Episode #508
News Items
Who's That Noisy
- Answer to last week: Eurosignal
Science or Fiction
-
Item #1
Science
A new study confirms the popular belief that batteries bounce higher when they are out of juice than when they are fresh. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/pues-dtb040115.php
-
Item #2
Fiction
Engineers at NIST have created a ‘nanomechanical plasmonic phase modulator’ which they claim can be used to fit an estimated 2.4 terabytes of data on an optical disc the size of a conventional CD. http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2015.40.html
-
Item #3
Science
Researchers have taught blind rats to effectively “see” and remember how to navigate a maze by attaching a geomagnetic compass to their brain. http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(15)00265-1
Skeptical Quote of the Week.
“Science is more than the mere description of events as they occur. It’s an attempt to discover order, to show that certain events stand in lawful relations to other events.” - B.F. Skinner