fun facts
A new lion roars into town.
“A cub was born at the [Lincoln Park] zoo Tuesday, marking the first time an African lion cub has been born there in 20 years, according to a zoo news release.” | learn more
fun facts
How much gold is there in the world?
A five minute video. Did you know that 90% of recycled gold currently comes from jewelry? | learn more
fun facts
Typography is impossible.
“The practical guide to why laying out type never quite does what you want.” | learn more
fun facts
Behind each plastic bottle cap is a careful engineering process.
Heinz Ketchup, Sriracha, and Vita Coco have very innovative caps. “Let’s take a look at what goes into a few of these mechanical marvels with the help of our industrial CT scanner.” | learn more
big ideas
Quantum cryptography and untrustworthy devices.
“For the first time, experiments demonstrate the possibility of sharing secrets with perfect privacy — even when the devices used to share them cannot be trusted.” | learn more
big ideas
Deploying 1.2 MWh nuclear plants anywhere within 48 hours.
“Radiant’s Kaleidos power generator will be an encapsulated, meltdown-proof core utilizing TRI-structural ISOtropic particle (TRISO) fuel, which the Office of Nuclear Energy claims to be “the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth”.” | learn more
teaching the kids
College: how to make the most of it.
A ton of good advice for students in here. “Signaling is the only good reason to go. Still, once you’re on campus, you might as well make the most of it. I’ve been in college non-stop for the last 33 years, and […]
thoughts of food
Reading up on bagels.
“The result is a dense, chewy, doughy interior with a browned and sometimes crisp exterior.” | learn more
under the microscope
Soundwave microchip to grow new bone cells.
This is like science fiction. Lob the right sound frequency at stem cells and they turn to bone. “We can use the sound waves to apply just the right amount of pressure in the right places to the stem cells, […]
under the microscope
The Pentagon is working on an algorithm to detect Covid early.
Preliminary results of the study, “show the algorithm’s projected accuracy is about 82 percent with a false positive rate of 11 percent over a 14-day period.” This is one of a few groups working on early detection with wearables. What […]