Why TV Show Seasons Begin in September

I had always assumed that September's back-to-school timing was the reason that television shows almost always began their new seasons at that time.  But in the early days of TV, the only major national advertisers were automobile companies.  And the car companies rolled out their new models in September, so that is when the big advertising dollars were up for grabs.  This TV-advertising model has been the standard ever since.

But now things are changing and viewers are demanding new content during the summer and at other non-traditional times.  The television executives are finally moving past the 1950's...

Why We Yawn, and Why Yawning is Contageous

It seems that the purpose of yawning may be to cool our brains, and the combination of yawning and stretching (pandiculation) makes us more alert and focused - which is helpful for a herd.  Empathy may also influence whether or not we yawn along with someone else.

Check out the video:

An Elephant Underpass

An underpass that has been constructed under a busy Kenyan highway provides a corridor that allows isolated elephants to move freely between areas.  Previously the elephants would face fences, cropland, traffic, and more - leading to conflict with humans.  The underpass is designed to re-create the historic migration routes of northern Kenyan elephant herds.

Newly Found Mayan Calendar Goes Beyond 2012

A new Mayan mural has been excavated that, among other things, includes date/time calculations that continue thousands of years beyond 2012.  So much for that doomsday myth...

The mural was found in an apparent workroom, where records were kept and calculations made and books (now disintegrated) were written.  It is the only room like it ever discovered.

Asteroid Mining

Sounds like dangerous work. But start-up company Planetary Resources is planning to do just that - send spacecraft to extract water and minerals from near-Earth asteroids.

You might be wondering how that could be even remotely profitable, but consider this:

Precious metals like platinum don't occur naturally in the Earth's crust, but are found in abundance in asteroids--a single asteroid could hold the equivalent of all the platinum ever mined on Earth. Other minerals found in asteroids include nickel and iron.

The company is backed by Google and Microsoft billionaires and hopes to launch the 1st spacecraft in two years.

Leeches Help with Wildlife Studies

Scientists have realized that they can use the blood from leeches to determine what types of wildlife have been in the area.  The blood from a leech contains the DNA of animals from which it has taken blood.

This is extremely helpful to wildlife biologists studying difficult to find or endangered species.  A leech will come right to any human standing in a stream, so they are simple to collect.  The DNA of the bitten animals remains in the gut of a leech for quite a while, so a DNA analysis can be very valuable.

For example, 25 leeches were collected in a Vietnamese national park.  The researchers discovered the DNA of a small-toothed ferret badger in one of the leeches - and this was exciting because there had never been a sighting of that species of badger in that national park.

So leeches can be an inexpensive, simple tool in the toolkit of biologists wherever leeches naturally live.

Shooting THE HOBBIT in 48 fps

For 80 years, cinema movies have been filmed in a camera at the rate of 24 frames-per-second.  Peter Jackson, however, is using twice that rate in the filming of The Hobbit - a first for a major motion picture.

The advantage is apparently it can capture motion and camera movement much sharper, and it works better for 3D (The Hobbit is being filmed in 3D).

10 minutes of the film were recently previewed, and the reviews by many were harsh.  One quote was:

"The footage I saw looked terrible … completely non-cinematic. The sets looked like sets … sets don’t even look like sets when you’re on them live, but these looked like sets. The magical illusion of cinema is stripped away completely.”




James Cameron is an advocate for the new technology.  And Peter Jackson says:

"Looking at 24 frames every second may seem ok–and we’ve all seen thousands of films like this over the last 90 years–but there is often quite a lot of blur in each frame, during fast movements, and if the camera is moving around quickly, the image can judder or “strobe.”

Shooting and projecting at 48 fps does a lot to get rid of these issues. It looks much more lifelike, and it is much easier to watch, especially in 3-D."

We will all get to judge for ourselves come December.

A Crab With Flair

Four new species of crabs have been discovered on Palawan island of the Philippines, including this one:



Scientists are not sure what evolutionary advantage this coloration provides, except perhaps to allow these crabs to identify their own kind.

Chernobyl - 26 Years Later

Reactor #4 exploded on the morning of April 26, 1986.  It is still leaking radiation today, and there is a large exclusionary zone around the plant that is off-limits.

Here are some photos of the city Pripyat today, 50,000 once lived:








http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/04/road-through-chernobyl/?pid=1924

Abandoned Town as Art

Belgium ordered the abandonment of the town of Doel in the 1990's to make way for a port facility.  The buildings were never razed, and instead of a port, it is now part of a nature preserve.

But over the years squatters have painted murals on many of the structures, turning this ghost town into an art museum that will slowly be reclaimed by nature.

The Iceberg that Sank the Titanic

At least two different ships' crew members took photos of this iceberg in the days just after the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic.  The iceberg had a streak of red paint, a sure sign that something large had struck it recently.




http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/titanic-iceberg-history/

A Life-Sized Starship Enterprise in Vegas

Back in the early 1990's, officials in Las Vegas were trying to figure out how to bring business back from The Strip to the downtown area.

One idea was to build a full-lize replica of Star Trek's Enterprise. It would include all of the key rooms/locations and also have live shows.

Most everyone loved the idea, but an executive from Paramount felt that if the attraction were a flop, it would be a highly visible flop forever, as opposed to a bad movie that people forget about after a few months.

It could have been pretty neat!



http://io9.com/5900012/how-las-vegas-missed-out-on-a-life+sized-starship-enterprise

Repairing Potholes with Putty

Students at Case Western suggest that a simple, stop-gap way to fill potholes is with a mixture of corn starch and water.  This fluid is a putty that will fill the entire pothole and all its crevices, but it becomes stiffer and quite viscous when a strong force is applied to it - like a car tire rolling over it.

It is cheap, simple, and anyone can do it.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2012/04/12/bright-idea-filling-potholes-with-non-newtonian-fluids/

Real or Fake?

Real.  This is a 3-month old white-handed gibbon in a German zoo.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/04/fac-2.html

A Niceness Gene?

Oxytocin and vasopressin are two hormones that are known to affect how "nice" someone is. It turns out that there are specific gene receptors that boost the effectiveness of those hormones, especially in a person who views the world as a threatening place.

In other words, someone with those genes is more likely to be generous and engaged in civic duty.

Any chance we can splice those genes into people we don't like?