Episode #538
News Items
Who's That Noisy
- Answer to last week: 3D Printer
Interview with Dr. Dean Edell
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22PJnZFUCns
Science or Fiction
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Item #1
Fiction
New evidence supports the theory that climatic change, specifically progressive desertification, was largely responsible for the extinction of Australian megafauna about 30 thousand years ago. http://phys.org/news/2015-10-early-humans-linked-ancient-australian.html
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Item #2
Science
New research finds that humans can subconsciously hear a sound delay as brief as 40ms and use that delay to judge the distance of objects. http://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/can-we-unconsciously-hear-distance/
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Item #3
Science
Researchers find that the electric eel uses short runs of electrical pulses to cause the muscles of fish prey to contract, thereby giving away their location. http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2015/10/electric-eel-most-remarkable-predator-in-animal-kingdom/
Skeptical Quote of the Week.
“Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics.” - Steven Pinker