Humans are not merely adept at communicating danger — it is seemingly built into our brains. That may be true for most social animals, but not all animals can communicate using specific nouns or verbs to refer to present dangers. That, it seems, is the unique power of human language, an ability that provides a strong evolutionary advantage....
Originally posted on salon.com
The red planet Mars, fourth from Earth’s sun, has two little moons: Phobos and Deimos. Neither is anything like Earth’s moon: small and irregularly shaped, astronomers have long believed that they are more likely captured asteroids, pulled into the Martian orbit by the red planet’s gravity and then kept there indefinitely as makeshift moons....
Originally posted on salon.com
Though dogs are so close genetically close to wolves that many taxonomists consider them to be a subspecies, most people wouldn’t let a wolf lick their hand as readily as a Shih Tzu. When animals are domesticated, as the dog was, their traits change; an artificial selection occurs over many generations, which, in the case of the dog, probably happened through unconscious selection bias among ancient humans and their canid hangers-on....
Originally posted on salon.com
When the first residential electrical grids came to life, the world saw it as a utopian project. The miracle of science had brought an invisible force through a wire to their homes — one that could light rooms and make un-living objects move. Much as “AI” has become a buzzword to advertise consumer software nowadays, consumer products of that era advertised that they were superior because they were produced through electricity; Triscuit crackers, for instance, whose name was a portmanteau of “electricity biscuits” and which were produced in electric ovens, were so-named to heighten their appeal....
Originally posted on salon.com
If there ever were a science experiment that combined the power of artistic expression with the traditionally dry task of collecting data, it is the one conceived by Dr. Nicky Clayton and her PhD student, Elias Garcia Pellegrin. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Clayton is a dancer and Pellegrin has a background in performance theater....
Originally posted on salon.com