Friday, October 28, 2011

Science fair season is coming up


Thanks to the fine people at io9, I now know that Britain's Royal Society has recently opened up their historical archive of journals to the public, free of charge. The Royal Society has been publishing peer-reviewed scientific literature since 1665, so that's quite a bit of information (around 60,000 scientific papers), including articles written by Ben Franklin, Charles Darwin, and Isaac Newton.

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Thursday, October 27, 2011

A step in the right direction

According to Scientific American, a Dutch researcher has developed a font designed to decrease the number of errors made by dyslexics while reading. The font emphasizes the differences between certain letters commonly confused by dyslexics ("d" and "b", for example), making it easier for dyslexics to distinguish between them.

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Monday, October 11, 2010

Want to smell tomato-soup-roast-beef-and-blueberry-pie fresh?

Of all the candy mentioned in Roald Dahl's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Violet Beauregarde's full-course-dinner gum has always struck me as the least appealing, but apparently scientists have been hard at work making it a reality. According to the Telegraph, researchers have produced microscopic capsules that will allow timed releases of various flavors. The (non-nutritive) gum capsules could then be...
"...filled with flavouring for tomato soup that would break open on contact with saliva, while tougher capsules would contain the flavour for roast beef that would break open as the gum is chewed. A final flavour for blueberry pie could be packaged in capsules that require vigorous chewing to burst."
I actually feel a little queasy just typing that, but I'm assuming they wouldn't have put all that energy into developing this product if there wasn't a demand for it.

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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Hot-button topic

The most recent Horn Book newsletter has a great interview up with Joanna Cole, one of the co-creators (with illustrator Bruce Degen) of the Magic School Bus series. Cole and Degen's most recent MSB book tackles a more politically-charged topic than usual: The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge. Cole gives a very clear, firm statement to the magazine about the "false controversy" over climate change, so props to her for her bravery.

Now all we need to do is sit back and wonder how long it will be before somebody tries to have her book banned....

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