river
dr. dolittle | February 15, 2013
Trace amounts of oxazepam in rivers has large effects on wild perch. Image credit: Brent Christensen
Dr. Tomas Brodin (Umea University, Sweden) and colleagues have discovered that trace amounts of the drug oxazepam that ends up in rivers and streams (from toilets) greatly effects local fish. The drug is used to treat anxiety in humans and also calms fish. However, for wild perch, which normally hunt in schools, the antisocial effects of the drug in fish makes them more vulnerable to predation.
Psychiatric medications are not the only drugs found in potential drinking-water…
esiegel | June 26, 2012"We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth." -Bill Anders, Apollo 8 astronaut
From hundreds of miles up, the International Space Station speeds around the Earth, completing 18 orbits a day, looking down on us and returning some absolutely fabulous images.
Image credit: Fyodor Yurchikhin and the Russian Space Agency Press Services, of Greenland from the ISS.
But what you may not appreciate is that my favorite images taken from the ISS weren't taken by American Astronaut Don Pettit (better known as @astro_Pettit), but rather by a…
stoat | May 2, 2012It has rained quite a bit recently.
I did go down from the bridge and give them a hand in, you realise. In other news...
* Adventures in Vim!
* Pointless resentment - one for all the people who would rather criticise than help
* Swan reveals bone-breaking technique - about Mr Asbo if you hadn't realised. He even has a facebook page.
* Hitler was a vegetarian etc. etc., you know how it goes.
* TCBC - Total Eclipse of the Heart
esiegel | March 3, 2008People love to speculate that Mars was once a great place for life to form, and claim that there is plenty of evidence that there used to be oceans and rivers there. But this isn't true. People used to claim there were big Canal-like features on Mars, and used this as evidence that Mars was very wet.
It was later realized that these weren't canals, but rather geological features caused by impact craters from astroids. But more recently, people have been claiming that images like the one above are examples of dried-up riverbeds.
But this turns out not to be the case. When we take a closer…