Episode #312
News Items
Who's That Noisy
- Answer to last week: a screw being dropped into a turbine engine
Science or Fiction
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Item #1
Science
A new study shows that it is possible to learn how to deliberately forget information. http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=24890&news_item=5629
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Item #2
Science
Research suggests that pigeons are very adept at recognizing human faces. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110703132527.htm
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Item #3
Fiction
Medical engineers report that they have successfully built and tested a functioning ‘robotic’ small intestine that is capable of replacing a significant portion of the small intestine in an animal. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-functioning-small-intestine-laboratory.html
Skeptical Quote of the Week.
‘If agricultural land be left uncultivated, in a few years the jungle returns, and signs are not lacking that a similar danger is always lying in wait for the fields of thought, which, by the labour of three hundred years, have been cleared and brought into cultivation by men of science. The destruction of a very small percentage of the population would suffice to annihilate scientific knowledge, and lead us back to almost universal belief in magic, witchcraft and astrology.’ - William Cecil Dampier Dampier-Whetham