Science & Technology: Thinking Outside of the Toy Box

Four Children's Gizmos That Inspired Scientific Breakthroughs (Scientific American 2010-03-24)

Advances in science and technology can launch from unassuming springboards. In 1609 Galileo tweaked a toylike spyglass, pointed it at the moon and Jupiter (not the neighbors), and astronomy took a quantum leap. About 150 years later, Benjamin Franklin reportedly used a kite to experiment with one of the earliest-known electrical capacitors. Continuing that tradition, researchers reach back to childhood -- to Etch A Sketch, Lego, Shrinky Dink and Balloon within a Balloon -- to help them develop tiny transistors, study particle separation, make microfluidics devices, and fight cancer.

Astronomy: The Known Universe Scientifically Rendered by the American Museum of Natural History

After hovering over Mount Everest and the gorges that plunge to the Ganges, you are pulled through the Earth’s atmosphere to glimpse the inky black of space over Tibet’s high desert. So begins The Known Universe, a new film produced by the American Museum of Natural History that is part of a new exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City.

Science & Technology: Elements of Humanity

On Elements of Humanity, the editors of Make magazine present interviews with great minds working in science and technology that ask what intrigues them and try to learn more about what they do.
Lynn Rothschild is "Fascinated with Microbes."

Science: Rensselaer Researchers to Create Semantic Web Platforms for Massive Scientific Collaboration

Web scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will use the World Wide Web to compile and share scientific data on an unprecedented scale. Their goal is to hasten scientific discovery and innovation by enabling rapid and easy collaboration between scientists, educators, students, policy makers, and even “citizen scientists” around the world via the Web.
Funded by $1.1 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the research seeks to break science out of the hallowed halls of the laboratory and place it in the hands of the people. -- from the press release, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The Brain: Cognitive Daily News

"Cognitive Daily reports nearly every day on fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition from the most respected scientists in the field....The research isn't dumbed down, but it's explained in language that everyone can understand, with clear illustrations and references to the original research." -- from the website. <http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/>

Good Eatin': The science behind pickles

In LOL's continuing effort to answer your most deep-seated questions, here is a site where you can learn about the science underlying pickling, "the ancient culinary craft of preserving foods in salt brine or vinegar." How does a cucumber becomes a pickle? The site has a gallery of international pickle suspects -- kimchi, chutney, pickled eggs, pickled herring; pickle facts; pickle recipes -- fried dill pickles, ceviche; pickling tips; in short, everything you wanted to know about pickles but were afraid to ask. <http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/pickles/>