Author Archives: Nathan


About Nathan

For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity. - Ecclesiastes 3:19

Crazy Ants Are Displacing Fire Ants — Invading Texas And The South (VIDEO)

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Image Credit: Joe MacGown, Mississippi Entomological Museum

Crazy ants are currently invading Texas and the southeastern United States, displacing and eliminating the fire ants throughout those areas, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin. This is of course not a surprise for many of those throughout those regions who have had experiences with those ants. This is just the most recent of the recurrent ant invasions that have been happening since large-scale human movement between North and South … Read More

Dance Of The Planets 2013 — Venus, Jupiter, And Mercury Dance May 24 – 30

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Image Credit: Nathan August © ; After Sunset via Flickr CC

The Dance of the Planets will be occurring from — roughly — May 24 through May 30. The “dance of the planets” is the name used for the event where Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury, all appear to be right next to each other in the evening sky, and over a period of time appear to rotate and change positions with each other. The show is expected to be a good one this year, so I … Read More

Microbes Genetically Engineered To Grow In The Dark

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Image Credit: Cyanobacteria via Wikimedia Commons

A photosynthetic bacteria that can survive without light? What…? A strain of photosynthetic cyanobacteria has been genetically manipulated by researchers at the University of California – Davis and is now able to grow without the presence of light. “In this work, we used synthetic biology approaches to probe and rewire photoautotrophic (exclusively relying on carbon dioxide and light energy for growth) cyanobacterial metabolism for the ability to grow without light energy,” says Jordan McEwen, the … Read More

Genome Sequencing Diagnostics Have Significant Problems, As New Research Demonstrates

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Genome sequencing diagnostics has some serious limitations to it, as researchers at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute recently discovered when they came across three children who had some of the rare inherited conditions collectively known as Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation (CDG), but only in some of the cells of their body, not all. The children are ‘mosaics’ — the term used for people who have different genomes in different parts of their body. The press … Read More

NASA’s Mars Rover Opportunity Breaks Record For Off-Planet Driving By A US Made Vehicle

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Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s relentless solar-powered Mars rover Opportunity has now set a new record — greatest distance traveled by a US made vehicle on another world. The Opportunity rover was originally scheduled only for a three-month mission that began back in January 2004, but the solar-powered rover has shown itself to be quite tough and long-lasting — greatly outlasting the original mission. The new record set by Opportunity eclipses a record set more than 40 years ago … Read More

Asteroid 1998 QE2 — Asteroid Big Enough To Cause Extinction Event Passes By The Earth On May 31 2013

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Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

An asteroid big enough to cause an extinction event if it were to impact the Earth will pass by us at a distance of about 3.6 million miles on May 31, 2013. That’s about the distance that theEarth is from the Moon, times 15. The asteroid — asteroid 1998 QE2 — isn’t any danger to us anytime in the near-future, but it is an interesting opportunity, giving researchers the chance to observe a 230-foot — … Read More

Insecticides Cause Slow Starvation In Aquatic Organisms, Discovery Shows Limits Of Conventional Toxicity Tests

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Image Credit: EAWAG, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

A very commonly used insecticide, imidacloprid (a neonicotinoid), has now been found by new research to be extremely toxic to aquatic organisms, often leading to their death. It’s very important to note that the “slow starvation” caused by the insecticide is undetectable by conventional toxicity tests, which are done on a much shorter time frame than the new research was. Which means that many chemicals which are now considered to be “non-toxic”, in various regards, … Read More

Commonly-Used Poultry Drug Increases Levels Of Toxic Arsenic In Chicken Meat

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Image Credit: Poultry via Flickr CC

The meat from chickens raised with arsenic-based drugs contains considerably higher levels of inorganic arsenic, a very toxic carcinogen, new research from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future at the Bloomberg School of Public Health has found. While it may sound obvious that if chickens are administered drugs containing arsenic than their bodies will retain and contain some of that arsenic, it has actually long been argued that they would not… Especially with … Read More

Earthworms Protect Gardens From Slugs, Research Finds

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Garden Swiss chard

Earthworms, when present in healthy numbers in a garden’s soil, effectively protect the plants there from being consumed by slugs, according to new research from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. An interesting finding, for those of us that like to garden. Slugs can be quite the pest from what I’ve heard, though I’ve only had issues with them once — with regards to cucumbers. And that was remedied pretty easily … Read More

Solar Flare Bonanza — Third X-Class Solar Flare Within 24 Hours Erupts From The Sun

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"These pictures from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory show the three X-class flares that the sun emitted in under 24 hours on May 12-13, 2013." Image Credit: NASA/SDO

Another powerful X-class solar flare just erupted from the Sun — the third within only 24 hours. the solar flare registered as a X3.2, making it the most powerful solar flare of the year. This third flare peaked in intensity at about 9:11 pm EDT on May 13, 2013. The previous two flares, an X1.7 and an X2.8, peaked at about 10 pm EDT on May 12 2013, and 12:05 pm EDT on May 13 … Read More