NPR

Thank You National Public Radio (USA)

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In this 2014 photo, two Siberian tigers rest beside a gamekeeper’s vehicle at the Harbin Siberian Tiger Park in China’s Heilongjiang province. Goh Chai Hin/AFP/Getty Images

We watched this video, from a link on social media that sometimes offers excellent, informative material related to the animal kingdom, wilderness, and conservation; but this turned our stomach so we are happy that NPR gives it exactly the kind of attention it deserves:

The Problem With That Video Of Tigers Squaring Off With A Drone

By Colin Dwyer

The video of about a dozen hefty Siberian tigers chasing and batting a flying drone from the sky seemed a lighthearted reprieve from the more serious news of the day. But since sharing the footage, we’ve become aware that it may conceal a darker story. Continue reading →

Jackfruit: Potential Meat Substitute?

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A vegetarian restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri, offers the Jack BBQ: jackfruit, onions, and kosher dill pickles served on sourdough bread. PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVE HEBERT, THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

This question has actually already been answered here before. Last year, Rosanna wrote about the fruit, revolving around an article from The Guardian that featured a recipe for pulled pork but with jackfruit replacing the meat. Earlier that month, we had linked to an NPR segment that called them a “nutritional bonanza” that may help with the food crisis in developing countries. And the year before that, we had written another post calling the fruit a “mega food.” So when will that happen for good? Hopefully, soon! Stacie Stukin writes for NatGeo on the would-be fad-food:

When Annie Ryu first encountered a large, spiky orb called jackfruit, she was perplexed. “I thought it was a porcupine,” she says.

But when she ate it prepared in a curry, she was amazed at how meat-like it was in taste and texture. That was in 2011, when she was traveling in southern India as a premed student helping community health workers improve prenatal care. By 2014, she had waylaid her medical career to start The Jackfruit Company.

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Shaken, Not Stirred – The Golden Age of Cocktails

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Forget the blender and all of the bottled mixes, the best Daiquiri is made from scratch and it is an unbelievably easy mix of three main ingredients.

Forget the blender and all of the bottled mixes, the best Daiquiri is made from scratch and it is an unbelievably easy mix of three main ingredients.

“Shaken, not stirred” is a catchphrase of Ian Fleming‘s fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond and describes his preference for the preparation of his martini cocktails. The phrase first appears in the novel Diamonds Are Forever (1956), though Bond himself does not actually say it until Dr. No (1958), where his exact words are “shaken and not stirred”. Going by it, there clearly seems to be a preference and an art to topping up a glass. And The Salt‘s trackback to when Americans learned to love mixed drinks shows just that.

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A Man of His Work

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Another pothole bites the dust in India, thanks to the efforts of Gangadhara Tilak Katnam

Another pothole bites the dust in India, thanks to the efforts of Gangadhara Tilak Katnam

“You shouldn’t be out there filling potholes at your age.” That’s what Venkateswari Katnam tells her 67-year-old husband, Gandgadhara. He doesn’t listen. Over the past five years, he estimates that he has filled around 1,100 potholes on the streets of Hyderabad. He carries bags of gravel and tar in the trunk of his Fiat, along with a spade, two brooms, a wire brush and a crowbar. When he spies a pothole — or learns of one from a Facebook message — he can usually fill it in under an hour. He clears out any debris or standing water, pours in the mix of gravel and tar, levels it off and waits about 30 minutes for it to set. He puts up red flags in English, Hindi and Telugu to make sure no one steps or drives in it. And when he’s done, he takes a selfie to add to his collection of filled pothole Continue reading →

Is Tapping Urban Wastewater the Answer?

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The city of Modesto's wastewater treatment plant could supply millions of gallons of water to local farmers in California. PHOTO: Lauren Sommer

The city of Modesto’s wastewater treatment plant could supply millions of gallons of water to local farmers in California. PHOTO: Lauren Sommer

Many California farmers are in a tight spot this summer, because their normal water supplies have dried up with the state’s extreme drought. In the state’s Central Valley, that’s driving some farmers to get creative: They’re looking at buying water from cities — not freshwater, but water that’s already gone down the drain.

