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Science
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Students Honour Yuri Gagarin, Launch Guitar Rocket
12 Apr 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The headline says it all. Students from the Siberian State Aerospace University decided to mark and honour Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin’s first flight into space, which was 50 years ago today, by building a rocket out of a guitar. Coincidentally it resembles a Gibson Flying V.
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Flying Drone Peers Into Japan’s Damaged Reactors
11 Apr 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Engineers have used a flying drone to peer into the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Sunday. The drone has been used by the US military and reportedly weighs about 23kg and has the propensity to withstand winds of up to 20 knots.
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One Step Closer In The Quest For A HIV Vaccine
07 Apr 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Hooray for science. US government scientists say they have discovered three powerful HIV antibodies, the strongest of which neutralizes 91% of HIV strains, more than any HIV antibody yet discovered. Details inside.
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Scared Of Heights? Take This Pill
05 Apr 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
It’s safe to say that tests are still in their early stages but it’s also safe to say that scientists are quite a bit closer to helping people overcome their fear of heights. They have discovered that by giving people a tablet of the stress hormone cortisol, they can help reduce their phobia.
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Fake Weed Gets Naval Academy Student Expelled
04 Apr 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
It seems this is a common problem that the US Naval Academy faces. Another midshipman was expelled from the force for using or having a banned weed-like substance known as “spice”. No spice. This brings the total number of expulsions to 12.
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French Vegan Couple On Trial Over Baby’s Death
01 Apr 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Two vegans who fed their 11 month old daughter only on her mother’s breast milk went on trial in northern France on Tuesday. They have been charged with neglect after their baby died as a result of suffering from vitamin deficiencies and could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
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Check Your Radiation Levels
31 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
What with radiation being the topic du jour at the moment (Google Japan), I thought it my civic duty to share this chart that shows very simply just how much radiation you’ll need to absorb before turning into a sludgy mass.
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12 Year Old Expands Einstein’s Relativity, Thinks He Can Prove It Wrong [VIDEO]
29 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Jacob Barnett has an IQ of 170. According to some, this is reportedly higher than Albert Einstein’s was, although Einstein himself never took the test. Jake is now so far advanced in his Indiana University studies that professors are lining him up for a paid PHD research role. He also finished high school at eight years old.
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Robotic Clouds To Provide Shade During Qatar World Cup [VIDEO]
29 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Not even designers of world class video games have thought of this one yet. I bet the Qatari engineers are hunched up and sniggering through their beards into their cupped, fist-shaped hands right now. Their World Cup is only in 2022, but these guys clearly have the money to blow to make magic. Very Bruce Almighty of them.
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German Doctor’s Juicy Malpractice Lands Him In Jail
28 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
I’m all for advances in alternative medicine but this is a little too alternative. A German doctor has been found guilty of endangering the lives of 25 patients due to his highly eccentric methodologies which included using lemon juice to sterilise his surgical procedures.
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Water Soon To Be Subjected To Eskom-esque Tariff Hikes
22 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
A report about a month ago attributed that South Africa indeed stared a water crisis directly in the eye. Experts told the inaugural South African Water and Energy Forum in Johannesburg that we even face the possibility of chronic water shortages as early as 2020. Now Eskom-esque tariff hikes loom too.
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Koeberg Nuclear Power Station Shuts Down, Routine Maintenance
15 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Take a deep breath and don’t panic. It’s nothing to be alarmed about and this is why we have eased it in on this beautiful Tuesday afternoon in Cape Town. Unit two actually shut down yesterday already and we thought we’d now explain why you might see it puffing the odd bit of steam from time to time.
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Looks Like Our Ancestors Were Into Hallucinogenics
09 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Aside from hunting, interbreeding and kicking back in caves, looks like our ancestors were totally into hallucinogenics. Researchers have been analysing cave paintings in Spain, and have come to the conclusion that our long lost relatives weren’t adverse to dabbling with ‘magic mushrooms’ from time to time.
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The “Super Moon” – Let’s Have That Chat
09 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Everybody loves a little bit of sensationalism, especially when the majority of news starts becoming rather bland and repetitive. Take for example the way The Sun headlined this piece: “Disaster as moon closes in” – awesome vibe. Fact is though, that no disaster should technically happen and surfers should actually be getting amped for a mission, bru.
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Camel Milk: In Fridges Soon
09 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
That’s right, camel milk demand is on the up and the word is getting out. Demand from diabetic patients, parents of autistic children and sufferers of Crohn’s disease has resulted in them becoming their own powerful lobbyists. Internationally that is. So when will camel milk sail into the mainstream market here at home I wonder?
