Something I ran across last week — March 30 was the birthday of the pencil eraser! According to a Writers’ Almanac entry on that date — “On this day in 1858, Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia patented the first pencil to have an attached eraser. The eraser-tipped pencil is still something of an American phenomenon; most European pencils
If the world seems especially grim right now, let me report some good news. You may have heard of the Guinea worm, a particularly painful parasite with an unusual lifecycle. It’s responsible for the disease dracunculiasis, which historically has sickened about 3.5 million people a year across 20 African and Asian countries. For the
Think Death Valley and you think desert, with an average rainfall less than two inches per year. Yet the ecosystem is surprisingly diverse, even including wildflowers. And in a year of above-average rainfall, the desert can spring to life with such a profusion of flowers it’s known as a superbloom. Seeds can lie dormant for long periods.
The world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. That’s 2 billion more than we have today. How will we feed them? National Geographic magazine ran an eight-month series of articles on this subject beginning in May 2014. With some people going hungry now, it’s going to take some creative thinking to accommodate
Scientists still talk about gravity as a theory because they can’t explain exactly how it works. Albert Einstein hypothesized gravity waves, but there was no way to confirm they existed… until recently. Granted, the science is a bit hard to comprehend because all the numbers are extreme one way or another, but basically, over a billion years ago
On March 20, I had written about our early spring. Today I learned (from the same source, EarthSky News) that this is the earliest Easter until 2035. This is their explanation — Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon in a Northern Hemisphere spring. By ecclesiastical rules, which fixes the
I guess this falls under the category of Every Little Bit Helps. The odds are few people can find Bhutan on the map. A small country between China and India astride the Himalaya Mountains, it’s strictly third world with an economy of only around $2 billion. But thanks to some enlightened leadership, it’s taking a first-world
Did you know this is the earliest spring since 1896? According to the EarthSky News, the March equinox, when the sun crosses the celestial equator going from south to north, signals the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. The March equinox can actually come on March 19, 20 or
This may come as a shock, but not everyone is satisfied with our current calendar. We presently use the Gregorian Calendar, which was first established in 1582. But everyone is familiar with its quirks, like months with either 28, 30, or 31 days. What if it there were no leap years, holidays fell on the day day
Would you wear a garment that was alive? You may get a chance. According to the March 2016 issue of Smithsonian magazine (page 18), MIT Media Lab researchers have found a way to incorporate live bacteria into a synthetic fabric. They’ve chosen a bacteria that quickly changes shape in response to moisture. With such a