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Indian authorities are evacuating nearly 1 million people along the country’s east coast ahead of a severe cyclone moving through the Bay of Bengal.

Arsenic is a deadly poison for most living things, but new research shows that microorganisms are breathing arsenic in a large area of the Pacific Ocean. A University of Washington team has discovered that an ancient survival strategy is still being used in low-oxygen parts of the marine environment.

“Thinking of arsenic as not just a bad guy, but also as beneficial, has reshaped the way that I view the element,” said first author Jaclyn Saunders, who did the research for her doctoral thesis at the UW and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The study was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Continue reading “Arsenic-breathing life discovered in the tropical Pacific Ocean” »

In our final episode of Crash Course Engineering we are going to take all the tools and ideas we’ve discussed throughout this series and try to imagine where we’re headed. We’re going to explore some of the biggest problems that today’s engineers are trying to solve and make some guesses about what the future of the field might look like.

Crash Course Engineering is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1mtdjDVOoOqJzeaJAV15Tq0tZ1vKj7ZV

Continue reading “The Biggest Problems We’re Facing Today & The Future of Engineering: Crash Course Engineering #46” »

But right now, humans are still better merch pickers.

A blog by Jeff Atwood on programming and human factors.

And they’re not the only big company turning to this “fun-gi” packaging.

The physicist sees big things in humanity’s near future.

Right now Chandra is studying a cluster of stars in Camelopardalis! Nearby in the sky is planetary nebula NGC 1501. The progenitor star seen in the center of this nebula looks like a shimmering pearl inside of a glowing shell to some, inspiring the nickname the Oyster Nebula!