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National Geographic Finds The Average Human
09 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
So hey, congrats to all you non-male, non-Chinese folks who were worried about looking average! Because according to a decade’s worth of research by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing for National Geographic, a 28-year-old Han Chinese male is the mean. Numbers, explanation after the jump.
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Fish Farming Is Big Business
08 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Perlemoen, in particular. I know a few chaps who used pull out the odd perly when we were younger. It was childish and naive at the time I thought, although I too engaged in other unrelated mischief of my own. Anyway, aquaculture has always fascinated me and the recession did it no favours. This however, might be the new oil.
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World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles – FILM PREVIEW AND TRAILER
01 Mar 2011 by Seth Rotherham / No Comments
Take us to your leader. We come in peace. ET phone home. They don’t say much, but they sure know how to get to the point! ‘The X-Files’ knew “The Truth Is Out There” with dramatised cases of real government conspiracies and where there’s smoke, there’s a smouldering alien spacecraft. Don’t just take it from […]
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Kidney Transplant Scam, Criminal Case Gaining Momentum
01 Mar 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
South Africa’s very own surgery tourism trade has boomed for a while. We’ve been well-known as a great destination for the industry because we’re inexpensive. Now the smoke around the kidney transplant scam has finally begun to bellow. Over the weekend Netcare decided it was no longer going to comment on the scandal.
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Utah Archeologists Discover New Dinosaur – ‘Thunder Thighs’
24 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Oh, scientists. You discover an entirely new species of dinosaur on a quarry dig, and then you come up with a name for it that non-scientist people use to insult hefty folk with. I mean sure, you use the fancy Latin Brontomerus mcintoshi, but Thunder Thighs is the sort of thing people remember.
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Aroused Elephant Flips Car In Pilanesberg Game Reserve [UPDATED]
23 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 5 Comments
You’re going to want to have a little look at this. Remember we talked about John Somers’ passionate encounter with Amarula the elephant yesterday? Well, a little earlier I received an email purportedly containing some shots of Amarula, doing his thing as you might say, to John’s new car.
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“You’ll Throw Away Your Gumboots And Relax” – Trevor Manuel
23 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
This was one of the remarks made by Trevor when he addressed a press briefing relating to the acid mine water drainage situation around jozi. We should take cognisance as it comes from the man who spent many years in charge of our country’s finances and who is also arguably the most trustworthy politician around. If that exists.
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Japanese Space Agency Wants To Send Sexy Robot Into Space. For ‘Comfort.’
18 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Ha! Yes. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is looking at plans to send a humanoid robot to the International Space Station. Except by humanoid I mean it will look attempt to look sexy but end up being insanely creepy. Also, it’s going to post photos and text to Twitter.
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Jamming With The Large Hadron Collider
16 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
If you think about it, music is simply data ordered in a specific way by a clever human and then executed by either man or machine. So why not take some existing data from a very clever machine and see if it makes music? Well that’s what the very very clever people at CERN have done.
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Animal Sex Exhibition
11 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
So here’s something we don’t normally discuss, in general, but it’s actually really fascinating and I’m sure you, like me, wouldn’t have ever described flies mating quite like this: “They get up to the craziest stuff. Amazing genitalia.” Well, now London’s Natural History Museum has put it out there, so to speak.
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So Is This The Doomsday Asteroid?
10 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
So according to the ever pessimistic Russians, we’re all gonna die in the year 2036. See, this 900-foot-long asteroid, epically named ‘99942 Apophis’, is apparently headed towards our measly little planet. NASA doesn’t agree, but don’t you worry, even if things go pear, they’ve got a plan.
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Dating Site Calculates The Best First Date Questions
09 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Well this is pretty awesome. Researchers at OkCupid waded through 776 million matches of questions and answers between would-be-couples, and matched those against relationships success rates – and come up with some bizarre, awesome data. Apparently beer drinkers put out more.
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Only A Quarter Of A Percent Of The Sky Searched
04 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Nasa has discovered a new habitable planetary system. Needless to say, calling the new system part of the Kepler-11 is mildly ironic considering what is being sent to orbit the pitches and dressing rooms of the approaching Cricket World Cup. But we won’t go there and that’s not what this is about either, it’s much more important.
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Plastic Bottle Cancer – Let’s Have That Chat
04 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
With the Radlantic continuing its game of lake-lake as far as Windguru will forecast (7 days ahead, actually), rumours of your plastic water bottle causing cancer are bound to peak. No doubt reaching for a sun exposed bottle of warm water will be met with upturned noses and precautionary words. So, hit them with the truth.
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Oral Sex Will Give You Cancer
01 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you read that right, oral sex will kill you. According to scientists, who are yet to get past first base, people who have had more than five oral-sex partners in their lifetime are 250% more likely to have throat cancer than the orally celibate.
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