, I do feel a responsibility to speak up [...]

Cast Iron is Dead: Long Live Cast Iron!

Hugh Powell — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:04:50 +0000

A bit of household science in the New York Times this week has wrecked my decades-old reverence for the cast-iron skillet. That’s according to data from the kitchen of Harold McGee, the great foodie-chemist and author of On Food and Cooking – a book that’s nearly as important to your kitchen as a decent chef’s [...]

Candidates and Constituents Visualize Science in 2008

Hugh Powell — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:22:32 +0000

The 2008 electoral campaign has now brought us three debates. After 270 minutes of argument, the word “science” or “scientists” has been used approximately four times. That would be three times in the first presidential debate*** (transcript), zero times in the vice-presidential standoff, despite the candidates being asked point-blank their views on climate change and [...]

Argentine Dinosaur Had Birdy Lungs

Hugh Powell — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:27:54 +0000

A new dinosaur discovered in Argentina had labyrinthine lungs that extended into hollows in its ribs, hips, backbone, and wishbone. It’s a rudimentary version of the lung system found in birds, where it allows breathing to be far more efficient than in mammals. The dinosaur, named Aerosteon riocoloradensis this week in the open-access journal PLoS [...]

Chinese Spices Hijack Your Taste Buds

Hugh Powell — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:06:18 +0000

The Gist has been on a field trip in New York City this week, taking culinary detours into Italy, Korea, Lebanon, Ireland and the Sichuan province of China. The Grand Sichuan International in Chinatown is a living-room-sized restaurant with an invisible kitchen, a dozen tables, and a soft-drink cooler wedged against one wall. Grand or [...]

Mistakenidentosaurus Becoming a Thing of the Past

Hugh Powell — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:03:17 +0000

Behold the fearsome Manospondylus: one of the largest, fiercest predators the world has ever seen. With a skull the size of a wrecking ball and teeth like scimitars it terrorized the Cretaceous fens, eviscerating plump vegetarians and kicking around the skinny ones like discarded soda cans. What’s that you say? Sounds an awful lot like [...]

News Flash: You May Be Boring Your Dog

Hugh Powell — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:24:26 +0000

Here at the Gist we try to keep you on top of breaking science of all kinds. Sure, you get popular hits like massively expensive particle accelerators and nail-biting Mars touchdowns. But we reach deep into the heart of science, too, bringing you topics like top-quality dingo urine and paranoid squirrels. This week we learned [...]

Dinosaur vs. Crocodile: Who Wins?

Hugh Powell — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:53:45 +0000

Turn the clock back 230 million years, and the land was covered with big, toothy reptiles.*** But as many a nine-year-old can tell you, not all of them were dinosaurs. Some were “crurotarsans,” a lineage that all but died out just as the dinosaurs were acheiving global domination. Today, the only crurotarsans are the crocodiles. [...]

Loud and Clear Department: Intergalactic Telegrams

Hugh Powell — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:44:03 +0000

After 26 years of listening for radio transmissions from deep space, we learn this week that aliens – at least the really smart ones – could have been trying to contact us by a totally different method: manipulating the brightness of stars using stupendously powerful blasts of neutrinos. Or so say University of Hawaii physicist [...]

Science to Religion: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Hugh Powell — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:58:16 +0000

It’s not quite astrobiology rap, but a YouTube plea for finding common ground between science and religion is notable for its source, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the country’s leading association of scientists. The video is a trailer of sorts for a longer film available from AAAS. It features two prominent scientists [...]

Globalization: Good for Local Cuisines?

Hugh Powell — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:14:24 +0000

So I’m catching up on my Current Anthropology, and suddenly I’m craving something I never knew existed: tejate, a cold, frothy, corn-and-chocolate drink from Oaxaca, Mexico. Put it down to a recent brush with a silky, nutty Oaxacan black mole sauce, but suddenly I am really interested in chocolatey Mexican cuisine. I’m also curious because [...]