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From India to Houston, the 40-year-old Yogurt

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A recent batch of Veena Mehra's yogurt in Houston. She's been making yogurt the same way, with the same starter, for about 40 years. PHOTO: Nishta Mehra

A recent batch of Veena Mehra’s yogurt in Houston. She’s been making yogurt the same way, with the same starter, for about 40 years. PHOTO: Nishta Mehra

If you’re making your own yogurt at home, you need an old batch to make a new batch. And the community of microbes in that yogurt starter — and the flavor — should remain relatively unchanged if you make it the same way every time. That’s what Rachel Dutton, an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of California, San Diego who studies cheese and other dairy products, says, anyway.

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Hunger Games and Peru’s Wachiperi

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Victorio Dariquebe Gerewa displays his bow and arrow at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. PHOTO: Ben de la Cruz/NPR

Victorio Dariquebe Gerewa displays his bow and arrow at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. PHOTO:
Ben de la Cruz/NPR

Girls and women in the Peruvian Andes are also asking to learn — but for a different reason. They want to be able to hunt for meat and fish so they don’t have to rely on the men to bring home food.

“The world is modernizing, and women are starting to want to use the bow,” says Sergio Pacheco, a skilled archer who’s part of the tiny Wachiperi community — population estimates range from 90 to 140 — in a remote region of Southeast Peru. “They say, ‘We are just women in the family, so what happens when our father dies? We need to learn this to be able to take care of our families.'”

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The Gears in Planthopper Nymph Legs

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Igor Siwanowicz’s image of planthopper nymph gears won 9th place in the Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition. Photo by Igor Siwanowicz, HHMI Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, Virginia. Via Science Friday.

In September of 2013, Science published a paper by Malcolm Burrows and Gregory Sutton titled, “Interacting Gears Synchronize Propulsive Leg Movements in a Jumping Insect.” The two British biologists were discussing the fascinating structures they had found in the legs of small insects called planthoppers. At the top joints of each pair of legs, the tiny jumping insects had gears with interlocking teeth that synchronized the kicking motion between the two appendages, so that the planthoppers could jump straight rather than slightly to the left or right if one leg had acted even slightly before the other.

Covering the story back in September, Joseph Stromberg wrote for Smithsonian Magazine that:

To the best of our knowledge, the mechanical gear—evenly-sized teeth cut into two different rotating surfaces to lock them together as they turn—was invented sometime around 300 B.C.E. by Greek mechanics who lived in Alexandria. In the centuries since, the simple concept has become a keystone of modern technology, enabling all sorts of machinery and vehicles, including cars and bicycles.

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Bats Sing Like Birds Do. Who Knew?

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Pipistrellus nathusii, a species of European bat.

We recently learned that certain types of fruit bat can echolocate with their wings, and now we’re discovering that some bats also make sounds for reasons other than sonar or distress calls! Although bat songs have been recorded as much as four decades ago, more and more singing bat species are being found by scientists today, and these batsongs seem to function the same way that birdsongs do. As Robert Krulwich points out for NPR, there are very few types of mammal that sing, so it’s nice to see the club growing. Krulwich’s article continues below:

Bats produce “pings” or “clicks,” right? They make these high-pitched sounds, too high for us to hear, but when their cries ricochet off distant objects, the echoes tell them there’s a house over there, a tree in front of them, a moth flying over on the left. And so they “see” by echolocation. That’s their thing. They are famously good at it.

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The Big Idea

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You may or may not have attended university. Maybe you studied science.  Or wish you had.  Or will.  Still, nothing prepares you for the big idea, presented with charisma that is as impressive as the idea.  Click to the right (Krulwich wonders) to see this idea laid out courtesy of one of our favorite science communicators:

Here it is, in a nutshell: The logic of science boiled down to one, essential idea. It comes from Richard Feynman, one of the great scientists of the 20th century, who wrote it on the blackboard during a class at Cornell in 1964.