In yet another example of the serendipity of science, a University of Michigan research team applied “cocrystallization”—a process used in the pharmaceutical industry to alter the physical properties of drugs—to the production of high explosives, and discovered what may improve explosives technology in use for the last half century. Mixing two mainstays, the volatile CL-20 and the popular HMX (two parts to one), chemist Adam J. Matzger and colleagues cooked up an explosive that travels about 1 percent faster than HMX alone, the military’s explosive of choice since the 1940s. Not a ... Read More
My Nuclear Bomb Detonates More Safely Than Your Nuclear Bomb
September 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Consider the Crawdad
September 6, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Recently dubbed the “ultimate survivor” by British biologists, the Louisiana red swamp crawdad and its globe-trotting adventures have made it the poster crustacean for pluck in the face of adversity. As legends go, the American export, a Gulf Coast native, first landed in Africa in the 1960s. Despite harsh conditions, food scarcity, and fierce predators, the swamp crawdad thrived—and today boasts progeny across the continent. In these challenging social and economic times, the crawdad’s superior coping skills have caught the attention of scientists the world over. Herewith, the ... Read More
Polynesian Corals Say No to Diversity
August 28, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
When it comes to the symbiotic relationship between reef-building corals and energy-producing algae, “the more the merrier” has been the rule—that is, the more algae types the corals host within their tissues, the heartier the corals, the better they can withstand environmental stress (say from climate change or ocean acidification). Right? Counterintuitive to the notion that biodiversity is essential for a balanced ecosystem, a University of Hawaii at Manoa study of corals in French Polynesia has revealed just the opposite. In the field for the National Science Foundation’s ... Read More
Paint By Numbers
August 23, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Artists and collectors looking to cash in on the reported one percent’s run on the international art market can take cues from a recent Washington State University study on auction house sales of paintings by Picasso, Magritte, Munch, and a dozen other impressionist and modern masters. Among the preliminary findings, a single percentage point increase in Google hits on the artist—the assigned indicator of popularity—corresponded to a chunky price increase of 38 percent. Arzu Aysin Tekindor, an artist and economics PhD candidate, employed hedonic regression theory—a modeling system ... Read More
