All 2,242 illustrations from James Sowerby’s compendium of knowledge about mineralogy in Great Britain and beyond, drawn 1802–1817 and arranged by color.

All 2,242 of James Sowerby’s illustrations from his compendium of knowledge about mineralogy in Great Britain and beyond published between 1802 and 1817 and arranged by color.

Welcome to the ASL-STEM Forum! The purpose of this online community is to bring educators, interpreters, captioners, students, and others together in order to help build ASL's technical vocabulary from the ground up.

Most cases are not life-threatening, which is also what makes the virus a historic challenge to contain.

Soap absolutely annihilates the coronavirus, a chemistry professor explains. --- One side of the soap molecule (the one that’s attracted to fat and repelled by water) buries its way into the virus’s fat and protein shell. Fortunately, the chemical bonds holding the virus together aren’t very strong, so this intrusion is enough to break the virus’s coat. “You pull the virus apart, you make it soluble in water, and it disintegrates,” he says. Then the harmless shards of virus get flushed down the drain. And even if it the soap doesn’t destroy every virus, you’ll still rid them from your hands with soap and water, as well as any grease or dirt they may be clinging to. Soap will also wash away bacteria and other viruses that may be a bit tougher than coronavirus, and harder to disintegrate. The trick is this all takes a little time to happen, and that’s why you need to take at least 20 seconds to wash your hands.

Millennials who see no contradiction between using astrology and believing in science are fueling a resurgence of the practice. --- It’s easy to name our own opaque and inscrutable systems—surveillance capitalism, a byzantine health-insurance system—but to say that we are no longer the self-determining subjects of our fate is also to recognize the many ways that our lives are governed by circumstances outside our control. […] It’s a commonplace to say that in uncertain times people crave certainty. But what astrology offers isn’t certainty—it’s distance. Just as a person may find it easier to accept things about herself when she decides she was born that way, astrology makes it possible to see world events from a less reactive position. It posits that history is not a linear story of upward progress but instead moves in cycles, and that historical actors—the ones running amok all around us—are archetypes. Alarming, yes; villainous, perhaps; but familiar, legible.

This suggests that sun is better for us than previously thought, and the potential risks of minor skin cancer outweigh the risks of not getting enough sunlight. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised a radical new approach to brain imaging that reveals what past studies had missed. By mathematically analyzing scans of the auditory cortex and grouping clusters of brain cells with similar activation patterns, the scientists have identified neural pathways that react almost exclusively to the sound of music — any music. It may be Bach, bluegrass, hip-hop, big band, sitar or Julie Andrews. A listener may relish the sampled genre or revile it. No matter. When a musical passage is played, a distinct set of neurons tucked inside a furrow of a listener’s auditory cortex will fire in response. Other sounds, by contrast — a dog barking, a car skidding, a toilet flushing — leave the musical circuits unmoved.

The untold story of the fight over the legacy of “H.M.” — the patient who revolutionized the science of memory.

On Aug. 21, a total solar eclipse will traverse the contiguous United States. It’ll be the first to traverse coast to coast in nearly a century.

Climate deniers blame natural factors; NASA data proves otherwise.

Technology is the active human interface with the material world.

That MSG isn’t the poison we’ve made it out to be has been well-established. News stories are written regularly about the lack of evidence tying MSG to negative health effects. (Read here and here, for example. Or here, here, here, here and here.) Still, Yelp reviews of Chinese restaurants tell tales of racing hearts, sleepless nights and tingling limbs from dishes “laden with MSG.” Even when the science is clear, it takes a lot to overwrite a stigma, especially when that stigma is about more than just food.

The article that started the band. By "fingerprinting" DNA of the ant species - Mycocepurus smithii - they found them all to be clones of the colony's queen.

A new evolutionary theory explains how critically small populations of early humans survived, despite an increased chance of hereditary disabilities being passed to offspring.

Comic about a classic experiment into drug addiction science: Rat Park. Would rats choose to take drugs if given a stimulating environment and company?

The playful spirit among the operators can occasionally be problematic in the eyes of the nuclear regulatory agency. The NRC, says Oxley, "isn’t always a huge fan of how much fun we have." For example, they "couldn’t really think of a reason why we weren’t allowed to have a rubber duck on top of our nuclear reactor pool, but they just didn’t like it." The government agency instructed Reed's operators to complete an official form proving the duck wasn't dangerous.

Skulls Unlimited is the world's leading supplier of osteological specimens. Complete selection of legally-obtained animal skulls and replicas. Everything on this site makes me laugh.

Women want sex, and in particular, they want sex with people who really want them. But socially, many straight men still find it a turnoff when women are sexual aggressors. Which means that, for women, aggressively pursuing the thing they want actually leads to them not getting it. I suspect this is the source of much sexual dissatisfaction of the modern single lady, who's so horny she's running across the street to Walgreens to buy more batteries twice a week, but is unable to pick up men despite social conventions that men are "easy" to bed and women have to be coaxed into casual sex. The thing women are told they can access any time is, maddeningly, often just out of reach.

…a series of small case studies of a handful of characters whose work then, and perspective now, sheds light on how the foods are created and sold to people who, while not powerless, are extremely vulnerable to the intensity of these companies’ industrial formulations and selling campaigns.

Asimov’s favorite of his short stories, and widely regarded to have an astonishing ending.

Infographic on the scientific evidence for effectiveness of popular dietary supplements. ‘Showing tangible health benefits when taken orally by an adult with a healthy diet.’

What a beautiful instrument.

A chart.

As of this writing, “6 on the International Space Station and 6 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.”

Jesse Bering: “I don’t think any scholar ever captured the suicidal mind better than Florida State University psychologist Roy Baumeister in his 1990 Psychological Review article , ‘Suicide as Escape from the Self.’” An exploration of the six conditions that lead to suicide — academic, informative, and imploring.

A ton of scientific studies are flat-out wrong. And most of it doesn't really matter anyway. "‘Science is a noble endeavor, but it’s also a low-yield endeavor,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure that more than a very small percentage of medical research is ever likely to lead to major improvements in clinical outcomes and quality of life. We should be very comfortable with that fact.’"

"Your Guide to Quackery, Health Fraud, and Intelligent Decisions"

On the history of autism and the dramatic increase of diagnoses in Silicon Valley.

"It seems the message of this research for those seeking to establish a new habit is to repeat the behaviour every day if you can, but don't worry excessively if you miss a day or two. Also be prepared for the long haul — remember the average time to reach peak automaticity was 66 days." I wonder if it takes just as long to break a habit?