[Below is the original script. Some changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]
Ultimately, global warming can be blamed on the sun. It's the sun's light that bathes the Earth and then gets sent back towards space as heat. But some of that heat gets blocked by those pesky carbon dioxide molecules building up in the atmosphere--inexorably warming our planet. [More]
PORTLAND, OREGON (May 20, 2009) -- It is easy to understand how explosions involving shrapnel – such as those caused by improvised explosive devices in Iraq – could cause brain damage. But what about such injuries that seem to be caused by blasts themselves, rather than from being thrown or hit by shrapnel?
Researchers have a few ideas, but one scientist has used some of the world’s most powerful computers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to get a better answer. Willy Moss and colleague Michael King used available data on blast waves from explosions and the physical properties of the human skull, brain and cerebrospinal fluid to craft a three-dimensional simulation of a soldier standing less than 15 feet from an explosion of 5 lbs. of C4. (See image to the right.)
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The landing of space shuttle Atlantis has been postponed until tomorrow morning at the earliest* because of bad weather at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. [More]
Why do two things I like to eat sometimes taste so bad when eaten together? --R. Lange, Houston
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[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
If you ever got picked on in the schoolyard, you might have wished for some sort of superpower: like unbeatable speed or maybe just the ability to completely disappear. Now scientists at the College of Wooster in Ohio say that you might have had a skill you didn’t realize: the uncanny ability to hear a bully coming. [More]