Category: Coping with COVID
The special ingredient for Mars travel meal prep? Astronaut breath
NPR The ingredients for space yeast are fairly simple. “Astronaut breath, water, yeast starter, electricity, a rolling pin and we can make it happen,” Stafford Sheehan, a finalist in the NASA-sponsored Deep Space Food Challenge, told NPR. Put air, water and yeast starter into Sheehan’s handy machine, wait about two hours and voila: a protein shake […]
Aug 8, 2023
Scientists woke up a 46,000-year-old roundworm from Siberian permafrost
Washington Post A female microscopic roundworm that spent the last 46,000 years in suspended animation deep in the Siberian permafrost was revived and started having babies in a laboratory dish. By sequencing the genome of this Rip Van Winkle roundworm, scientists revealed it to be a new species of nematode, which is described in a […]
Aug 1, 2023
Snail Racing World Championships make post-pandemic return
A snail racing event making its return this weekend in England has been awarded a Guinness World Record as the longest running humane snail-racing world championships. The Snail Racing World Championships in Congham, England, are returning Saturday after being suspended in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event was founded by Tom Elwes in the 1960s after he […]
Jul 18, 2023
Maybe Simon & Garfunkel were right about the “sound” of silence.
NYT Silence Is a ‘Sound’ You Hear, Study Suggests In auditory illusion tests, people perceive silence as a form of sound, just as Simon and Garfunkel suggested. The hush at the end of the musical performance. The pause in a dramatic speech. The muted moment when you turn off the car. What is it that […]
Jul 11, 2023
No more rides to Hel on bus 666 in Poland
AP There will be no more going to Hel on bus 666. The bus to the town of Hel on Poland’s Baltic coast has long been popular with tourists. But some Christian conservatives have protested the number signifying the devil on a bus leading to a place that sounds like the word “hell” in English. […]
Jun 27, 2023
How a Toilet Plunger Improved CPR
New York Times The conventional method for chest compressions doesn’t have a great success rate. Doctors are pumping it up with a high-tech plunger. In 1988, a 65-year-old man’s heart stopped at home. His wife and son didn’t know CPR, so in desperation they grabbed a toilet plunger to get his heart going until an ambulance showed […]
Jun 20, 2023
The sheep have finally arrived to our farm! Let me introduce you to the new crew… These are Southdown Babydoll sheep, they grow to be about 24″ tall and perfect for mowing the lawn in our vineyard. Right now they are enjoying the fresh greens in our pasture, and getting used to the new surroundings. […]
Jun 14, 2023
Contestants chase cheese wheel down a hill in chaotic UK race
AP The big cheese of extreme U.K. sports events is back. Hundreds of spectators gathered Monday to watch dozens of reckless racers chase a 7-pound (3 kilogram) wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down the near-vertical Cooper’s Hill, near Gloucester in southwest England. The first racer to finish behind the fast-rolling cheese gets to keep it. […]
Jun 6, 2023
