Hold your nose and head for the hills: Titania is opening
Get a whiff of this: Titania, UC Botanical Garden's corpse flower, is being pollinated today. The plant's skirt of petals now measures 44" in diameter. Visitors to the garden's Tropical House will be...
View ArticleCircus performer's flight preview steals NASA show
(AP) -- A former stiltwalker and fire-eater stole NASA's show Thursday, saying he'll be "like a kid in a candy store" experimenting with zero-gravity tricks on his upcoming tourist trip to the...
View ArticleLife cycles of mysterious Namibian grassland 'fairy circles' characterized
The grasslands in Namibia are home to so-called "fairy circles" - circular bare spots, usually surrounded by a ring of taller grass of unknown origin. These circles are described and characterized in...
View ArticleMysterious fairy circles demystified: it's termites (Update)
They appear in the desert in southwest Africa and persist for decades: so-called fairy circles, or puzzling rings of grass with a barren center.
View ArticleAstronomical pranks of April fools' past
The first day of April is always a traditional time for pranks and puns, and astronomers and scientists aren't above an April Fools' Day shenanigan or two. Hey, I gotta admit, as a freelance science...
View ArticleDisney Research develops method to provide tactile feedback in free air
Depth cameras and other motion-tracking devices allow people to use natural gestures to play computer games, yet the experience remains unnatural because they can't feel what their eyes can see. Disney...
View ArticleAt last: Mysterious ocean circles in the Baltic Ocean explained
Are they bomb craters from World War II? Are they landing marks for aliens? Since the first images of the mysterious ocean circles off the Baltic coast of Denmark were taken in 2008, people have tried...
View ArticleFairy circles apparently not created by termites after all
For several decades scientists have been trying to come up with an explanation for the formation of the enigmatic, vegetation-free circles frequently found in certain African grassland regions. Now...
View ArticleMysterious desert fairy circles share pattern with skin cells
Patterns appearing on both the very large and very small scale are extremely rare, but researchers at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) in Japan have found a...
View ArticleFairy circles found in Australian outback
(Phys.org)—A small team of researchers from Germany, Israel and Australia has confirmed that fairy circles exist in a part of the Australian outback. In their paper published in Proceedings of the...
View ArticleDeep in the virtual world: A newbie's first brush with VR
My descent from the boat, gliding through schools of fish and clouds of phosphorescent jellyfish, seemed to be going pretty smoothly. At least until the shark emerged from the deeper gloom and tried to...
View ArticleScientists dance around Pilbara's fairy circles
An extremely rare phenomenon known as fairy circles—a concept more at home in the pages of fantasy books—have sprung into the vast, arid expanse of the modern day Pilbara.
View ArticleFrom America to Viagra: finding what you're not looking for
It's serendipity: from America to Viagra, history is full of great discoveries helped along by chance, as more than a century of Nobel prizes can attest.
View ArticleFinally, an explanation of strange African 'fairy circles'?
The forces behind the mysterious "fairy circles" that dot a desert in southern Africa do not appear to be supernatural, but they are intricate and complex.
View ArticleIn African 'fairy circles,' a template for nature's many patterns
Be it the Mima mounds of Washington state or the famous "fairy circles" of Namibia in southwestern Africa, people are captivated by the regular patterns of plant growth that blanket desert and...
View ArticleHow to escape a maze – according to maths
Mazes are in vogue at the moment, from NBO's Westworld, to the return of the British cult TV series, The Crystal Maze. But mazes have been around for millennia and one of the most famous mazes, the...
View ArticleResearcher weighs in on fairy circles of Namibia
A study conducted by researchers at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis adds new insights into one of nature's great mysteries: the fairy circles of Namibia.
View ArticleWhy the Internet hasn't killed off books
We stand amazed by the vitality of printed books, a more than 500-year-old technique, both on and offline. We have observed over the years all of the dialogue which books have created around...
View ArticleResearchers get to the bottom of fairy circles
Fairy circles are round gaps in arid grassland that are distributed very uniformly over the landscape and only occur along the Namib Desert in southern Africa and in parts of Australia. Various...
View ArticleThe high price endangered animals pay for charisma
"Wanted: beautiful, intelligent companion well-versed in the art of conversation." It's a familiar story, but don't expect a fairy-tale ending. In this instance, we're talking about a transaction that...
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